Prelude
I am summing up some of my experiences in a pre-sales role, (IT Service Provider perspective), which can be a quick guide or say best practices for those who are in the field or who are aspiring to be, It helps to hone the up the necessary skills.
Suggested Audience: IT Pre-sales team, Senior Managers, Leaders
Introduction
The pre-sales team works with sales and solution teams, helps to bridge the business & technologies to achieve customers need. The shortest definition I conclude being in the real world supporting banking, energy & utility deals.
Like in life or in business, most we can get out of them would be directly linked to the leadership approach we adopt. While putting our best, by understanding the customer’s inner desire, we are in the right direction. I call it meeting the implicit and explicit expectations.
Most folks start to respond to an RFI /RFP, - by thinking do we win here?,
while it is usual and desirable to think that way, but what I found, thinking every deal, is an opportunity to do better than the previous, actually improves the teams servicing skills. Over time, it helps everyone involved becoming better.
The foreground
When a service provider receives the RFP from the customer, two points are clear.
The customer would have already gone through the proactive solutioning pitch from the existing vendor
The customer is aware of his problems than the service providers have experienced with different customers
When we take such an approach we would able to put our best, without prejudices of previous success or failures.
The Background
Preparation before the battlefield; best we get only when we have the best within ( the team, collective experiences, past examples)
Have a core team to handle the winning deals, where it’s already your (organization) strength
Where deals look dicey or just because customer needs one more bid from a different vendor for the sake of it, then such deals better go to the next level team
Let repositories updated immediately with completion of each RFP responses activity
Know which consultants have worked on what, who is currently having the bandwidth to support
Case studies, domain wise available under relevant headers
Past wins and failures, responses recorded and segregated clearly
All customer references are handy and know where to look for what
The Team
A leader is as good as his team.
The responsibility of a good business leader is to develop the right mindset within, keep strive to evolve, plus develop team in that direction; the next level leaders.
How good is our team?
A few symptoms that indicate are team aligned to be on the top 10%, in the area they work.
Be clear on what is limiting them, each time. Know where to voice it out without personalizing
Have a 360-degree view of the deals worked
Review each deal, what went right, not so right. Let sales folk always share the final cues they got after presenting your solution to the customer
Do teams get to go through the industry standards/reviews/trends? (say McKinney’s, Gartner’s )
Are they have a quarterly review to see where they are all heading towards, as a whole
How their individual and team numbers look like each month on month
Now, let’s looks at critical factors which affect success.
Working on more than 2 RFP’s, simultaneously. I have seen examples wherein people finish a CALL from one of the RFP and get into another. While, one more expected to catch up in the next one hour.
This sound good as we say with numbers. Does it sound good with results?
When we split our mind quality suffers. Deeper aspects of the deal will be known only through insights, of stakeholders, of their customers, their region, technology, and industry trends. Comes by spending time on one deal for a considerable amount of time; not possible in split scenarios
Searching for the right contacts, right case studies, right SME profiles, and right customer references takes time. And repeating the same endeavours for each RFP shows something else is the problem.
Being organized and being aware of it makes half of the journey easier and also enjoyable.
One response for all - Customer who is looking for support of 10 FTE, 100 FTE or over 1000 FTE has different requirements and priorities, fitting one story line for all customers may not be the right approach.
Have a primary set of Deck which gives an overall picture of the deal and subsequent smaller specific sections would help for those who like to deep dive. Consider 5 X 5 rule. Five slides with five points in each.
The Winning Theme
Here, as always clarity precedes success
Articulate what customer expects (different from scope given, at a higher level, plus numbers, percent)
Increase in ROI, response time, resolution effectiveness
Say, reduction in tickets volume, FTE, other HW / SW resources etc
YOY growth in business and IT cost associated with it
Consolidation of IT Platform
Moving to newer technologies
Why you / organization
Talk about where the same has been done by you, and how many times,
What was the result of it, over 1 year, 2 year or 5 years give examples
The lessons, best practices, what can still be done better
Get past winning customer talk to the new aspiring customer: a live case discussion or face to face meeting or via a quick video recorded on mobile.
What else your organization can do for this customer in perticular?
Let each practice or service line offerings be structured to meet the above points, plus
Indicate the problems the customer would face in his approach
Voice the problems as a service provider you faced in similar situations in past
Organizations IP related to the solution and on your expertise
Providing multiple approaches to meet the customers implicit & explicit expectations
Best customers are the existing ones; the next best are the ones who are referred by these existing customers
In my experience, when we approach each RFI / RFP challenge in the ways suggested as above, any customer would become alert at his place and start listening to you with more keenness, tries to identify what this service provider can make difference to his organization.
And as you keep improving, so would be your strike rates!
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