Quadrants and Waves don’t count – references do?

Is this the case?

Clearly Quadrants and Waves help with drawing up shortlists of vendors, but surely some good solid references are gold.

I wouldn’t buy into anything without a good solid reference on the product and the vendor, or just the vendor if the product is brand new.

But how do we skip the quadrant? The whole IT vendor org seems so hung up on it, yet most people see through them pretty quick. Vendors get damned if they put up the quadrant in their pitch as it is cheesy, and when people don’t put up a quadrant people get suspicious. Is this really the way to do things?

From an end user perspective we skip the quadrant by talking to someone knowledgeable in that space up front (those people are difficult to find, see earlier posts), and as a vendor you should start talking references.

Ultimately in this world we buy from people, not organisations and it comes down to one simple word – SERVICE.

Where’s the quadrant for customer service?