The growth of generative AI (GenAI) has significantly impacted the way we think about tech in general. While users may still be divided, enterprise companies and start-ups all seem to be rushing to figure out how they’re going to adopt GenAI. It’s a potential goldmine for the companies who are jockeying for position in the developing AI stack. One of the challenges we’re seeing hold companies back isn’t a tech one, though. It’s people.
Single buyers don’t make decisions anymore, regardless of what you’re selling. In most places, that’s been replaced by a buying group. When you’re trying to sell GenAI infrastructure, you need to be prepared for a totally different buying group. Emerging tech has a way of bringing people out of the woodwork to chime in. The differing opinions around GenAI makes this problem worse. To close the deal, you need to win over people in every part of the company—and there’s a good chance some of them might be looking for reasons not to buy just yet. Here’s a look at who we’ve seen weighing in on GenAI purchasing decisions.
The Usual Suspects: Developers.
Developers are a critical part of the buying group for any software purchase, especially for infrastructure plays. Their role is even more pronounced in the GenAI buying process. They are the ones who will work directly with the tools and platforms, handling the integration and implementation.
Their technical expertise and hands-on experience mean that if your product doesn’t work for them, it isn’t going to work for anyone. We’ve seen that developers are often the first to identify new technologies, which makes them even more important. They can serve as internal champions who advocate for your product within their company, effectively becoming a member of your sales team.
Why they’re there:
- Technical validation. Developers assess whether the product meets the technical requirements and can integrate smoothly with existing systems.
- Usability. Developers need to know that the solution their company chooses is going to work for them. That means it’s easy to learn, fast to implement, and ready to fit into their existing stack—with as few headaches as possible.
- Innovation. Developers are most likely the people keeping the closest eye on what GenAI can actually do, and they’ll be pushing for solutions that can deliver.
How to reach them:
- Technical documentation and demos. Provide detailed technical documentation and hands-on demos to showcase how your GenAI infrastructure can fit into their current workflow, enhance their capabilities and ultimately improve their product. It’s particularly important to highlight the ways your product overcomes the stumbling blocks your competitors may be tripping on— if you’re positioning your offering as “best in class,” be sure to show developers exactly how you can back that claim up.
- Community engagement. Engage with developer communities through forums, webinars and conferences to build trust and awareness.
- Open source contributions. Contributing to open source projects can demonstrate your commitment to the developer community and showcase your product’s capabilities.
The Team Captain: CTO.
The CTO is the strategic leader responsible for driving technological advancements within the company. If the company has decided to move toward GenAI, we can almost guarantee the CTO is going to be involved in the conversation.
CTOs are likely jumping into this process earlier than they would in other types of purchasing decisions. They care deeply about how AI can provide a competitive edge and align with the company’s long-term vision. They’re more invested in the business factors of the decision than developers, and acknowledging their role in the buying group means tackling those concerns head-on.
Why they’re there:
- Strategic alignment. CTOs ensure that the GenAI infrastructure being considered aligns with the company’s strategic goals and technology roadmap.
- Risk management. That “big-picture” look continues with addressing the risks associated with adopting new technologies, including integration challenges, potential disruptions, and the concerns that arise around GenAI specific things like training models.
- Scalability and performance. CTOs evaluate whether the infrastructure can scale with the company’s growth and meet performance expectations. Developers might be looking for the solution that works now; CTOs are looking for the solution that works now and next year.
How to reach them:
- Evidence-based content. Provide case studies, white papers and research reports that showcase the effectiveness and ROI of your GenAI infrastructure.
- Strategic vision. Create high-level materials that align your solution with their strategic goals and address their concerns about scalability, security and integration.
- Webinars and workshops. Host webinars and workshops that focus on the strategic implementation of GenAI in their specific industry. People want to connect with other people who are striking out into this new space. Playing the role of connector can be incredibly valuable.
The Checks and Balances: CIO and Legal.
The CIO and Legal departments play crucial roles in assessing the viability and safety of new technologies. For GenAI, that’s even more important. LLMs often require access to a host of sensitive enterprise data to deliver on the most impactful use cases. The CIO focuses on information, risk and security, ensuring that the infrastructure (and any data that serves as a part of that process) meets the company’s data governance standards and security protocols. Legal departments are concerned with risk exposure, compliance with regulations and protecting the company from potential legal liabilities that might arise from using data in training—or from using the outputs.
