The Perfect Pitch

Attention all CEOs: Time to get your stories straight. In today's economy, approaching a client without a clear pitch on your company's value proposition is about as constructive as banking your financial future on stock options. That's why so many solution providers are reshaping their sales messages around things like technology leadership, business-process improvements and industry-specific expertise. But shouldn't the same be true for technology vendors? It's no secret that today's solution providers are much more selective about the vendors they work with, choosing to go deep with fewer relationships. As a result, their businesses depend on the messages conveyed by their largest technology partners. In the best scenarios, aligning a business with a vendor whose message is clear can reap immense benefits. However, getting cozy with a vendor that can't get its story straight can be the kiss of death.

Just how closely is a company's fate tied to the direct message of its chief executive? Consider last month when rumors surfaced that Cisco CEO John Chambers was planning to leave the company. The stock dropped roughly 8 percent in a single day and didn't rebound until a week later when Chambers made it perfectly clear he wasn't jumping ship. And, no matter your opinion of HP's acquisition of Compaq, you can't deny that CEO Carly Fiorina's strong and consistent messaging on what the move means for the future of the company drove the deal from idea to reality.

Of all the technology CEOs, IBM's Sam Palmisano probably has the biggest challenge facing him, at least from a messaging point of view. For one, he's under immense pressure to cut costs and grow revenue,hey, who isn't? But his is an $80 billion juggernaut with a diverse product and partner portfolio built around everything from Web applications to consulting services. And he's starting from the top. So, exactly how will he balance all those messages? Good question. He must convince the world that IBM's $3.5 billion acquisition of PwC Consulting is a positive move to increase leadership in the services arena and not a move destined to muddy Big Blue's core mission. Cramming that all into an elevator pitch won't be easy for Palmisano when you consider the challenges he faces or the way his peers are positioning their organizations.

The Palmisano conundrum got us thinking about whether his pitch and those used by the upper echelon of computing make sense to solution providers and if they help move even one dollar's worth of IT business. So we studied the CEO pitches of more than a dozen technology giants. We then asked our readers if these messages looked like a Randy Johnson fastball or something Grandma tossed in her prime. Some CEOs we spoke with directly. Some communicated to us through their spinmeisters. Even those who ducked us we tracked down in some manner, as we pored over their most recent speeches. Our mission: distill their main value propositions into a sentence or two.

Not surprisingly, we found a correlation between today's strongest market performers and those that have a clear, concise pitch that partners can understand and embrace. For the ones still struggling to define their value propositions, you can bet they'll face an even bumpier road ahead.

Read on to find out who's got "The Perfect Pitch."

Sam Palmisano, IBM
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
Jack Messman, Novell
Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems
Craig Barrett, Intel
Hector de J. Ruiz, AMD
Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard
Michael Dell, Dell
Paul Curlander, Lexmark
37289>John Chambers, Cisco
Meg Whitman, eBay
Gary Bloom, Veritas Software
Joseph Tucci, EMC
Sanjay Kumar, Computer Associates
John Thompson, Symantec
Alfred Chuang, BEA Systems
Larry Ellison, Oracle

This story was reported by VARBusiness editors T.C. Doyle, David Strom, Sonia R. Lelii, Jeffrey Schwartz and Rich Cirillo. It was written and compiled by Cirillo.