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You need to connect with the CIO or IT director, of course, when you are selling a solution. Also, you’ll need to show the CFO the value to what you are proposing. Getting a new system’s ticket punched by these two executives is standard practice in IT sales. But, there may be another angle. If your client has a risk manager and you don’t know him — find a way to get on his calendar.

We’re still pretty early in the millennium, but if the first decade is any indication, the next thousand years will be the domain of the risk manager. Financial busts have become commonplace, and natural and manmade disasters (including those resulting from terrorism) have caused profound loss. With these threats looming, businesses need to conceive of a broader set of business continuity/disaster recovery solutions than they did in the past — while also gauging the systems and applications needed to help them identify, monitor and remedy financial risk.

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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:

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