Understanding Broad Business Needs is Crucial for Success in Technology, Not Just Selling

Especially in a struggling economy, business needs are at the crux of what ultimately closes a deal and ends in a successful sale. As a sales rep selling technology, understanding your prospect’s business needs enough to align your solution with their specific plights is the key to closing business. As it turns out, sales reps aren’t the only ones that might be overlooking these broad, strategic business pains in the process of their efforts to sell technology.

According to experts at Santa Clara University’s, Information Technology Leadership Program, many CIOs and IT executives lack the ability to think strategically about corporate business initiatives and problems when thinking about the effects of their actions for the short and long term. “It is clear to us that most of them don’t understand, for instance, how to base their work not just on assigned tasks but on a broad understanding of the environment the company is operating in, or how to build the capabilities of their IT organizations with the future in mind,” said the experts in their Wall Street Journal report, Why CIOs Are Last Among Equals.

Why is this a problem for enterprise technology sales reps? “Consider the fact that major corporate strategic initiatives in recent years that rely heavily on information technology haven’t been led by IT people—movements like total quality management, business process re-engineering, online commerce. More recently, the leadership for Web 2.0 initiatives appears to be coming from outside the IT department in most cases.”

There are two equally important and very different approaches that reps need to take in order to make a sale successful, especially if it they are selling enterprise solutions that affect the entire company. A good rep must be able to “plug in” to their prospect’s general business pains and pitch their solution as a TRUE solution to those needs. Simultaneously, they must also be well versed and incredibly knowledgeable about the technical specifications of the product to earn CIO/IT approval and eventually get both departments to sign off on the contract and delegate a portion of their precious budget to the solution.

This may sound like a lot of extra legwork, but in an economy where every dollar spent is scrutinized, you can be sure that both IT executives and high-level execs holding budgets will be involved in the approval of the deal.

Check out the free Top 10 Technology Buyer’s Tips document for insights and tips from top execs about how to go about selling solutions into the enterprise.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107