SAMVAAD

Strategy – Art of Selling – II

As a part of our guest Lecture series “Samvaad” we once again had the opportunity to listen to Mr. Sanjay Ray who is Director, Solutions Engineering and Pre-sales at SAP India.

This time he spoke about “Strategy – Art of Selling”, role of Business Development and Sales team in an IT company. He started with the example of Cisco whose latest product offering Human network, suggest the way in which a company can relate to the needs of its customer. Sanjay’s Lecture started with “The customer Engagement Lifecycle”,which can be represented as below:

VIP MAP–>Qualification MAP–>Value Proposition–>Differentiator Matrix–>Presented Contracts

VIP MAP is a jargon used to express three key parameters:

Vision: This means understanding the vision of your customer. What they want to achieve.

Indicator: To know how are the customers progressing?  How are they doing in strategy?

Pain: Indicates reduction in pains of your customer. The IT product map you give should be aligned to the customer’s vision map.

What is Lead generation : The Business Development Team and Sales team sit together at the start of the year and decide on number of leads in year.

• Don’t focus at “Pains” of customer but focus at their “Vision”.
• The Lead should be validated through value assumption
• Until you have clarity that your product is feasible and aligned to customer’s vision, don’t take it up.
• Even if you have a proposition but the chances of conversion are lower in customer then it is better to DROP.

You drop a customer if there is

Distraction

Risks are bigger

Opportunity &

Potential then

DROP the PROSPECT

The Qualification MAP asks to check on following:

Customers

• Customer Profile: Example “Selling of ERP to Real Estate or Jewellery Industry”.  Few years back Real Estate felt no need to implement any T solution to maintain their projects and work. However the long term vision and increase in sector was perceived well and today most of the real estate business going global know how important it is to implement ERP system.
• Financial Situation of customer: In most cases the customer won’t buy your Product if his financial situation is grave. However in few cases if customer’s need is critical and your product feasibility aligns with customer’s vision and his survival then it is sure the customer would accept the offer. Example: Eureka Forbes struck a deal with IBM
• Project Framework: Make sure the customer has a team or Project that can evaluate your product
• Drivers and Requirements
• Date of Rating

Project

• Customer Relationship: One of the most important criteria. It is actually the relationship that makes the deal work. In most of the cases the Technologies are more or less similar eg. Outsourcing capabilities of WIPRO and Infosys are similar but who would get the deal is decided by customer relationship.
• Political Situation: This is another very important criterion.For eg, “You have good customer relationship with CIO . But your competitor gets the deal.Why? He knew the CFO. And unfortunately CFO is the decision making.” Bottom line : Understand the Politics of Customer’s Organization.
• Expectation Matching
• Decision Making

Risk

• Prospect Resources: If customer doesn’t has the right kind of people who can use your product and services then better drop the customer.
• Competitive Differentiation
• Relative Value Add
• Our resources

Solution Selling Phase

• This is the showcasing of Products and services.
• Make sure you don’t showcase all features here.
• Identify specific areas and specific indicators here.
• Customer seeks in you the capability they want.

In fact if customer sees the number of computers, the number of people, and the number of systems you have deployed then he may actually assume his costs for implementing your product may be higher and the customer may divert.

Value Proposition:

Few Questions to ask and remember in Value Proposition are:

• Understand the value for customer
• Convey to the architects: The architects are actually the technical people. You are required to give them briefing note
• Why us and not others (competitors)
• Which factors are decisive for success of project
• What is our solution
• What is the prospect aiming to achieve
• Why does Prospect need to act

Identify–>Evaluation Phase–>Solution Selling–>Decision Making–>Implement

The SAMVAAD for 13^th June 09 ends here. Waiting to hear soon from Mr. Sanjay Ray soon on further phases of “The art of selling”.