Let’s be honest, sales and marketing skills may not always come naturally to members of the internal audit community. We often view ourselves as thorough, persistent, independent, brave—I could go on and on—but not sellers. Why is that? Why don’t internal audit leaders devote more time to developing sales and messaging skills? We are all humans after all. Can we expect to reach our full potential and impact if we sit back and look to the historic status quo, the veil of independence and anonymity, to be our corporate salvation?
One of the greatest values that internal auditors can provide is performing the right audit at the right time, and that requires selling those ideas to management, the audit committee, and the board. To be successful we need to tap into our inner P.T. Barnum.
As we all know, however, that is not an easy task. Having a seat at the big table requires chief audit executives (CAEs) and their teams to be constantly juggling priorities, being tough but fair, keeping the organization’s risk and control framework moving forward, and, yes, delivering the right message. Providing commercial value and impact is a must for internal audit teams; to do this consistently, all while being a trusted advisor, requires immense sales and relationship skills, particularly at the CAE level and other internal audit leadership roles. If good ideas are the bargains of the corporate market, then internal audit should be having a blowout sale.
“I Learned that as an Accountant”
We all know that you no longer need to be an accountant to be an effective internal auditor—effectiveness is driven by knowing the business, and applying professional skepticism, objectivity, and fairness. That said, most internal auditors, like accountants, love structure: templates to be completed, balances and differences to be extrapolated, boxes to be checked, and of course conclusions to be reached. Nothing wrong with that. As a Chartered Accountant with over two decades in external and internal audit roles, I can relate to that. Those types of activities formed a good bit of my collective experiences and, no shocker, I was pretty good at them too.
Yet my “aha” moments mostly came when I worked in roles outside of audit mid-way through my career. I worked in E-commerce, strategic projects, and fixed income coverage strategy roles. When you work outside of audit, you need to cultivate relationships more proactively. It is push and pull. Selling your relevance becomes your calling card. “What can I do for you?” becomes an obvious question. Internal auditors, by design, always have doors opened for them by the nature of their role; what executive or manager will not make time for internal audit (knowing the consequences of potential negative feedback)?
Still, internal auditors devote a lot of time to activities that require active “selling” to add value to the board, audit committee, and executive management. If you don’t believe me, reflect on these eight instances where internal audit needs to don the salesperson hat:
1 – Selling your ideas to cover the organization’s key risks to improve its resilience (aka, the audit plan resulting from your key risk assessment).
2 – Selling your ideas on optimal audit or review timing and interaction with the second line functions (aka, coordinated assurance).
3 – Selling your proposed audit scope to the key stakeholders (audit scope).
4 – Selling your audit issues and insights identified in each audit to management and key stakeholders (aka the audit report and insights).
5 – Selling the optimal way to perform audits to internal audit staff and stakeholders (aka the audit and agile audit methodology).
6 – Selling the over-arching risk and control environment messaging and audit impact every quarter to the audit committee and board stakeholders (aka your audit committee update report).
7 – Selling your relevance and demonstrating that you care about the success of the business to management stakeholders every quarter in relationship meetings (relationship updates).
8 – Selling continuous learning to your team, so the internal audit department has the right skills to add value and ensuring that internal audit is a source of talent and talent development for the organization (the talent development plan).
Indeed, internal auditors and CAEs are involved with selling every day of the week! But being candid, some CAEs and their directs are much better than their peers at closing the proverbial deal. Selling is simply not a skill that internal auditors focus on historically. As you can see, though, it can be argued that it is a core component of being an effective internal auditor.
Embedding Sales Skills Within Internal Audit
Here are some actions to take to improve the sales and messaging skills among members of the internal audit team:
Action 1: Focus on the “How” and Sell Internal Audit’s Journey
Internal audit mandates are exactly that in every organization: a set of required standards that apply to every function no matter what. The “what” is not really in question, but the “how” is. The reality of making that forced conformance effective and value added to the organization requires constant sales and marketing, especially on how we go about our work and how we prioritize our approach to risks, issues, outcomes, relevance, and value proposition. Here, positioning and messaging are vital. Just reflecting on how the internal audit team positions itself to sell each of the standard audit deliverables above is a major reality check.
Forward-thinking internal audit teams have a clear vision and mission, supported by strategic change initiatives, and are great at communicating them (or selling them) to stakeholders. I worked on internal audit teams that did this well. We found more and more success as we took steps to get closer to our vision (our North Star), and we felt proud to market both our change journey and our impact. It didn’t go unnoticed as we excelled in data analytics, full data audits, and delivering valued insights well before most of our industry peers. In other words, don’t be afraid to be internal audit’s promoter.
