> I would (and my advice to anyone else would be to) reach out to the potential client's IT department as a matter of course, whether or not they're likely to b

> I would (and my advice to anyone else would be to) reach out to the potential client's IT department as a matter of course, whether or not they're likely to be involved. Ehhhh - I would maybe rephrase that to be, "Talk with your business sponsor about whether it makes sense to have IT involved - are there roadblocks they are likely ot throw up that you should get ahead of" Because as a general rule of enterprise sales, I would say, "The more people that are involved in your deal, the more people that can screw it up. Only involve the right amount of stakeholders to insure the deal gets done" Nothing is worse than watching a deal go sideways because a rep went wide and deep into an organization and suddenly you're trying to make everyone happy. It is sometimes better to keep a deal size smaller and more focused to insure it closes sooner, and then you can deal with upselling other orgs or getting IT's buy-in on a broader implementation once it's up and running and working.