“Nobody got fired for hiring IBM” — The importance of brand building for innovation consultancies.
The quote “nobody got fired for hiring IBM” is more than 30 years old and comes from a time when IBM was the leading brand in computers and related infrastructure. The quote (or variations of it) was used by the IBM sales force to convince undecided customers to choose IBM above competing offers.
The message behind the sentence was
If the project with us turns out to be a failure, our brand reputation will shield you from being blamed for it.
All of us who ever had to buy a service know the situation: You have several offers on the table for the same tender. You evaluate the offer by price, by the company’s references and competencies, by the its size etc. You might have an offer from a highly motivated, highly competent start-up and one from a large, respected company that might be a little slower or less cutting edge — How do you decide?
None of the suppliers can guarantee success, and you can not test the result beforehand (this is one of the major differences between sourcing a product and sourcing a service). So you look at indicators (size, reputation, chemistry with the team etc.) and take a decision without full visibility of the consequences.
At the end of the project there are two potential outcomes: success or failure.
In case of success your decision for a certain supplier will not be questioned and you as a decider will get the praise for the project and might even be promoted — so far so good.
BUT: in case of failure your decision will be questioned and you will have to argue before your boss and maybe even your bosses boss
- Why did you choose this supplier?
- Could one not have foreseen that it would be a failure?
- What was the basis the decision was taken on?
- etc.
The sales strategy behind “Nobody got fired for hiring IBM” addresses exactly this fear of negative personal consequences of failure. The message to the decision maker is:
“If anything goes wrong, our reputation will shield you from personal negative consequences.”
Or in other words “Thanks to our reputation, your organization will settle with something like “Well, if even IBM, as a renowned consultancy, did not succeed, then the task must have been impossible”.
The same is true also for innovation consultancies (or any other consultancy): brand reputation can turn out to be a decisive success factor in a tender situation as your customer will see your reputation as a personal shield for him or her in case of failure.
