Every so often, it seems, there is a new "Johnny come lately" on the sales scene as far as methodologies, means of engagement, etc. is concerned. Whether it's BANT, MEDIC (or any its variants), Value Selling, Challenger Selling, etc. there always seems to be a new book that promises to make you more effective in your selling activities. Here's and idea, however, that doesn't seem to get a lot of press coverage, in all likelihood because it's fairly obvious: just solve the problem.
Let me explain.
With the exception of the CIO, CTO and CDO, most IT professionals aren't looking to anticipate future needs or prevent issues that will occur because they can start to develop a solution now. Instead, they are reactive, seeing problems develop and then realizing that solutions are needed.
See if these stories sound familiar.
- The PMO is having trouble managing releases from the application development teams because compliance-related activities like developing support plans aren't done by the application owner yet these deficiencies aren't uncovered until the application has had a Severity 1 issue in production six months after it was released.
- The Security Operations team discovers that anyone using the proper version of their VPN solution can get access to the corporate network regardless of authorization due to a misconfiguration or their VPN infrastructure.
- Infrastructure Monitoring has a monitoring solution, which has been in use for years, that was bought by a large software company who decided to discontinue support for it two years ago. Only now have the applications being monitored outgrown its capabilities, meaning that it finally has to be replaced.
In all of these examples (which are all based on recent situations in real companies), the solutions to the problems weren't pursued until the problems became large enough that they could no longer be ignored and solutions were absolutely necessary. If you were the head of the PMO, the CISO, or the Head of Infrastructure Operations in those examples, do you need someone to challenge the way you think? What about someone to show you the value of their solution to your business?
When I was in IT, my answer would have been, "I don't need any of that - just fix my damn problem." Yet this seems to be the biggest challenge to all sales professionals that I've seen - they overthink things and, as a result, they spend far too much time trying to impress their customer with all of the bells and whistles of their solutions. They should instead be showing their customers how they can stop keeping the lights on and go back to creating value for their company through innovation.
With the exception of the CIO, CTO and CDO, most IT professionals aren't looking to anticipate future needs or prevent issues that will occur because they can start to develop a solution now. Instead, they are reactive, seeing problems develop and then realizing that solutions are needed.
See if these stories sound familiar.
- The PMO is having trouble managing releases from the application development teams because compliance-related activities like developing support plans aren't done by the application owner yet these deficiencies aren't uncovered until the application has had a Severity 1 issue in production six months after it was released.
- The Security Operations team discovers that anyone using the proper version of their VPN solution can get access to the corporate network regardless of authorization due to a misconfiguration or their VPN infrastructure.
- Infrastructure Monitoring has a monitoring solution, which has been in use for years, that was bought by a large software company who decided to discontinue support for it two years ago. Only now have the applications being monitored outgrown its capabilities, meaning that it finally has to be replaced.
In all of these examples (which are all based on recent situations in real companies), the solutions to the problems weren't pursued until the problems became large enough that they could no longer be ignored and solutions were absolutely necessary. If you were the head of the PMO, the CISO, or the Head of Infrastructure Operations in those examples, do you need someone to challenge the way you think? What about someone to show you the value of their solution to your business?
When I was in IT, my answer would have been, "I don't need any of that - just fix my damn problem." Yet this seems to be the biggest challenge to all sales professionals that I've seen - they overthink things and, as a result, they spend far too much time trying to impress their customer with all of the bells and whistles of their solutions. They should instead be showing their customers how they can stop keeping the lights on and go back to creating value for their company through innovation.