With Timothy Chou

We recently discussed the IT buying/selling process from the IT seller side with Timothy Chou, a longtime Stanford University professor who served as President of Oracle on Demand and currently invests in and advises startup companies in Silicon Valley.

This is the first in a series of perspectives from Chou.

As a technology vendor executive, what are the biggest pain points you've experienced when it comes to winning a deal from a CIO/company?

Timothy Chou: The biggest pain points between client and vendor are communication and education.

Our current processes are straight out of the Stone Age. As vendors, we bring our sales staff to the HQ campfire and tell them a bunch of stories, which they attempt to go out and tell the potential customer. The second a customer asks a substantive question, the sales staff has to say, “Let me get back to you on that,” or, “Let’s schedule a meeting with my ‘expert.’”

Compound this with the fact that even after the next meeting around the campfire, the CIO gets asked a question by the CFO… and the cycle continues.

In between stints teaching at Stanford University, Timothy Chou served as President of Oracle on Demand, where he helped pioneer the concept of cloud computing. He serves on the board of Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) and continues to invest time and treasure in a few young Silicon Valley companies. Timothy is the author of the landmark book, "The End of Software" as well as "Cloud: Seven Clear Business Models".