Relationships are based on trust, not tweets

Where do you normally turn for information on IT sourcing? Blogs like this or even the regular print media and all those magazines full of B-school wisdom? But wherever you go to get your information, the bigger question is, how did you get there? In a sea of information that is of varying quality, it’s important to have some kind of trusted curator – a filter to what really counts.

Naturally, the SSON site is providing that filter for those interested in outsourcing, but a survey we carried out recently found that the sourcing executives surveyed were almost all using LinkedIn as their social network of choice. That’s the tool they are using for networking, discussing the industry, and finding information – useful to know.

*Click here to read the article

So, executives involved in IT sourcing are finding it essential to be involved in social media, if only to find the latest news and research. At least, that’s the major requirement for those on the buy-side of the industry.

Take Twitter for example. Long derided by many executives as a waste of time because they have no inclination to broadcast what they had for breakfast this morning, or how frequently they have used the bathroom.

Turn the model upside down. Stop feeling obliged to broadcast what you are up to and start listening instead. There are two ways to start listening intelligently. First, choose some people you already trust; leading business journalists or bloggers, industry analysts, other executives. They are all out there making comments on IT sourcing. Follow them. Create a stream of information coming only from those people who you already have some time and respect for.

Then, add some search terms. If you are interested in finding out what people are saying about remote infrastructure management then put in some search terms that describe the areas or tools you are interested in.

Now you can sit back and monitor some of that chatter on the Internet, but the difference is that you are monitoring only the subjects you are interested in, as well as the writers you are interested in. You just found a way to allow social media to curate the information in a way that helps you save time.

And that’s very different to the idea of Twitter being useful only for updating friends on your choice of dinner last night.

As the SSON research notes, one of the things that the outsourcing decision-makers hate most is vendors pushing their products too hard, even when online the hard-sell can be annoying. It’s one of the biggest turn-offs for IT buyers, and is responsible for many of them operating in a social media dead-zone… keeping visible to friends and family only and not allowing their online persona to be visible to anyone else in case another solution vendor bombards them with messages.

A friendly word of advice to the sellers who make this mistake, don’t be too eager to push your wares. Just because you are operating online doesn’t make the process of selling to a CIO any different to real-life.

Twitter and LinkedIn are both full of business journalists, industry analysts, consultants and advisors. Why not spend some time using this fresh new medium to reach out to those people first? They are the traditional influencers of IT deals and in this new environment they are easier to reach than ever before.

But if you try jumping the queue and thinking that just because that C-level exec you really want to reach is on Twitter and it can’t harm anyone to send him a few messages, well, think again.

Outsourcing is still all about relationships and though social media makes it easier to stay in touch and find information, those big purchasing decisions are all based on trust, not tweets.