In the previous post, TECHNOLOGY SALES – HOW DO WE GET ACCESS TO THE BUSINESS? we discussed how legacy IT sales organizations can gain access to those much higher up in IT as well as the business (where increasingly the decisions and money are), by initially focusing on the data and applications that are important to the business. Outcome-Based Selling should be a significant strategy for addressing this shift of technology sales to the lines of business. However, I’m concerned with how Outcome-Based “Selling” is being widely interpreted and implemented.

A recent publication by LinkedIn “The Enlightened Tech Buyer: Powering Customer Decisions from Acquisition to Renewal”, found that today’s tech buyers are seeking to make “informed, rational decisions” and that they are under increasing pressure to deliver greater business outcomes (a hat tip to Dutch Schwartz for sharing this study with me). Additionally, the study found that 71% of IT projects are considered failures and 19% are considered utter failures.