A Brush with Strategic Sales

Mr.Sanjay Delivering lecture On Strategic Pre-Sales

As part of our Samvaad Series, we had an opportunity to listen to Mr. Sanjay Ray who is Director, Solutions and Pre-sales Engineering at SAP India.

His lecture provided us great insights into strategic pre-sales cycle and how there are different level of pre-sales consultants operating in the market. The most important point which came to forefront was that you should know your customer for sales and business development. It is not about selling product and services but about selling “value” to the customer. This is one aspect which is evidently visible when you take a pass on different type of sales guys present in the industry, namely technical (level-1), capable (level-2), strategic (level-3). As one tries to distinguish between these three types of sales consultant one would see that there intent to sell moves from product & features to the customer and that is where the difference lies.

Some key parameters on which you can classify these consultants are as follows:

Level	Outlook	Timing	Alignment
Level-III	Outcomes	Proactive	Executive
Level-II	Process	Response	Management
Level-I	Event	Reactive	Operations

 A strategic sale is like a game of chess and playing it the grand-master style is what makes you cut the deal. You need to make the customer play to your game-plan to crack a deal. Alignment with the customer is what can lead you to success. The opportunity to align with the customer either lies in the initial phases of the deal or at the end of the deal. In middle phases when technical evaluation is being done, it is not possible to establish relationship with the customer to the extent you would desire. Level-I sales guys operate during the operational phase of the deal which actually tends to make them not think beyond the operational silo where as a level-II or III sales guy would think make interface with the customer at the stages mentioned earlier during the deal roadmap.

 There is another matrix which distinctly explains the different facets of the various levels of sales guys which exist in the industry:

Level	Perception	Resources	Performance
Level-III	Business Meeting	High On Customer ROI	Reliable/Exceeds
Level-II	Reasonable sales call	Timely / judicious	Consistently Achieves
Level-I	Technical alternatives	Premature / Excess	Marginal / inconsistent

Don’t consider technical alternatives for the customer but treat it as a meeting where you can highlight the value proposition to the customer which can come in many ways & most importantly pricing is not a barrier, you would get the right price if customer perceived value is high. Even if the customer does not have the kind of money to buy the solution, you can make him go for it if you are able to identify the impact points for the customer and how it can help turnaround tables in customers favor if he were to buy the solution. It is necessary to understand the buying process and what are the sync points of it with the Customer Engagement Cycle (CEL). For being a successful strategic sales guy you don’t need to “sell” but help the customer “buy”.

The sync points through which helps develop the value proposition consist of:

Value Assumption ↔  Assessment and understanding customer needs

Value Proposition ↔ Identifying solutions to suit the value proposition of the customer

Value Proof ↔ Justification

Value Delivery ↔ Implementation

Customer management would be a continuous process all through the buying process. There was lot to offer from my Mr.Sanjay’s side but we were constrained by time and that was the most unfortunate part. I would leave his trail with this parting point; understand the concept of VIP while dealing with the customer view point.

V ↔ Vision ↔ where do I want to be ↔ customer vision

I ↔ Indicator ↔ How do I know that I have arrived?

P ↔ Pain ↔ what keeps me from getting there?