People are brilliant
Not everyone can possess the scientific, literary or mathematical brilliance of Einstein, Wilde or Turing. Luminaries and intellectual gamechangers like these don’t come along every day.
However, brilliance manifests in various ways, reflecting exceptional intelligence, talent, or skill in specific areas. Brilliant individuals think deeply, solve complex problems, and generate innovative ideas daily.
It’s a shame that this truth seems to lack recognition in much of the tech services marketing for professional services (PS), managed services (MS) and engineering consulting (EC). How can we change the record here?
The new services universe
‘Old-world’ IT Consulting has long been a complex industry, where well-paid organisations are charged with ‘integrating the un-integrateable’. And managing the (almost) un-manageable.
Big advisory firms, boutique players and top-drawer resellers have feasted over the space for decades. Their success stories had/still have the potential to influence corporate client success – and for institutions to deliver-on policy pledges.
But times are changing.
- The new world of IT is more integrateable, more composable, more modular.
- IT itself can now deliver more profound business capabilities than previously dreamt of.
- Tech offers are now (generally) configured to be consumed as a service.
But while this is all true, it still needs the power of people to make it happen. We must make sure the value of human ingenuity, assurance and experience shines-through in marketing PS, MS and EC offers. This is not always the case.
Articulate the potential of people
As technology marketers, or b2b tech agencies, we’re used to extracting and communicating the value/potential from a software, device or platform. We’re experts at projecting the impact to the user or buyer. But advisory plays are a little harder to land.
Yes, explaining process and operational pathways are part of the job – especially for complex, high-risk tasks that benefit from a ‘good-old’ methodology. But don’t forget about the value-add. And it needs to be better than competing offers too!
What’s the checklist for services marketers?
For b2b tech marketers with a people-driven service portfolio, they should:
- Ensure each play expresses the very difference of human input – not just a flow of tasks.
- Cluster service propositions into meaningful bundles where collaboration and intersection of expertise can flywheel success.
- Create constructs that express the escalation of value aligned with human inputs – possibly around a lifecycle or buyer experience.
- Establish interlocks between individual services – creating a pathway around the incremental plays that can deliver compounding gains.
- Embed a vision/ultimate customer destination that can only be achieved with the right combination of tech play + services play.
Manifested properly, these principles will set marketers and tech agencies on the right path.
Blending empathy with expertise
With services plays, tech marketers have more chance to apply empathy and emotional intelligence. Here they’re selling people to people. They’re addressing highly-human concerns – ‘is that something we could do?’, ‘do we trust that to happen?’,’ how can that possibly be achieved?’.
It takes b2b tech agency expertise and mind-shift to get the balance right. But, after all tech still needs people, and people still need tech…
For now, until AI fully takes over! (wink)
The Rubicon Agency has deep experience with consulting, engineering and services propositions, working with many of the leading vendors in disruptive innovation.
Check out our experience in consulting and services.