Action 2: Pursue Informal Opportunities to Connect with Stakeholders
One senior executive once told me that I did not come across as an internal auditor, but more as a salesperson. We were in an informal group catch up at an off-site in Europe. It was an interesting discussion after a long day, but what piqued his interest was that I was asking forward looking, open questions about his business. How do you measure success? What risks are out there and how do staff respond to key risks and strategic challenges? What did he think of internal audit and why? How could we help? The questions sparked a great and genuine conversation.
Informal meetings are often more valuable than more formal, scheduled meetings because there is no set agenda. It is critical though to know how to ask open questions and to be humble. Let’s be honest, few of us get it all right. A key learning for leaders of internal audit teams is to place as much emphasis on relationships and interactions outside of the normal audit cycle, as we do on formal meetings.
There are many ways to build that informal connection: coffee, lunch, teach-ins, surveys, sharing quarterly messages, guesting at team meetings, and several others.
Action 3: Be Humble, Transparent, and Value Client Feedback
I recall and often reference a great piece of advice from a head of sales I worked with years ago: “Always strive to be #1, but act like you are #2 or #3.” What did he mean? He meant be humble, and be thankful for the opportunity to trade even if you didn’t get the order. Having the right mind-set and being thankful for being in the game will pay dividends as sincere relationships develop. Translated into internal audit parlance: listen carefully to client feedback and be careful in how you message on potential issues to make sure that you have an open discussion on any draft observations to validate fact patterns and discuss root causes.
In my experience, clients don’t mind if internal audit finds issues, it is more about how we communicate and finalize them. If we do find a major issue, 99 percent of the time management will be the first ones to agree it’s important to fix. Too many times internal auditors come across as inflexible and not willing to listen to management. The perception can be that we are set in our ways and dig in to save face. Strive to have an open conversation about the facts and be willing to be flexible if facts or data emerge that suggest internal audit needs to modify or even drop its finding.
Too many times I have seen internal audit fail to invest in the ebb and flow of relationships. How many of you have witnessed an unwavering internal audit team with one low-rated issue written like the sky is about to fall that doesn’t even belong in an audit report to the board? I have seen this too many times and it always reflects poorly on internal audit. Don’t be afraid to listen to client feedback, especially if you are the CAE. We found adoption of an agile auditing methodology to be helpful here as our sprint reviews were transparent and we openly invited management feedback and commentary on observations, risks, and insights. We also used to tee up client teach-ins before audits to kick-start that listening and feedback cycle.
Action 4: Focus on Key Risk Topics “Here and Now” and Invest in Continuous Risk Awareness within Internal Audit
Resist the temptation to focus on easier lower-level risks or audits. This sounds very logical, but if you want your internal audit team to be valued as a strategic asset, you must think strategically and audit stuff that matters to the CEO, audit committee, and executive management. When you propose audits, seek active input from management and your second-line colleagues. Anchor your audit plan to key risk themes and update these periodically to stay current. If you have a quarterly audit plan, as we did, then market those key risks on your radar for possible subsequent quarters and audits you may be contemplating. Audit committees love to see a forward-looking view of risk and like to discuss whether they agree or would look to change the focus of future audits. These are always great discussions to have as they show internal audit’s relevance and risk responsiveness.
Always Be Closing
While selling and marketing skills are not typically associated with the requirements to be an effective internal auditor, that’s starting to change. Think about it; do you know any successful consumer product or service that is not supported by an active marketing and sales strategy? Internal audit work is no different. It requires us to develop new skills to better connect with our stakeholders so that our work is relevant and valued. If you follow through on the action steps above, you will be on track to become a leader of an audit team that will be more responsive to risk, increasing your value and relevancy.
It is not easy because new skills are required, particularly for those who may be more introverted than extroverted. Focus on “how” you perform your roles, value informal meetings and catch-ups, be fair and transparent, and look to market your coverage of risks that matter to your organization. No matter your audit team size, if you follow these steps, your team will be well on the way to embedding sales and marketing within your internal audit DNA and turbo-charging your overall performance. Are you sold yet? 
Shane Rogers, FCA, MBA, is an independent risk and audit management consultant. He is also a former Audit Managing Director and U.S.-based Chief Audit Executive with deep, partner-level, insurance, and investment banking experience globally.