The “Outlook on 2004” headlines are touting software, hardware, desktops, PCs, blade servers, grid servers; everyone has their favorite story and everyone is right, in one way or another. Good for them. The truth is, those headlines are important because they aren’t a whole lot different than the headlines from 2003! How can I say that? Easy: everything old is new again. Welcome to another year of upgrades, add-ons, changes in service contracts and more. Not to mention learning new acronyms that will leave us all cross-eyed by year’s end.

So, is any of that going to help you sell servers? Not unless you have a good sales process to integrate into those new developments the tech pundits are predicting.
In the Harvard Business Review book, Creating Value in the Network Economy, (1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College), Chapter 1, “The Coming of Knowledge-Based Business,” written by authors Stan Davis and Jim Botkin, contains a list of the six elements necessary for a successful knowledge-based business. Of those six elements, # 3 seems most relevant to the needs of a reseller in a 2004-knowledged-based, networked economy. It embodies all of the headlines scattered across all the technology publications everywhere: “Knowledge-based products and services adjust to changing circumstances.”
I expect you’re setting higher goals for this year. Good for you. And, welcome to the same old, same old. Read the headlines, sift the grain from the chaff, but don’t begin the new year with a resolution to trash your existing sales process because every new year is supposed to begin with a resolution to start new, start over, or start fresh.
Yes, IT is all about ‘knowledge-based products.’ And yes, they adjust to ‘changing circumstances.’ The question is: have your circumstances changed or are you still selling servers? If you are still selling servers, why should you change the way you do it, just because industry experts are touting new, improved technology?
In sales, the reality is that everything old is new again.

Trust Never Changes
This isn’t rocket science. Yes, selling servers isn’t like selling pens, or copy machines, or birthday cakes. It’s high tech, and all the headlines predicting which company is going to dominate the market, which software is sure to take off like a rocket, or which application is going to save the day, is important only because it reflects a changing landscape. The truth is, the process of selling servers is still a matter of establishing a good relationship, of building trust, and of performance.
That landscape hasn’t changed at all. Let’s recap a few predictions for 2004, and then discuss what they really mean.

- “Optimistic Outlook” the cover story in January’s InformationWeek sounds like a positive headline but it gets dark very fast by stating that “Business-technology professionals participating in InformationWeek’s annual Outlook study are optimistic about their companies’ revenue prospects for the coming year, but they’re being cautious, with no plans to significantly increase IT purchasing or staffs.”
All this means is that the IT outlook for 2004 is iffy. If that’s news to any of you, you weren’t paying attention during the last quarter of 2003. Your response should be a thoughtful, “Isn’t that interesting.” And, a determination to get out there and prove this story wrong by making a sale today.

- EWeek opened its January issue noting that “this week’s pairing [signals] a return to the basics of IT innovation.”
I’m not sure when we left the basics behind, but eWeek thinks more power, more memory, lower prices, and innovative (can someone please put that word out of my misery?) form factors “are giving IT pros strong reasons to refresh their hardware inventories.” A clear contradiction to the bullet above. Which one do you believe? It doesn’t matter because it’s always been about the basics and it will continue to be about the basics. Trust me.

- In the January 12th issue of FORTUNE magazine, Peter Drucker, the reigning king of gurus in the business world, is quoted saying, “Everybody says China has 8% growth and India only 3%, but that is a total misconception. We don’t really know. I think India’s progress is far more impressive than China’s.”
Looks like you need to learn more about what’s happening in India. Unless you think you’re smarter than Peter Drucker.

- CRN: Vital Information for VARs and Technology Integrators announced a special report on its January 5th cover titled, “20 to Watch & Economic Outlook 2004” with this enormous sub-heading: “IT Rising.” The report pictures a Phoenix, a bird known to be reborn from its own burning ashes, indicating that the IT industry is in for “an economic rebirth.”
Make your own economic rebirth. Let the IT industry feed CRN’s Phoenix. Your Phoenix is in the sales process you have — one the builds trust and bonding. Revive it from last year’s ashes and watch it soar.
Predictions like these are little more than glimpses into a cloudy crystal ball. They will influence your sales this year, but they should not dominate your approach. Being consistent in your sales efforts is more powerful than relying on any reporter’s views of what’s going to happen this year.

Countdown to Lift-Off
John C. Maxwell, author of “Your Road Map for Success: You Can Get There from Here,” (Georgia, Maxwell Motivation, Inc. 2002) says this about becoming a success, “On the success journey, the first part of the trip is just as important as the last part.”
The first part of the trip is just as important as the last part. What does this tell you? It tells you that on your journey to a bigger bank account you can only succeed by putting one foot in front of the other, every day, on a consistent basis, over and over again. That never changes. No matter how big technology gets, no matter what the upgrades and integrations, the only way you, the reseller, can make a sale is by developing and following a process that works.
Just as a rocket ship demands certain requirements to gain altitude, lift-off of your sales success in 2004 has certain requirements that should have been in place last year, and the year before. Luckily for you, your lift-off isn’t influenced by inclement weather or outside forces attempting to topple you. Your lift-off is entirely dependent on consistent work, on your daily actions, not on industry predictions, upgrades or doublespeak. Eweek, CRN, InformationWeek, and all the others can write thousands of words on what is going to happen to the tech industry in 2004, but your lift-off will only gain altitude if your countdown is predictable.

