Blog
1

Why CIOs Must Become Trusted Advisors

A great trusted advisor uses a formal approach to selling, persuading and overcoming resistance.

The CIO at a premium hotel known for its excellent customer service tried to convince the executive team to digitalize the customer experience. She met with significant resistance, her peers worried that it would dilute the experience.

After spending six months researching, cultivating and persuading stakeholders to buy into her idea, the CIO couldn’t comprehend why anyone would resist the idea of empowering customers through a new digital experience.

Leigh McMullen, managing vice president at Gartner, says most CIOs have to work on becoming a trusted advisor because the skills involved are greatly different from the engineering and problem solving skills that helped them master their current role.

LMcMullen_article_body_image“Some people have a knack for becoming trusted advisors, but many CIOs aren’t so lucky,” McMullen says. “CIOs need to become trusted advisors to the rest of the C-suite to help their enterprise thrive in an uncertain digital future.”

CIOs who’ve moved beyond simply being managers to becoming trusted advisors have great latitude to innovate and drive change. Meanwhile, those who focus on the table stakes of IT find themselves under constant budgetary and operational pressures.

Any CIO can realistically set “trusted advisor” as the goal. McMullen says there are three key abilities they need to develop.

Selling a compelling vision

CIOs have one of the hardest selling jobs. You’re selling an idea — a vision — rather than a product with features, functions and styling.

Persuading established business leaders to try something new, rather than to double down on what has worked in the past, requires a compelling narrative full of emotional triggers.

The tactics of persuasion

Trusted advisors don’t play off a script. Scripts don’t allow for listening. Think about your own trusted advisors. They make a personal or professional difference in your life without working off some “pathway to the sale” program.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out what a person’s problem is. People are rarely upfront about their problems or desires.

Trusted advisors don’t play off a script. Scripts don’t allow for listening.

This is where the tactics of truly great salespeople come into play. Rather than applying a formula, they use tools that amplify their ability to get to the root of the prospect’s problem.

Overcoming resistance

The best efforts to sell and persuade may still be met with significant resistance. This can be exceptionally frustrating for “engineering brains” who believe they’ve found the ideal solution, only to be met with what they view as a perplexing and illogical reaction.

With practice, resistance can actually be used to explore and develop ideas, and ultimately reach a common understanding with shared goals. Overcoming resistance well, with style and dexterity, adds to your cachet as a trusted advisor.

Get Smarter

Client Research
Gartner clients can read more in “The CIO’s Trusted Advisor Playbook: Selling and Persuasion.”

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2017
Additional analysis on CIO leadership will be presented during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2017, the world’s most important gathering of CIOs and other senior IT executives. IT executives rely on these events to gain insight into how their organizations can use IT to overcome business challenges and improve operational efficiency. Follow news and updates from the events on Twitter using #GartnerSYM.

Upcoming dates and locations for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo include:
September 18-20, Cape Town, South Africa
October 1-5, Orlando, Florida
October 23-26, Sao Paulo, Brazil
October 30-November 2, Gold Coast, Australia
October 31 – November 2, Tokyo Japan
November 5-9, Barcelona, Spain
November 13-16, Goa, India

You may also like
Gartner Keynote: The Future of Business Is Composable
CIO Story: How to Drive a Culture of Innovation
Overcome Employee Resistance to Change
Are You A Master CIO?