News Feature

The Hardest Job in IT Is Sales, Not CIO

By Jerry Gregoire

May 01, 2002 — CIO — CIOs get 70 percent of their information about new and quickly evolving technologies directly or indirectly from salespeople, according to a study done for The Wall Street Journal. Scary, but not surprising. It’s no secret that I’ve never been real fond of technology salesmen or their endless shenanigans, but still, I have to give these folks their due. As hard as a CIO job seems sometimes, it’s difficult to conceive of anything harder than selling software. Imagine making your living selling broken stuff?code with more bugs than a cathouse mattress. Or having to routinely promise features that don’t yet and may never exist (a practice known as overhanging the market), at prices that bear no earthly resemblance to the product or service being rendered.

There’s a book I think you and all of your managers should read called How to Sell Technology: Technology Sales Is a Premeditated Sport, by Paul DiModica. It’s not Ulysses and it’s not likely to be made into a screenplay anytime soon, but it’s a worthwhile read for a couple of reasons. First, it goes a long way toward explaining why salespeople do some of the weird things they do, and second, this book can be a valuable tool for teaching your folks how to sell technology projects within your company. Oh, and while you’re at it, give a copy to your administrative assistant. I’m sure he will get a big kick out of the section on the six ways to "get past the gatekeeper," particularly the "intimidation method."

I happened across How to Sell Technology on the Internet. DiModica’s website (www.itsalestraining.com) promotes the book like an infomercial, promising to reveal "secret proven formulas" and "dramatically increase your income and closing ratio," complete with glowing and untraceable testimonials and a free bonus if you order the manual within the next 24 hours (24 hours from when, it didn’t say). Expecting the worst, I paid my hundred bucks, and in a couple of weeks, the 120-page softcover, ring-bound manual arrived. On the front, a youngish looking man (who I assumed at the time was DiModica), wearing a David Byrne-size jacket, leaps into the air and points at the sky. That evening I pulled up a chair in my workshop and flipped to the first section, "Perception Is Reality." What a way to start, I thought. I set the book down and went to get a beer.

It’s kind of a shame they didn’t take a more dignified approach to marketing this book. My guess is that it will be overlooked by a lot of people who will assume that the contents are just as hollow as the website. In fact, the book deserves a lot more respect than that. DiModica opens with an admonishment that ought to hang on the wall of every CIO’s office. It reads: "If you can’t pick up the phone and cold-call, or handle the objections from a tough chief executive officer of a large company or the drilling probing of a small business owner because you are afraid, then you should get out of technology."