CIOs should stop trying to achieve buy-in for IT initiatives and start helping business colleagues sell the projects themselves

An ambitious CIO came up with an excellent idea for one of the business units. He did some due diligence on the Net, sent out e-mails, made a few calls and built up a pretty decent business case for his proposal. The executive running the business unit even liked the idea. Alas, he didn't find it compelling enough. The conversation - and the CIO's initiative - fizzled out.

"Michael," said the frustrated CIO, "I just couldn't persuade him to take the next step. How do I get buy-in?"

"Dude," I responded, "stop selling buy-in. Your IT shop has to get itself out of the buy-in business and start practising 'sell with'." IT should avoid being the organization's "sales leader" for technology-enabled productivity and change. Persuasion can't be - and shouldn't be - your core competence. Salesmanship is not your friend.

Too many CIOs invest too much time and energy trying to get colleagues and peers to buy in to IT initiatives. They're pitching and wooing and selling with every ounce of charisma they have — which, for IT executives, tends to be on the lighter side.

If you've got the charm, loquaciousness and skill to sell iceboxes to Eskimos, what the heck are you doing in IT? You should be raking in commissions on the vendor side. But if you truly happen to be a gifted salesperson for internal IT initiatives, chances are your problem is expectations management. You do such a fine job selling that the actual implementation ends up as either an unhappy anticlimax or a bitter disappointment. Not good.

The most effective IT executives I've observed have learned (usually the hard way) that the pursuit of buy-in is a chimera. What works is subtler but demonstrably more powerful: Turn the IT client into a sales partner. Get the client to sell with you instead of buying from you.

That means don't waste time trying to persuade someone to adopt your idea or implement your app. Instead, figure out ways to get people to help sell that idea or implementation to someone else. Former Apple exec and current venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki has called this "turning customers into evangelists". I call it "turning customers into VARs" - value-added resellers. IT clients and customers should be viewed - and treated - as resellers of IT's systems, services and reputation, not just as customers.

Consequently, IT should never be driving a CRM or sales account management system implementation within the enterprise. Never. Instead, IT should be getting the sales and marketing heads to champion those initiatives with IT's open - but clearly subordinate - support.

The truest test? The CIO shouldn't be making the CRM case before the CFO and the CEO - that's marketing's job; that's sales' job. The CIO should be the person most responsible for making it easy for sales and marketing to make that case.

Don't Lead, Enable

What does enabling sales look like? A talented Webmaster rigged up an internal Salesforce.com account management knockoff for his division's sales teams. Within six months, the salespeople wanted a bit more support and functionality from the bootlegged ASP. Their boss went to IT for money and manpower. The CIO heard about it.

The creatively opportunistic CIO shrewdly decided to cut a deal. He brought the Webmaster, the sales manager and a couple of the salespeople to the attention of the sales VP to demo their working system. The sales VP was impressed. So the CIO suggested that the sales VP go to the COO and CFO and push for a rollout of an enterprise sales ASP. The CIO would say how impressed IT was with sales' initiative and point to the bootleg ASP as a prototype for a successful system. The sales VP agreed. He did a successful job selling. He didn't buy in to IT; he sold with IT.