If you were a technology salesperson a few years ago, you knew who your customer was within an organization’s information technology group. Salespeople were able to start the sales process with the CIO (or equivalent) and work their way down the organization. Alternatively, they could start at the bottom and work their way up.

Today, this customer identification process is not so clear.

Non-IT managers are now well trained in IT and have been users of various technologies for years. Accordingly, non-IT managers have a much better understanding of the application of technology. While they may not understand the “bits and bites” and the integration issues, they have a clear understanding of the problem they are trying to solve and how various products and services may satisfy that need.

Technology has become so integrated into every aspect of the business that everyone is becoming involved in the decision to procure technology.

Still, one cannot afford to ignore the IT organization during the selling process. Failure to engage the department leaves the salesperson vulnerable to delayed purchases. IT still evaluates how your product or service will be integrated into the current IT environment and whether it complies with compliance issues like HIPAA or SOX.

So what should you do?

1. Clearly define your customer. Who approves the purchase? Who influences the sale? Who are the actual end users and what is their involvement in the purchase decision?

2. Understand the customer’s decision-making process. Does the client have an IT governance process? How influential are the end users? How influential is purchasing and/or finance?

3. Assure that your marketing material matches the target customer. Selling to IT requires more discussion around speeds, feeds, bites, integration and the technical quality of the application. The business users are normally interested in ease of use, ROI and functionality. Have you adjusted your marketing information to reflect this new customer?

4. Keep up with the changing competitive landscape. A few issues ago, we discussed your ability to understand your customer’s top 10 issues and to make sure your products address these so you can shorten your sales cycle. As we add the business customer, this will require you to know what their top 10 issues are as well and to make sure your product is positioned to be one of them.

   Keep in mind that you have two levels of competition. There are products and services that compete directly with your products. This is usually easy to identify and to respond to in a competitive manner. There is also competition from other products that compete for “mindshare” or resources. These new competitors are more difficult to handle.

5. Clear value proposition. Keep in mind that you have two customers now and you have to make sure you have developed a clear value proposition for both.

6. Language of the customer. Is your sales team capable of shifting from speed and feeds to business functionality? Do they understand how the technology can be applied to real business issues?

7. Sales tool modifications. If you use sales tools to present your product or service, have they been modified to address the business user?

The world is a changing. We need to keep up or be left behind. Where did that cheese go? Happy selling!

Bill Waas is CEO of the Information Technology Executive Exchange, an executive membership organization serving IT executives. He can be e-mailed at bwaas@iteex.org.