Deal Architect on changing the influence game

Vinnie Mirchandani posted in his blog Deal Architect on The Changing Influence Game after discussing this with HP's AR chief Carter Lusher on this ARmadgeddon post (check the comments).

His views are worth a read: he suggests technology vendors need to look beyond the PR+AR+IR influence trio and start addressing procurement consultants (including Gartner's) and blogs. The comparison he uses in lieu of conclusion is striking -and smart.

While we agree that the sphere of influence is changing, we would also add that vendors need to do a better job at focussing on AR and ressourcing it properly. James give a couple good reasons why in this post: Analyst fingerprints on billions of HP’s revenues, Gartner 0wns GAO. Once it's covered, it is surely a good idea to address those second tier influencers... maybe with the exception of systems integrators (Vinnie mentions Accenture and we can't agree more that their consultants also need to be brought up to speed by tech vendors).