The challenges for senior IT leaders these days are overwhelming. In addition to understanding and dealing with new technologies, such as the cloud and mobile computing, they are increasingly called upon to be change agents, strategic planners and innovation drivers, and to contribute to top-line growth.

In particular, the issue of top-line growth and IT’s ability to make a meaningful contribution at this very significant, corporate level is top-of-mind right now. I know from experience that this can be a big challenge for CIOs.

For the past 13 years, the IT Leadership Program at Santa Clara University in California has convened to address some of these issues. A major part of the three-day event is a case study/role play in which participants have the opportunity to practice the skills we teach them. The case study involves a request from a senior vice president of sales for IT to help him or her achieve the objective of top-line growth. In the three-part exercise, the student teams are first presented with the problem; they subsequently dig deeper into its details; and finally, they present their best solution to help the executive achieve the objective. Here’s the grabber: In 13 years of doing the case, only one team — out of approximately 150 — has successfully solved the case.

Ask the Right Questions

Why is this such a difficult assignment? For starters, the students must understand the business of the sales organization, but beyond that, they must understand the strategy of the sales organization — something they can accomplish in the interview opportunity that we give them. Yet, few know the right questions to ask. To learn about strategy, they should make the following request of the senior sales executive: “Help me understand how a sales organization achieves top-line growth. What strategies do you employ?”

Then, through active listening, they will learn everything they need to know from the VP of sales to solve the problem and to come back with an innovative IT solution that contributes to top-line growth. Without this strategic knowledge — gained by asking questions — it is impossible to solve the case.

I don’t view this only as an academic textbook exercise. I can say with great confidence that this example is very real world: IT can’t contribute to top-line growth unless it understands the strategies the company employs to achieve SALES growth. Surprisingly, there are only six to eight key strategies companies use to grow their business, regardless of industry or global geography.

Examples are:

• Add more sales people.
• Introduce new products and/or services.
• Merge with another company.
• Raise product prices.
• Increase yield per salesperson.
• Gain greater market share.

Armed with this type of knowledge, the IT organization can creatively determine what role, if any, IT can play in each strategy. Let me give one brief example of how this might work.

Being able to increase the yield-per-salesperson is a powerful strategy. Imagine a large sales organization with 1,000 salespeople and average sales of $1 million per salesperson. If one could increase the average sales yield by 5 percent, that would result in $50 million of additional sales per year. One IT solution seldom mentioned in our case study exercise would be to develop a win/loss knowledge management system in which we would combine a database system with analytics to tell us why we win and why we lose. Armed with this knowledge, each salesperson could be potentially more effective and close more sales.

IT people can acquire the kind of knowledge about sales that I am suggesting without formal education or extensive training. While education is a good idea, I’m suggesting that IT people need to learn to think strategically and to ask the right strategic questions of their internal clients — and their top managers. For years, we have told IT people that they need to “learn the business,” but in all fairness, we need to be more specific and tell them what it is about the business they need to learn. We hope this discussion will start that process.

How do you ”learn the business” at your enterprise? Can you share your tips with others?

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Peter S. DeLisi is President of Organizational Synergies and Academic Dean, Information Technology Leadership Program, Santa   Clara University.

Organizational Synergies is a strategy consulting firm located in Fremont, Calif. Previously, Pete spent 16years at Digital Equipment Corp.---eight of those years as a consultant to large, Fortune 500-size customers.

He has been published in the Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business  Review, Business Horizons and Journal of Management Inquiry. He is also an internationally recognized speaker.

Pete is also a member of Smart Enterprise Exchange and can be reached on this site.