There’s a bounce in tech marketer Geoff Blanco’s step, like the red, purple and yellow toys he carries in his coat pocket.
They’re freebies from a software company in an industry that couldn’t afford to give away anything a year ago. Now, the firm is buying boxloads of glow balls to distribute at trade shows.
They light up and flash when Blanco bounces them, a habit he indulges while waiting in airport security lines.
The 36-year-old sales and marketing vice president has been spending a lot of time in airports lately, but he doesn’t mind. The fact that he’s traveling four days a week for Chicago’s Doculabs means clients are in a buying mood.
They’ve got projects to discuss. They’re setting timetables for initiatives with multimillion-dollar price tags–more than enough to buy a few boxloads of glow balls.
Doculabs sales reps are feeling upbeat. For one thing, they’re exceeding the targets Blanco set for “completes”–their ability to reach somebody or get a call-back.
At its worst last fall, one in 10 sales calls were completed. Everybody hid behind their voice mailboxes. Lately, the ratio is two in four.
Budgets are more than paper dreams again–fictional spending plans that no one can implement. Now, when money gets allocated for a tech project, IT directors can proceed without having a CEO sign off.
“Morale is a lot better,” Blanco says.
The signs at Doculabs are early indicators of a rebound in corporate IT spending because the research and consulting firm gets called in at the front end of a project, before a nickel ever gets spent.
Runaway corporate IT investment drove the economy in the late 1990s, and when spending plummeted after such giddy growth, computer-related sales fell off a cliff.
Survivors grabbed ledges and clung by their fingertips while high-tech’s worst slump since the early 1970s led the broader economy into recession.
Now, companies are pulling themselves back up, dusting off and getting acclimated to their new and narrower perch.
The government’s closely watched monthly report on manufactured goods shows that spending on computer gear is up more than 5 percent since October–a noteworthy lift after nearly two years of decline.
“I believe we’ve turned the corner,” says economist Brian Wesbury.
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There’s still pain–layoffs and bankruptcies, mergers and shutdowns–but fewer people are fretting about survival. More are planning for the future.
Companies are ringing up David Jacobson to talk about sponsoring events at tech networking forum First Tuesday. His first call in months came on Jan. 4. There were a few more in February and a steady trickle since.
Tech attorney Scott Glickson is inking more big licensing, software and outsourcing deals–“the whales” he calls them–and drawing up more incorporation papers.
Of course, there are lagging indicators too.
Tribune computer columnist James Coates’ mailbag hasn’t regained its heft. Before Nasdaq’s crash in 2000, he was getting five gizmos a day for possible review–software, computer toys and games–each representing an expensive marketing initiative. Now he’s lucky to get five a week.
At Chicago’s Prime Advantage, an online buying consortium for industrial manufacturers, CEO Louise O’Sullivan says heavy equipment makers are ordering more supplies for their factory floors, but technology is still a hard sell.
“Some of them drastically cut their IT staff,” and they’re not inclined to add back, she says. “They’re overhauling the technology they’ve got before looking at anything new.”
Then there’s the matter of corporate dress. In good times, people dress casually. In hard times, they suit up.
Doculabs’ sales reps traded their casual blazers and open shirts for formal suits and ties a year ago, and they’re not likely to revert soon, if ever.
“For 20 years our customers have been called on by people wearing suits,” says Blanco.
He’s right, of course. But how many of them do you suppose were hiding glow balls in their coat pockets?
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