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 COLUMN
Hitting the road IN ITS MOST basic form, the CTO's job at most companies is leveraging technology to help drive forward business goals. As I've written in previous columns, a CTO lives and works at the intersection of business and technology; however, most of the attention generally falls on the technology aspect and how to marry it to the business.
As most of you have probably guessed from reading InfoWorld in the past, a large portion of the our revenue comes from advertising. Our advertisers want to reach people like you and me. For all practical purposes, I am InfoWorld's target market -- I just happen to also work here. Although I've gone on the road with sales teams before, every trip is a valuable refresher course in what the general sales challenges are and what specific issues face our team. The following is what I continue to learn. Selling is difficult: It's a game of inches and incremental gains that can be wiped out on a whim. In the relative purity of the technology world, either systems work or they don't. Networks are up or they are down. Sales operates in the realm of "maybe" -- even good salespeople hear "no" much more often than "yes." Yes, one eats some good dinners along the way, but those dinners are spent talking to the customer, answering questions, and trying to close business. The next time you are in a restaurant, take a look around and note the business meetings. The salesperson is usually the one who has eaten very little by the end of the meal -- he or she is too busy selling. Anyone who thinks sales is all about a great meal, a few drinks, and a signed contract at the end of the meal should go on the road sometime. In reality it is much more challenging. Staying in constant touch with your sales team is important because you never know where you might be able to help. The genesis of my sales trip was an offhand conversation I had with one of our online salespeople. I was raving about how pleased I was with NetIQ's WebTrends product, and it turned out that our sales team had a trip planned to visit NetIQ last week. I had been deeply dissatisfied with our existing Web analytics software, and after taking a look at WebTrends and downloading and installing the demo, I was really impressed with how far the product had progressed since I had last looked at it several years ago. I wanted to give my feedback directly to the people who created the product. On my visit to NetIQ, I had the pleasure of telling the marketing department why I bought the product and how I thought they could improve their marketing message to people like me. I even met the person who answered the phone when I called in my order. In a world of electronic communication, people forget that face-to-face human interaction is more important than ever, and that's why I'm heading out again next week to meet with more of InfoWorld's customers. See you on the road. Chad Dickerson is InfoWorld's CTO. Write to him at chad_dickerson@infoworld.com or look for him on a sales call at a company near you. MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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