In this blog I look beyond the obvious and try to find out why people and companies do what they do - and what it means for the rest of us. 
Just had a quick meeting with a friend, who shall remain nameless, who spawned what I think is a great idea.
He works for an IT Tech vendor and gets to meet plenty of interesting IT pros – but always under the umbrella of trying to sell something.
IT folks are smart; they get that there is a symbiotic (or parasitic) relationship between the vendor and the customer, so that’s ok.
Here’s the thought: Â if a company REALLY wants its people to understand how the other side thinks, operates, and functions in order to create an empathetic bond that hopefully leads to selling something – then having the person on the vendor side LIVE in that world is probably more legitimate than not. Â Huh.
In the industry, we take people from the IT world and put them up on a pedestal to tell others how they became great at what they did by using our stuff. Â We take legitimate humans and turn them into props we use to sell stuff.
Why don’t we do the reverse?
Why don’t we make it mandatory training to take our evangelists and force them to actually WORK inside an IT operation for a year or two? Â That way, when they speak, they will speak with legitimate authority – not marketing bullshit.
Big IT vendors have big IT organizations – so they could rotate through internal operations – which would probably be hugely beneficial to all involved. Â If not, maybe vendors should consider sending some of their team off to camp – have them go work in an IT shop at a non-profit, for example.
Interesting thought.
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Steve,
Great posting. Many organizations have projects under the title “Eat Your Own Dog Food” in which the vendor technology that is being sold is used internally and the product team gets a first hand view of how their proposed solution works in the real-world. These projects have aided many vendors in delivering real-world tested technology right out of the gate.
All the best.
Brett
I like this idea.
I actually see a lot of that going on at Symantec where I work. Former customers become evangelists and sales engineers and vice versa. It isn’t policy, but seems to happen organically.
There is one sticking point. The way that IT vendors consume technology seems less mainstream than other sectors in my opinion. Probably the result of having so many highly technical workers in the organization. So working IT at a high tech software company can be slightly different than the same IT job at the same size financial company.