CFOs and CIOs disagree on the potential contribution of IT technologies to supporting business goals.  A recent study by Sun Microsystems, CFO Magazine, and Saugatuck Technology has found that CFOs and CIOs have very different opinions about the benefits and financial payback of customer-centric technology initiatives, and disagreement about the level of urgency for their implementation.  If you think that CFOs tend to downplay the benefits of technology and make only the most conservative investments, or that CIOs are visionaries who embrace innovation even at high costs, think again. 
 
According to the study, CFOs have begun to surpass CIOs as champions of technology as a strategic growth tool.  For example, CFOs rate contact center technology as a financially promising investment, whereas CIOs prefer to invest in customer self-service technologies.  Twice as many CFOs as CIOs see the importance of decisions support technologies, while CIOs rank business intelligence investments higher than CFOs.  Interestingly, CIOs see no meaningful payback in marketing campaign management or wireless technologies, according to the study.
 
These differing opinions are a reflection of today’s complex business environment.  Large organizations are composed of multiple departments and business entities, typically organized by core competency and task-based silos rather than by product lifecycle functions.  Each entity is driven by a distinct set of internal customers and bottom-line goals, and rarely are these goals tied horizontally to others enterprise functions.  This fragmented structure often results in conflicting views of the benefits derived from specific technology investments, which can be detrimental to enterprise-level solution selling. 
 
One of the profound outcomes of this fragmented structure is that the results of process changes and technology solution implementations often have only limited effect in the area in which they are implemented and have greater impact on a downstream function.  Recently, I discussed the implementation of an advanced data mining technology at a multi-billion dollar manufacturing organization.  The original premise was the use of this technology to enable the warranty administration group to mine product quality and business intelligence data from large customer and product databases.  However, this approach failed to recognize that while the warranty group owns and manages the data, it would see very little benefit from this project, and that the real beneficiaries are located far downstream in the product lifecycle.  As a result, the warranty administration group had no interest in investing in this project, had little incentive to share its data with other enterprise functions, and would rather see the company invest to solve a different problem.
 
Having awakened from the Internet euphoria, when greed for quick mega-deals and fear of missing the “next big thing” drove most sales, today’s jittery economy slows down most technology sales to a halt.  Now is the time to re-examine the definition of a “lead” and the test for a “qualified lead”.
 
A qualified lead must represent a real problem that has a significant impact on the organization’s ability to meet its business objectives.  Bluntly put, there must be a pain.  Not just a “need”, or even a “problem”, but a pain that is recognized throughout the organization.  A problem that is only a problem in the eye of the seller, or, worse, in the eyes of those that have developed the “cool” solution, is of little interest to the buyer.
 
To be considered worthy of the investment, the pain has to be significant.  If a deficiency is considered a normal way of doing business, or if it appears easily solvable by existing ad-hoc solutions, it is often tempting to keep business as usual and avoid complex, risky and expensive technology solutions.
 
Many technology solution companies have an inflexible, one-dimensional view of their products and solutions.  They tend to sell from the bottom up, creating excitement at the technology level and promising euphoric ROI to technologists and line managers that cannot see over the silo walls, whereas C-level buyers are not aware of the pain and cannot see the benefits.  To successfully sell enterprise solutions, we must recognize and distinguish between the enterprise level, which is often also the buying level, and the implementation level, as each has different bottom line goals, needs and pains.  This necessitates top-down selling, focusing on business benefits, combined with bottom-up solution selling and excitement generation. 
 
A case in point is the rise and fall and the recent resurrection of Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  Analyses of CRM projects show that the most common cause of failures was an inability to demonstrate meaningful benefits.  This is a typical outcome of selling to the “project” level and focusing on technical excitement and implementation details.  Successful CRM projects, on the other hand, not only clarified the customization and integration details, but also secured and enjoyed C-level endorsement by delineating the long-term impact on customer loyalty and business growth. 
 
Here are some key points to consider when rethinking your sales process:

• The organizational complexities of product lifecycle processes and supply chain require you to clearly identify the roles of the multiple stakeholders and address their individual pains.  Even if not directly involved in the purchase, they are likely to be influenced by it in some fashion, and can potentially derail the sale if are not part of the vision. 
• ROI is clearly the most prevalent financial metric used in making investment decisions.  Buyers often expect the vendors to shoulder the burden of producing the models and proving the returns, only to discredit them because the results are either not aggressive enough or too optimistic to be believable.  Nevertheless, ROI is often surpassed by non-financial measures of value such as customer loyalty or strategic capabilities.  Understanding the pain will help you create a blended view of financial and non-financial metrics to justify the investment and position it as essential to successful execution of business strategy.
• Be willing to modify your approach and tailor your solution to relieve the specific pain of your customer.  This does not necessarily mean spending time and expensive resources modifying and customizing your product.  It does mean, though, that you should be sensitive to your customers’ needs to deploy the parts that are most valuable to them first, that you offer value-based product and service pricing models, and that you support the customer in modifying organizational processes to ensure sustainable successful implementation.

The progress of a typical sales lead down the sales funnel is slow, and conversion rates from prospect to buyer are very low.  The more complex the solution and the more parties to the process, the greater the effort and the lower the closing rate.  Today, more than ever, your marketing and sales activities should be very diligent in qualifying and quantifying the problem and the benefits of the solution, ensure they are targeting the right level, and provide product and service solutions that deliver sustained value to the customer.