Finding the Right Person to Sell To
One of the problems often cited by salesmen in the technology industry is how to find the right person to sell to. Do you sell at the CIO level or does it make more sense to sell at a more functional level?
There is no "one size fits all" solution for finding the right level to sell at - though if you do not have visibility at the "C-level", it can make it more difficult to sell a technology solution.
One organization I have worked with encourages salespeople to sell at the functional level and be introduced up through the chain versus coming in from the top down. The organizational culture is one which values the technical knowledge on the line and detest sales organizations which try to force themselves in from the top down. At a lunch a few weeks ago, a Systems Engineer described it like this, "we can't stand XYZ corporation. Their sales guy is always kissing up to our CTO but doesn't ever spend any time proving his products to us. We're the ones that have to live with the software day in and day out. Since he won't spend time with us, his products never make it through technical review."
This corporation always required technical buy-in from their System Engineering staff and this sales guy didn't sell at the right level.
The key to figuring where to sell is to figure out the culture at the company. It doesn't hurt to start at a C-Level person in the organization, but you should always use this as an introduction to the middle management staff and become familiar with the technical staff.
Having technical staff know and trust you can help significantly down the road as you develop sales opportunities.
