Information technology managers sometimes think that the sole purpose of their department is technology delivery. While setting up computers, managing technology infrastructure, maintaining and delivering applications and providing support are the foundation to what information technology managers do; there are many aspects of internal customer management that look more like sales and customer service than they do technology. Staying mindful of an internal customer's needs and concerns when “selling to” and providing services to a customer is essential in order to effectively work with your customers. Every positive interaction between your customer and your department increases the chances that your team will win the next big project. Information technology survival of the fittest looks more like survival of those with the most well balanced and reliably executed project portfolio and operational pipeline because those teams continue to be the go-to partner for future work. The following questions are useful in kicking off an I.T. leadership conversation about how well your department is selling to and servicing your customers. Sales Who are our best customers? Why are we successful with them? Who are the customers we are least successful at winning work from? What are the best ways we could improve our working relationship with them? What was the last big project we wanted to deliver to our customers but was lost to a consulting company or was not done? Why didn't we win the project? When was the last time we tried to sell a project to the CEO or CFO? Why did we succeed or fail? When we sell a project to a customer, do we consider the formal and informal organizational networks that may impact the success of winning the project? Service How effectively do we resolve customer's issues? How quickly do we resolve them? If our customers were to rate us as a servicing unit what would our rating be? What are the ways in which our rating could be improved? How would our satisfied, but not our greatest, supporters rate our soft skills as a department? Who criticizes our department most frequently about our customer service? Does information technology leadership believe that the complaints are valid? Why? When we think about our customers who struggle most with technology, how effectively do we address their needs? Why are our efforts effective or ineffective?