How to Sell to the CIO - Sven Gerjets

If you are in IT sales, you want to sell to the CIO. You want to sell to the ultimate decision maker and close the deal. But, you need to be prepared when you get there, really prepared.

Sven Gerjets (@SvenGerjets) is the former CIO at Time Warner Cable. At Time Warner Cable, Sven helped transform an IT organization preparing for an acquisition by Charter Communications. Prior to Time Warner Cable, Sven had stints at Pearson, DirecTV and Symantec enabling sales, marketing and ecommerce.

In this episode Sven and I talk about how to get to the CIO, how to prove the value when you get here and what moves his needle. Sven gives insights into how Customer Experiences are evolving to purely digital experiences faster than we are enabling them. This gives rise to the new CEO, Chief Experience Officer. The Chief Experience Officer is a combination of all of the C-suite measuring the effectiveness of on-line selling systems and digital customer experiences as sales people are redeployed into other areas.

Listen in and take notes to what the number one thing Sven says a sales and marketing person needs to do to effectively communicate and get to the CIO.

Questions During Episode

What are your next moves after being CIO of Time Warner?
How are you are you helping companies in your advisory role?
Are you helping them with product roadmap? Messaging?
What are startups having trouble with when selling to the enterprise?
What timeframe of pain point is worth researching?
What is your opinion on the content marketers are putting out?
What is the best way to get to a CIO?
What was the best method to get to you?
What is your favorite method to get peer referrals?
What do other CIOs ask of you?
What would you do differently in managing your social network?
What is your opinion on social media for selling to the enterprise?
Do CIOs need to promote themselves on-line?
Do you think CIOs use social media?
Where is the talent shortage?
How do the CIO and the CMO view the customer experience?
What is the Chief Experience Officer?
What problems to mobile devices create in corporate IT?
What advice would you give a sales or marketing person trying to talk to a new CIO?