Positioning Professional Services for Success
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The document outlines the importance of professional services in enterprise software deployment, emphasizing that customers require expert consulting to address complex problems. It highlights strategies to enhance service offerings, improve sales cycles, and engage clients effectively. Key rules include introducing services early in the sales process, differentiating value propositions, and leveraging experienced consultants to create compelling solutions.
Positioning Professional Services for Success
- 1. New rules of Positioning PS Ambareesh Kulkarni
- 2. Why Professional Services? • Customer’s who purchase services, usually come back and buy more software. • Without services, we risk our software becoming shelf ware. • Enterprise software always requires services for successful deployment. “ When negotiating with vendors, we expect to pay for Software, Maintenance, Services & Training” - Procurement @ Merck.
- 3. Why Professional Services? • Customer’s have complex problems. And these require deep Industry knowledge & consulting expertise to solve. • What kind of problems do customer’s ask us to solve? – Reduce touch points and increase automation. – Reduce impact of software delivery to desktops. – Help us reduce Software & Hardware spend. – What should our next-generation desktop strategy be? • Services is our Insurance Policy!
- 4. Why Professional Services? We help shorten the sales cycle
- 5. Sales Cycle Include an Acceptance Criteria in the SOW Qualification Qualification Give the customer an exit clause Lengthy & expensive process Move to procurement Typically need to discount heavily to get the deal closed faster Acceptance Procurement Sales Cycle Proof of Concept / reference calls etc. Might move forward with a limited purchase TIME Address customer’s perceived risks
- 6. What’s in it for the customer? Start Rapid Time To Value With Acceptance criteria With traditional approach of a POC. Fully Deployed Fully Deployed TIME Start
- 7. Coca-Cola Refreshments Coca-Cola Bottling Company 2011 2012 Coco-Cola Enterprise 30,000 seats > 90,000 seats with multiple products 1E’s potential expansion 90,000 seats; multiple products 2011 2012+ 30,000 seats Shopping + Wakeup Nomad AppClarity + NWM What a combined Sales & Services strategy can do for us
- 8. Rule #1: The bad economy, is so last year • Prospects have money to buy, they are open to interesting and relevant conversations and they are making decisions to move their business forward. • Many believe that they can get by without consulting. • Clients can now draw on deeper internal bench strength to meet their consulting needs.
- 9. Rule #1: The bad economy, is so last year … You are absolutely right! As long as you believe that the economy is bad, our rates are too high and you keep telling yourself that buyers are not buying ……….. guess what?
- 11. Rule #2: Play to Win-Win • Don’t give away anything for free, especially services. • Don’t spend too much time selling to organizations that are not good targets. • Don’t sell to people too low in the totem pole to make decisions. • Many times we discount heavily thinking that we are positioning ourselves to win “someday”. Guess what? - As John Fogerty says…..“Someday Never Comes”
- 12. Rule #3: Re-examine your value proposition • Prospects must want our services. Our service offerings must Resonate with them • Prospects have to see why we stand out from other options. We have to differentiate ourselves. • Prospects have to believe that we can deliver on our promises. We have to substantiate.
- 13. Create new conversations: examples • What are the top 3 things you would change about your current desktop systems management solution? • What are your top 3 challenges with managing your datacenters at the moment? • How efficient and agile is your IT compared with your competitors?
- 14. Rule #4: Introduce Services early • Our prospects are busy, they want our advice immediately. • Prospects react much more favorably to suppliers who recommend, rather than just salute and execute. • You have to be able to say, “This is where I think you should go (engage our experts). This is what I think you should do (speak to our consultants).” Don’t be afraid to say it.
- 15. The right time to introduce Services 1.0 Identify 2.0 Qualify 3.0 Propose 4.0 Negotiate 5.0 Deliver 6.0 Support Lead Sales Process Delivery process BacklogPipeline Opportunity Project Sales Services Delivery team
- 16. Who are we selling to? • Increase in number of consultants has led to so many former consultants now being buyers (they are more sophisticated buyers). • The odds are 1 in 3 that we will be selling our services to a former consultant. • Put the technical buyer at ease. We are not here to take his or her job! • Find ways to leverage the buyer’s skills and fill the gaps with ours.
- 17. Create new conversations: more examples • Our consultants can manage and deliver the 1E project from start to finish so your resources can continue to focus on other more critical projects. Would you like to learn how? • Our consultants, over the years have a proven methodology, developed best practices, repeatable solutions and workflows to accelerate project implementation. Would you be interested in speaking to one of them? • With the value that our consultants provide, cost of engaging our consultants is usually less than implementing the project internally. Would you like to know how?
- 18. Rule #5: Know thy tools and use them wisely • Develop a winning and compelling SOW and describe the services in a way that excites the prospects. • Reference prior consulting success stories. – “I don’t want to be ‘sold to.’ Have a good understanding of my situation, then sit down with me and lay out a detailed solution. Show me how it’s worked before.” • Show them the path to success using a project plan or Gantt chart. – Prove that we have been there, done that.
- 19. Rule #5: Know thy tools and use them wisely • Become familiar with all of the different types of services offerings. • Get to know the consultants and their background. Each and every one of them is hand picked and have expertize in one or more areas. • Don’t discuss rates till we have had a chance to demonstrate value. – Our rates will be high, only if we haven’t created enough value when sitting across the table.
- 20. The Team • Over 200 years of collective Systems Management Expertise. • Industry & Thought leaders. • In the last 5 years we have worked on close to 500 different projects*. • We see the bigger picture and take a holistic approach to delivering IT Efficiencies.
- 21. Consultant Profile : Mike Terrill • Specialises in architecting, implementing SMS and ConfigMgr solutions. • Worked on the world’s first ConfigMgr deployment in ‘native mode’. • Operating System migration & deployment Expert. • Working on a project to deploy Windows 7 to over 40,000 end points. • Successful track record of implementing full lifecycle solution offerings. • Proven expertise in providing innovative and resourceful, ‘outside of the box’ solutions. • Excellent Project Management Skills. Customer commends Mike Terrill at MMS 2011, for his in-depth technical knowledge and strong consulting skills. According to them “…Mike showed us tricks that completely blew us away…..engage Mike and his team to ensure that your projects are successful…”
- 22. Consultant Profile : Ian Godfrey • 15 years of consulting experience in Systems Management, 30 years in IT • Has worked with many types and sizes of customer architecting and implementing all versions of SMS and ConfigMgr as well as other vendors and 1E Solutions • Extensive range of skills including design, operations, project management, documentation, training, programming, scripting, SQL, reporting, analytical and troubleshooting. • Contributes to development of products, services, methodology and best practice Ian Godfrey is well known and appreciated for his thorough and dedicated approach on all projects. Focused on quality and success.
- 23. Consultant Profile : Troy Martin • Widely recognized in the industry for his Systems Management Expertise. • Specialises in architecting & implementing, complex, enterprise-scale Systems Management solutions. • Takes a holistic view of a project and brings a variety of technical skills to a project. • Is working on a unique one of a kind project using SCCM to patch over 38,000 servers. • Over 16 years of IT experience. Deep knowledge of Operating System and Software deployment solutions, including zero-touch OSD.
- 24. Benefits of Engaging 1E • Direct access to 1E experts. • Reduced implementation times. • Improved overall operational configuration. • Increased & quicker return on their 1E investment.