Data is NOT a Robot
One way to prepare for that lift-off is to be informed. Presumably you’ve improved your vocabulary over the last year or so to include terms such as: data mining (the practice of pulling data from a warehouse to analyze patterns, trends and relationships), data modeling (the practice of compiling data mining in order to identify relationships among the data), enterprise relationship management (using the two methods above to analyze customer information from sales, marketing, service, finance and manufacturing, in order to relate more efficiently to your customers), and intelligent agent (a program that automatically performs a service, such as gathering specific information, or that personalizes information on a Web site based on a user’s registration and usage analysis—compliments of Darwin Magazine, June 2002).
Of course the vocabulary list could go on and on, but you get the point. The words change, the applications change, the technology itself changes, and you are expected to change with it, but your sales process, the method you use to make sales, should be solid enough to withstand the shifting sands of data changes. This is not robotics, however.
Give it your sales process life. Breathe success into it. Feed it headlines for breakfast.
At www.serverwatch.com stats and reports cite a gearing up for increased sales in hardware, especially servers, and also for an increase in outsourcing. Conversely, eMarketer reported (5 January 2004) that the U.S. will lead IT spending this year, but cited security (big surprise), web-based applications, broadband, spam-filtering and storage as taking the biggest chunk of many 2004 IT budgets. Which story is right? Both. But you should already know that.
Market change is dependent on the humans behind the scenes. Journalists can research and report and interview to their heart’s content, but in the end, it’s you — the man or woman behind the scenes, who validate the content in those stories.

How High Can You Go?
Why shouldn’t you begin today, right now, before the lunch bell rings, or the 5:00 whistle blows? Maxwell sets it straight in his book, repeating this oft-heard phrase: “YOUR ATTITUDE DETERMINES YOUR ALTITUDE.”
That pro-active phrase has been true for decades, maybe centuries. When you equate success (altitude) to your sales process (attitude) you are on the road to recognition and riches. Maxwell puts it this way in Chapter 3, “How Far Can I Go?”:
- A dream without a positive attitude produces a daydreamer.
- A positive attitude without a dream produces a pleasant person who can’t progress.
- A dream together with a positive attitude produces a person with unlimited possibilities and potential. (my bolding)
Dreaming of success is a useful pastime only if you partner it with the right attitude; an attitude that gets past the presumption of failure and focuses instead on the rewards of success. Let the pundits and reporters calculate the numbers, your only goal should be to keep moving; step by step, pace by pace, making it to the close on your biggest sale yet. And you will do it by remembering that when everything else is in flux, you’re steady on your feet with a process that can’t fail.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Here are a few more stats and reporter insights, nudges to get you moving, one foot after the other, on your way to recognition and riches in 2004.
Serverwatch.com reporter Amy Newman stated in a November article that “HP Hits Milestone in Blade Sales.” Newman quotes Sally Stevens, director of marketing for ProLiant platforms saying, “there has been an uptick in acceptance,” moving blades beyond Web serving, into the application server and database space. Good news for HP and for resellers.
Forrester Research Inc. is reporting that gross domestic product growth will push IT managers into spending more than last year, at an estimated 1.7% growth. Understand that IT managers are equating performance and price, both places that fueled sales in 2003, and will continue to influence sales not only this year, but next.
In a December report, Serverwatch posted another article on blades, “Hardware Today: Getting Blood from a Stone, Maximizing the Server Budget.” This article, located at http://www.serverwatch.com/hreviews/article.php/3114901 noted that “Blade servers, for example, cost more up front, but they conserve space, cable clutter, and electricity, and they are beginning to prove themselves in enterprise environments.”
Finally, let’s not forget AMD’s introduction of the AMD Athlon™ 64 processors 3200+, 3000+ and 2800+, “the world’s only Windows®-compatible 64-bit mobile PC processors for mainstream notebook computers.” 64-bit computing is one of the technologies that is going to drive the market to new highs, whether it’s on the server end or the PC end. As I’ve touted in numerous articles before, value-added content, knowledge-based information will always make you stand out among your competitors.
Knowledge-based information isn’t an issue of knowing the right answer. It’s an issue of asking the right question. The technology is supposed to be the right answer. The right question is, how? Ask your clients and prospects how they feel about their existing technology; how it’s working; how it isn’t working; how you can help make it better? If you take care of the human being using the technology you’ll reach recognition and riches galore in 2004.

New Year’s Resolutions
This year, this writer hopes to bring you more concrete information on servers, server products, and IT improvements. There are people I want to interview, companies I plan to contact, and information I plan to add to my knowledge base.
Therefore, I am relying on reader feedback to push this column in the right direction for 2004. Hello? Is anyone listening?