Why they’re there:
- Information security. The CIO evaluates the security measures and data protection protocols of the GenAI infrastructure.
- Compliance. Both CIO and Legal ensure that the infrastructure complies with industry regulations and standards.
- Risk exposure. Legal departments assess potential legal risks, including intellectual property concerns and liability issues.
How to reach them:
- Risk mitigation strategies. Offer insights into how your GenAI infrastructure mitigates risks and enhances data security. Consider what the objections are most likely to be (or pull from the stumbling blocks you’ve encountered with current customers) and address them preemptively.
- Security and compliance documentation. Provide detailed documentation on security measures, risk management practices, and how you plan on handling customer data safely and securely. You may not want this to live on your website, even behind a gate, but having it available quickly when it’s needed is important. (Make the PDF now, so it’s ready when you need to send it.)
- Legal briefings. Host content and provide resources that address common legal concerns related to AI and data usage. Obviously, you aren’t their lawyer, but content that shows you’re aware of the current landscape can go a long way toward making a potential customer feel like you’re a partner they can trust.
The Numbers Folks: The CFO.
You know what a CFO is worried about: cost, payback period and ROI. They are responsible for ensuring that any investment in new technology makes financial sense for the company. The CFO will scrutinize the financial implications of adopting GenAI infrastructure, focusing on how quickly the investment will pay off and what the long-term financial benefits will be.
Why they’re there:
- Financial viability. The CFO assesses the overall cost of the GenAI infrastructure and its impact on the company’s budget.
- Return-on-Investment. They evaluate the potential ROI and how quickly the company can expect to see financial returns.
- Cost-benefit analysis. The CFO conducts a cost-benefit analysis to compare the benefits of adopting the infrastructure against the expenses involved.
How to reach them:
- Financial projections. Present clear value projections and ROI analyses that demonstrate the long-term value of your GenAI infrastructure. Forecasting around new efficiencies isn’t difficult, but finding ways to communicate the gains a company can make through new use cases and products are much trickier to nail down. Effectively communicating these possibilities to your prospects (and keeping those projections realistic) might be the key to unlocking some real growth.
- Case studies. Provide case studies that highlight cost savings and financial benefits realized by other companies using your solution. This is an area where getting a little creative can help. Create your case studies in a way that speaks to specifics, but also leaves room for potential clients to see how it relates to their own situation. Details drive your point home, but make sure you leave prospects with some big ideas that leave prospects wanting to write their own stories.
- Templatized proposals. Develop templatized financial proposals that align with a variety of budget and financial goals and can quickly be customized for a specific project. Put an emphasis on quick—you’re going to want to have these ready when you need them, and the details of a particular prospect may mean you need to be ready to adapt them to match.
Your buying group may vary.
Effectively engaging GenAI buyers requires anticipating the different potential roles in the buying group, identifying their needs and potential objections, and incorporating them into your content and GTM plan. Each instance is highly situational. Companies need to be ready to speak to the concerns of a wide variety of buying group members that’s going to change based on the type of product that you’re offering.
For example, large language models (LLMs) can expect more people involved due to concerns like copyright issues. On the other hand, observability tools might see less involvement because they are primarily technical solutions. The one thing that makes a GenAI buying group particularly mercurial is the role the CEO plays.
GenAI is very much on-trend right now. As companies rush to see how they can take advantage of it, there’s a strong possibility that your prospect is just in the market because of pressure from the top… which means you might be looking at a buying group where each individual member has their own reasons to be cautious about moving too quickly.
Ultimately, we think they’ll agree that the cost of doing nothing and letting the market blow past is the real danger. But overcoming that individual hesitancy is why communicating with the members of the buying group— in the ways and on the schedule that works for them—becomes so important.
The Iron Horse insight.
GenAI buying groups can be tough to deal with because it’s everyone’s first time through the process. They aren’t just upgrading pieces of their current stack, they’re buying brand new tech for what is likely a brand new initiative for their company. They aren’t sure of all the questions they need answered. They probably aren’t even sure who’s going to be in those conversations.
That makes your preparation more important than ever. Being able to address the pain points of the entire buying group (even the people who get added to the process late) is already proving to be the difference between the companies that are riding the GenAI wave and the companies who are struggling to find a foothold.
