Selling IT : The Science of Selling, Buying, and Deal-Making

Information technology (IT) is an essential core of the economy today. Corporations and governments worldwide rely on it to drive their core strategy and develop and execute business models. Amounting to over 3.7 trillion US dollars of worldwide spending, the growing significance of the IT industry in the global economy is now well established. Hence, it is crucial to understand the marketplace within which it exists, and this book presents a systematic analysis of the processes, techniques, and methods involved in IT sales and marketing.

In Selling IT, the book:

• Integrates a large IT provider’s selling process with the enterprise user’s IT buying process to highlight the nuances of selling, marketing, and developing IT solutions that create value for customers
• Discusses various key concepts such as value-based IT selling, business case for IT acquisition, vendor evaluation and management, account and customer relationship management, customer segmentation, and techniques for customer acquisition and retention
• Analyses the challenges and opportunities involved in selling digital IT and examines the evolution of jobs and careers based on the changed IT landscape
• Includes lesson plans, case studies, and chapter-wise practice questions to support teaching and learning

The book boasts a robust theoretical foundation supported by a clear exposition of concepts and management theories. It will be of benefit to professionals using organisation-mandated selling processes. Young executives with a technology background looking for a sales and marketing career in the IT industry can also effectively use this book. It will also be an essential read for scholars and researchers in B2B marketing, IT consulting, technology sales, and digital transformation.

Sandip Mukhopadhyay is an associate professor at the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, India. His research interests include digital platforms and ecosystems, social media analytics and selling technology, and IT solutions. He has published widely in different international journals and authored multiple case studies. Before academia, he worked for IBM, Ericsson, Reliance and Siemens for about twenty years, focusing on selling and deploying technology solutions. He received his PhD from MDI Gurgaon, India, specialising in business models for digital platforms. Prior to that, he received his PGDM (MBA) from IIM-Calcutta and studied engineering at IIEST, Calcutta, India.

Srinivas Pingali has close to 30 years of varied experience in product development and innovation and sales and marketing in multinationals and entrepreneurial companies. He is currently a professor of practice at the Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur, India. His areas of expertise include strategy, digital transformation, entrepreneurship, and innovation. He is a chemical engineer for Osmania University, College of Technology, India, and holds an MBA degree in marketing from the University of Illinois at Champaign–Urbana, USA. He is an executive fellow in management (doctoral equivalent) at the Indian School of Business.

Amitabh Satyam is chairman of Smart Transformations and a former managing partner of SAP. A graduate of IIT Kanpur with an MBA from Fisher College of Business, USA, he led Global Telecom Consulting at IBM, where he also set up the global IoT practice. His earlier roles include managing director at MobiApps, vice president at Siemens, national head of operations at Reliance Infocomm, and financial advisor at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. His book, The Smart City Transformations (2017), is an established global reference book on the topic. In the United States, he taught for four years at Ohio State University and Rider University.