Part 2 (of 3) of a white paper I wrote 10 years ago for a customer that had just recently started selling professional services, but had sold product for over 20 years. This deliverable was one of several I created over the years to train sales and delivery staff in the ways of professional services and intangibles in general. Part 1 is here.
Pre-Sales Project Considerations
Confidential is now maturing its sales approach to include other IBUs into a more complete and comprehensive offering. This unified approach makes for a much more exciting pre-sales phase, and allows us to meet and impress our Strategic Partners and sister IBUs.
A very important function of the new SDM (Service Delivery Manager) position is the close integration with the SAE (Sales Account Executive) and the sales phases of an engagement (Sales Cycles). In many cases, this new area of responsibility is very new to an SDM who may have risen through the technical/engineering ranks. In Confidential, the sales efforts were not a part of the technician’s concerns until after the sale was complete.
A purely technical approach in pre-sales can be disastrous. Equally bad is the pure sales meeting where the SAE can’t answer a question. The time to answer every question is every single meeting. There should be no take-ways to get back to the client on our capabilities. Understand that in almost every case each client meeting will have representation from their managerial and technical staff. You must have a team here to field questions and inquiries from both areas of the client’s business.
Continue reading “Part 2 – Pre-Sales Project Considerations”