Some interesting observations in this post, however, I would suggest that in many cases IT is more supportive of internally ‘selling’ new ideas because of the nature of most IT professionals, that is, they actively embrace new and different ways of looking at things.

I share this from personal experience in enterprise VoIP (pitching to IT was at least 300% more effective than the pitch to the telecom group) and IP convergence for building systems (getting IT to internally sponsor the initial foray is at least double the effectiveness of going after facilities management).

In both areas ITs involvement was needed but those areas were “owned” by another group. The incumbent groups were resistant to a new way of doing things even when similar concepts were pitched by the manufacturer of the incumbent system.

Even when selling through the IT side of the house it is critical to get above the mid-level functional staff early as they will bog you down with spec and demo requests. I would rather go well over their heads to the CIO of CFO and get pushed down after having at least made contact and made the executive aware of our existence.