Most tech sellers are always forced to sell through and to IT. That can be limiting when you want to be more strategic and tied to the leadership’s desired business outcomes. What’s your proven way for pivoting out of IT? What questions do you like to ask that open doors to Sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Service, etc?
I’m interested in this topic. Following it for advice from others.
Hey @steven.schneiderman,
I have had countless conversations regarding this topic, both with IT and Business Leaders.
Here is the issue, communication between the Business and IT is fractured.
Several years ago when I was selling to IT, I realized this disconnect and asked IT Leaders if they had a Trusted Business Advisor. I asked them in a way for them to ask for clarification.
A Trusted Business Advisor is someone on the business side who will help evaluate the tech and help promote the use of the technology. You would be surprise how many IT orgs “build in a vacuum” and not involve the business.
Story time:
I was selling an IT Chatbot to a company. The deal size was around 300K ACV. IT was super excited about it and they wanted to bring it in to help deflect call volume from the business users.
As we were progressing in the sales cycle, I asked them if they had a Trusted Business Advisor they were working with. They did not have one, so I suggested they reach out to the business and get their take. I told them, what I don’t want is a 1.0M migraine because I sold you a tech that your business users are not using and now your CIO is pissed (what do you think the chances of me selling to that CIO would be at that point?).
So they took a few weeks to present the new experience to their associates and came back to me with their findings.
1.) They were very appreciative of forcing them to meet with the business
2.) Their Business Users overwhelmingly told them “Hell No”, we don’t like chatbots, we won’t use them…we don’t like Alexa (which I was not selling)
Now there are a ton of details I did not include, but wanted to highlight the disconnect between the Business and IT.
BTW, I did walk away from the sale.
The question should not be to pivot out of IT, but to how to get IT and the business to work together. Perhaps some questions to think about.
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When did IT fail to deliver a successful solution for the business?
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Why did it fail?
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What PAIN is the business trying to solve and what are the outcomes the business is looking for?
My trick, as in with any discovery, is to not only ask more questions than there are answers, but ask enough to where they will either invite people who matter or you notice their struggles and ask them who would be the best person to meet.
Steven, regarding most tech sellers are forces to sell to IT, my read on that is most tech sellers are trying to sell tech and not a solution to solve a business problem. If a tech seller and SC are getting too technical in the demo or discussion, they will be pushed to IT.
I would suggest to not avoid IT completely, but to help bridge that gap and build Champions on both sides of the fence. You simply cannot avoid IT (ie Info Sec).
Regarding questions to ask that open the doors to Sales, Marketing, Finance, etc? These will vary, but it all falls back to the business problems your solution can eliminate.
For example, if the business/company is looking to increase revenue by X%, how does your tech help? If you are selling a Marketing solution, how can your help contribute to that increase? What role would IT have in supporting the technology, if any?
What tools are not delivering on the value they were sold?
What is IT’s tech debt?
Do they have strategic debt?
Another thing to be aware of from an IT perspective is that IT has been “kicked in the teeth” for many years, primary due to not being able to deliver a meaningful solution to the business…hence shadow IT. As a result, IT tends to error on the side of caution and past pain.
Similarly, the business will try to go rogue in buying a SaaS solution without IT then end of realizing they have an issue with internally supporting the tool, then calls IT who is like “WTF”?
Bridge the gap and Build Champions on both sides would be my recommendation.
Hope this makes sense!
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