Why IT Consulting Firms Must Think Like a Marketer

I’ve been asked by an IT consulting firm to present ideas on marketing to their clients’ staff when it comes to new internal projects. Now, some of you might wonder what these folks need with marketing — in fact, some in their firm might wonder the same thing.

Here’s my take though. Every business that provides services to an organization has objectives to meet. Maybe in the case of a managed IT service it is increased productivity, lower costs, greater automation, security or better inventory management.

So, let’s say that the CEO charges the IT consulting firm with finding and installing a new CRM system for sales and marketing to use. All of a sudden the IT firm’s objectives intersect squarely with two other business functions — two other teams that have been down this road before and may have no interest in playing.

This is where effective marketing comes into play. In almost every organization the scenario above is doomed to fail because there’s no alignment.

What if the IT consulting firm created a very marketing like process that was based on building the kind of trust required to get total buy-in, loyalty and even evangelism for their objectives?

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