Disaster recovery and business continuity solutions should be easy to sell. Everybody needs them, and some businesses are required by regulatory bodies to meet specific and demanding standards. They also represent a place where IT solution providers and manufacturers can distinguish themselves because DR/BC is not only a cost, but one that will show a benefit only rarely. So, a company that can shorten backup and recovery times, consume less storage space and lessen demand on datacenter staff is likely to find a willing audience.

But, there are factors that can frustrate the DR/BC sales effort. There’s plenty of competition, making it harder for our voice to be heard and causing sales fatigue to set in among CIOs and other IT decision-makers. Further, the technologies that can have the greatest impact can disrupt IT — and end-user — operations, a situation that many IT departments seek to minimize. So, what’s intuitively an easy sell can become rather complex.

Here are five ways to tip the odds in your favor:

1. Differentiate your approach and solution
Are you just like every other solution provider that’s selling virtualization, data de-duplication and other tools commonly associated with DR/BC? That’s a tough place to be. Instead, show what you do differently — and how well it works. Make it a point to demonstrate the value you add beyond the systems you resell, and how this can protect the prospect’s data, applications and operations from a disaster event.

2. Know the rules
Financial companies, public companies and others are subject to specific DR/BC regulations. Examples include regulations from NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange, Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. If you understand, even at a very basic level, your prospect’s regulatory challenges, you’ll be far helpful, increasing the chances that you’ll be engaged.

3. Timing is everything
Look for pain points around backup windows, recovery times and the TCO and ROI associated with both. Instead of asking the prospect to believe that faster is better, show how it’s also more lucrative. Even for projects driven by regulatory requirements, there’s no substitute for showing how the numbers can improve.

4. Always express impact in terms of end-users
Business efficiency is always more important than datacenter efficiency. Always. A CIO may appreciate technology that saves time or lessens workload, but the CFO would prefer to see that result across the entire company. Prove that you can make the business as a whole more effective, and the IT department will find a way to get your project off the ground.

5. Deliver more than better DR/BC
No company wants to have to see its DR/BC solutions in action. Quieter days, undoubtedly, are far better. So, you should show how the technology you’re proposing to implement can cut costs or boost ROI, independent of DR/BC, on a daily basis. If you’re discussing datacenter consolidation, virtualization and de-duplication, among others, there’s a case waiting to be made — take the opportunity to do it.

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