Casino technology decisions rarely belong to one person. The right partner helps the entire organization move forward.
By Cliff Unger, Chief Revenue Officer at CCT
You can ask anyone on my team and they’ll each recall one of my quirky, repetitive “words of wisdom” that I am certain they’re sick of hearing.
But one that I will continually remind them of is the fact that our customers don’t buy software every day. It’s not their job, what they care about, or how they want to spend their time.
But we SELL software every day.
And that creates a unique opportunity for us.
It’s what we do, what we think about, what we optimize. So we’ve seen it go really well…and maybe not so well.
Why do people pay for solutions like CCT? Pain. Maybe not physical pain, but there’s something painful about a process, workload or repetitive task, and they want the pain to go away.
So when someone inside a casino finds a technology solution they believe in, one that can really solve their pain, it can feel like the hard part is over. They’ve seen the product, understand the opportunity, built internal support and maybe even garnered that initial “yes.”
Yet, in reality, that yes is often just the opening bell.
I’ve watched a technology decision move from a single internal champion to four or five departments before a contract is even drafted. Maybe finance needs to understand the investment. IT needs to assess the environment. Legal and procurement have their own lengthy review cycles. Compliance has requirements of its own. And depending on the organization, there may be additional approvals at the corporate or gaming board level.
Knowing all of this is coming makes a real difference for the person who has to carry it through to the finish line.
In sales, we call this person the champion. That one person who takes a professional interest in stewarding your solution through the process because they’re convinced of the value and the outcomes you can help support.
So while a major purchasing decision might take many different shapes and sizes, we have a responsibility to help our champion however we can.
We recently began working with a casino property preparing for an opening later this year. The conversation started months in advance, and by late spring, we had clear agreement to move forward.
Great news, right?
Well, don’t ring the gong just yet.
From there came…
vendor approval
registration
procurement systems
security
more security
compliance
gaming council
and then…legal.
The commercial decision had been made, but meeting requirements and finalizing things was another process entirely.
As casino technology reaches further and further across the business, I’ve seen this pattern more and more frequently. That same, crystal-clear investment and benefit can mean something markedly different depending on where you sit.
A CFO is weighing what the business gets back, how long that return takes and what else is competing for those dollars. IT is considering whether another existing system might solve the same problem. Operations will contemplate how this works with the other tools the team is already using.
And audit? That calculation gets tangible fast.
On a recent site visit with one of our clients, we walked through a back-office area where a room, roughly 10 by 20 feet or so, had just been cleared of paperwork and moved into storage. In the audit director’s office, another stack of filing boxes still sat in the corner, waiting for its turn.
Casinos can be required to retain years of historical records, so that room represented real operational cost: storage, retrieval, audit prep and employee time spent managing all of it.
In addition to the challenges you can anticipate, inevitably there are those you can’t.
For example, when someone enters the process late, their questions and requirements arrive late with them. That’s when a project everyone still agrees on can quickly lose momentum.
One of the easiest ways to lose it? Discovering in month three that there’s a requirement that could have been surfaced in week three.
After enough of these “hiccups,” you learn two things: 1) to look further down the road, and 2) that we can’t expect the champion to identify or overcome these things on their own.
An experienced technology partner helps identify who needs to be involved, anticipates the questions likely to come up and maps the commercial, technical and legal steps early. We don’t want to create work for our clients. In fact, it’s the last thing we want to do.
That same thinking carries into the rollout itself.
A platform may be capable of solving problems across multiple departments, but the right starting point still depends on the organization. Much like our “Every Casino Has a Story” campaign, every casino has its own way of operating. Our job is to embrace what is going well, educate and inform based on the hundreds of versions and variations we’ve seen, and tailor our approach to what will deliver the best outcome for that operator.
I’ve seen properties take on a lot at once because the vision was exciting and the budget was approved. And it can work.
But I’ve also seen the value of starting deliberately, creating an early win and building from there. Knowing how much change an organization can absorb is part of making a good recommendation.
Sometimes that means recommending less than they originally asked for, even when it means a smaller price tag for us, to ensure early success.
Sometimes it means recommending they wait. I’ve told customers who were ready to sign that day that the timing, the scope or the internal readiness wasn’t there yet.
But that’s not the sale slowing down. That’s the relationship being built correctly.
The same is true of the buying process. A true champion needs a partner who can see around corners and keep things moving in service to them.
I believe buying technology should never turn into a second job for the person who championed it. If they’re spending hours every week chasing approvals, tracking down paperwork or re-explaining the same business case to five different audiences, too much has fallen on them.
Our job is to help carry that decision all the way through.
Getting to yes is the beginning of the relationship.
Getting it done is the relationship.
