When the CEO of a prospect told me “Sales is about relationships” and that the company didn’t need a CRM platform (in the midst of creating a proposal for just that), I knew it was time to walk away. His team was begging for the functionality—and with good reason. I’d already imagined 100 ways Salesforce solutions could help them know their audiences better, cross-sell to their current customers, retain knowledge and histories when reps leave the company, and save loads of time.

What’s more, I’ve heard countless people tell me their tech “doesn’t work” or that they want to cancel licenses. Without even asking, I know where the problem is likely to sit—in a corner office.

Trust me. It’s not the tech.

Without a champion at the top, any challenge is like a crack in the wall—a place where a weed can start to grow and take down the whole effort.

Recently, I shared my list of 7 elements necessary for success with sales and marketing technology, beyond the platform itself. At the top of the list sits the top of the organization. If you don’t have total investment from leadership, you will fail.

People are people and people hate change. They’re also smart. If leadership is having doubts or isn’t really committed to a platform change, everyone will sense it. Without a champion at the top, any challenge is like a crack in a wall—a place where a weed can start to grow and take down the whole effort. Human nature also tells us that some people think nitpicking is contributing. They’ll continually generate reasons not to get on board or go live unless the execs show them otherwise.

Leadership champions are even more important if there’s been a pattern of bailing out of initiatives. Anyone who’s seen a few ideas come and go will just wait things out, hoping this too shall pass. Instead, leadership has to demonstrate in everything they do and say that backtracking isn’t an option.

I’ve been working in data and CRM for longer than the acronym has been around. And every one of my biggest, most successful digital transformation engagements has had one thing in common—the idea was fully embraced by those at the very top. We were able to do great work, abandoning out-of-date, homegrown systems and redefining how companies did business thanks to vision that never wavered. Projects that fail? They generally have one thing in common, too. The team wants it to work—they know they’re being hobbled by technical debt and siloed, incomplete or dirty data—but the high-level execs don’t really believe.

This attitude determines what will happen when something inevitably goes sideways. It’s definitely a sliding-doors/multiverse stub moment:

1) If someone at the top is invested and willing to make the tough calls, workers will fall in line (or shake out of the company—and that may be a good thing). The hurdle will be overcome and the result will be better for it.

2) If no one with any clout owns the program or employees are fearful that they’ll be blamed, it will be an opportunity to back down—to revert to the old way, with its original owners and developers happily returning to their dysfunctional workarounds.

We get it. The “fail quickly” mentality makes a lot of sense across many areas of an organization. But that’s not the same as cutting and running the moment the going gets tough.

When talking about this post, I was asked about how I’d navigated these failures. Not to sound too full of myself, but I didn’t have any examples. I can’t think of any reason, at this point in my life, to try to sell someone on something they don’t want. Like an ill-fitting suit, it’s just never going to see the light of day.

Feeling like it’s time to modernize your data and platforms so they live up to their promise? Let’s talk. FATFREE can make it happen.