"It always seems to be the year of VITO [very important top officials] but it's actually getting worse," says sales guru Anthony Parinello, author of Selling to VITO. Technology marketers say they want to focus on business decision makers, but they remain bogged down in making their cases to mid-level product evaluators.

Parinello, a one-time sales representative for Hewlett-Packard, spends most of his time helping technology and other firms retool their sales forces to speak more effectively with top business executives. But he thinks technology marketers are just as guilty as their sales colleagues in missing the business mark. In a recent discussion with ITSMA, Parinello stressed three priorities for marketers today.

First, segment your audiences according to levels of influence and authority. Parinello highlights four levels:

• Leaders. Head of organizations, focused solely on achieving business goals, plans, and objectives, and little concerned with specific technologies.
• Directors. Corporate and business unit executives who will rely on your solution to support their business priorities. They are most concerned with the advantages that your solution might provide.
• Intellects. Technology evaluators, including IT and operations directors and managers who are most concerned with technical features.
• Consumers. End users of technology, including both technical (e.g., database administrators) and nontechnical users (e.g., bank tellers using a new CRM system). They are most concerned with the actual function of the product or service and how it will impact their jobs.

Marketers need different sets of talking points to speak effectively to each level, according to Parinello.
 
Second, begin at the top. Technology marketers tend to focus especially on the "intellect" level, says Parinello, "but the intellect's job is to evaluate, not decide." Orienting marketing programs and materials to this level generally means focusing much too much on features and functions and too little on business benefits.
 
Efforts to reach the director level are a step in the right direction but not enough. For example, Parinello argues that most return-on-investment (ROI) tools and similar business-value initiatives are just more elaborate versions of data sheets."Directors and intellects might look at them; leaders will not," he says.
 
For Parinello, connecting with leaders is as much about emotion as it is about fact. "The higher you go in the organization, the more nebulous it becomes." Marketers need to speak to the uncertainties, visions, and doubts that motivate leaders along with the hard and soft business benefits that their solutions may bring.
 
Once you've got the right story for the leaders, work down the levels from there.

Third, get to the point. Parinello is a firm believer that leaders have even shorter attention spans than young children. "You've got eight seconds to make an impression, or thirty words, or perhaps three slides on a presentation—as long as they have no more than six words on a slide," he states. "Begin with the punch line, which is the business result your solution can provide. Then get into how it can be done. Then you can talk about who will do the work."
 
With more and more buying decisions landing in the corner office, marketing to VITO has become a top priority. The basic concept is certainly not new. Many firms already dedicate special marketing resources to the senior-most executives within their target markets. The challenge now, according to Parinello, is to review the entire program to ensure that VITOs are truly front and center in the marketing mix.
 
What's your take on marketing to VITO? Are marketers guilty of aiming too low in the organization? How does your team reach out to top executives?