I'm glad to hear many people chime in and agree on the real problem as I see it, which is marketing and sales strategic focus and implementation, not specific staff. I give them lots of respect for working on the edge every day. Very stressful to keep moral strong. But at same time, if the sales people aren’t closers or capable of CEO type selling…sorry, time to move on or become the 2nd pitch people to IT, if that's their strength. I know I could never sell IT and instructed our cio not to teach me, I can't help myself and will try to answer...then I'm dead.
29tango pointed out something very important too and that is the need for clear application benefits presented from a CEO perspective. Just because you're at the table doesn’t mean match won, only game started. What will kill the meeting is if you start selling technology...CEO's don't like to feel dumb (not saying they don‘t get it, but most won‘t), so always use the K.I.S.S method (Keep It Simple Stupid) in affect during the meeting and just keep selling benefits...a little fear sprinkled in never hurts either...CEO's get fired too.
