According to a some IT analyst, budgets in 2011 will remain flat, if not a little higher than in 2010. This is something you probably already know but the real question is: given that IT leaders will spend differently, how will you respond?

For instance, in our experience IT decision makers have 5 main priorities both from a business and IT perspective. They are:

Business Priorities:

1)      Business process improvement

2)      Reducing enterprise cost

3)      Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness

4)      Attracting and retaining new customers

5)      Increasing the use of information/analytics

IT Priorities:

1)      Business Intelligence

2)      Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others)

3)      Servers and Storage technologies (virtualization)

4)      Legacy application modernization

5)      Collaboration technologies

So again, the real question for you is, given this information, how will you respond? If IT leaders are spending differently then that means they are buying differently.

If they are buying differently then what you offer and how you sell and market should change.  You can ask yourself:

• Am I listening closely enough to my customers to know how they are buying, what they are buying, what their priorities are and what their challenges are?
• Am I processing and making the appropriate changes to my business? Do my offerings match the needs of my customers or am I trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

The real problems come about because we don’t change and adapt to the market. I spend a great deal of my time now, showing my clients how to sell and market differently.

What everyone needs to understand that there is basically two approaches you can take in a post-recession economy that is still shaky: 1) you can panic and lower your prices and compete on price alone (instead of your value, expertise, and thought leadership), or 2) you can do the opposite.

I say you should focus on being different than your competitors who compete on price. Those who compete on price don’t compete for very long.

Let me know what you think?

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