Now you will prepare to revalidate the knowledge of your customer’s busi- ness processes you have accumulated thus far. Try to schedule time with the major buying influencers in reverse order of influence. Start with the gatekeepers or recommenders and conclude with the executives. Your goals in this step are the same as they have been for the entire needs analysis
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process: Build your reputation; enhance your credibility; and validate your value proposition. Often this may seem like a superfluous step given that you will shortly be putting together a more formal response, but it is impor- tant. A quick phone conversation using the following script should be able to get you that meeting:
“Jane, I was wondering if we could get 20 minutes to review the data we’ve collected. Your team has had some interesting things to say that I think you should know about.”
During this summary, you have an opportunity to make sure the mes- sages you have been getting from the different parties are consistent. More- over, if the messages are not consistent, then you will have an opportunity to find out why not and attempt to get the “real story.” This will conclude your work on developing the problem and vision that you will begin delivering.
This summary is also a great opportunity to enhance your professional or technical credibility. You should work to make sure you have something to say to the team that is new information. If you can improve their analysis of the situation, then you’ve done them a great service.
Finally, this is your last chance to “change the game” when heading to a later and more formal RFP process. If you believe other factors should be included in the proposal, get them on the table and under consideration.
This step is particularly critical if you are facing a strong competitor. Here you can work to flank your strength or add additional components to the solution that dilute your competitor’s core abilities.
This step can also be thought of as a very early trial close. Although you are still a long way from seeing a check or purchase order, it is worth going through the exercise. If an executive commits to you by saying you have the right problem in mind, you can expect to be told if that problem changes, as might happen if a competitor successfully flanks your strategy.
Wrap-Up
If you’ve been successful, then at this point you should have a great deal of detail describing your customer’s business. You should also have suf- ficient information about their needs to generate a pitch that will really wow them. You’ve gathered all available data, assimilated it, replayed your perfect pitch to the customer, and are ready to take the next step to your formal response.
From the customer’s standpoint, they’ve experienced an effective and educational inquiry process by a trusted vendor. They’ve met highly quali- fied personnel who have shown an understanding of the business chal- lenges they face. They’ve seen their challenges presented in an executive summary presentation and have validated that you are on the right track to
56 Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer’s Handbook Needs Analysis and Discovery 57
developing a final proposal. Their expectations should be high that you will deliver a proposal that meets their needs.
Customizing the Discovery Process
Now that you are comfortable with the general process, take the time to customize it to meet the needs of your business. Are there other buying in- fluencers or user communities you should be tapping to make sure you have all the information? Do you frequently deal with subsidiaries that require approval from headquarters?
Start by diagramming the life cycle of your product or solution for the customer. Try to identify all the people or functions that are stakeholders in the solution you deliver. In this case, a stakeholder is anyone who benefits from, suffers for, or is responsible for an aspect of the solution. Focus on developing a system that gathers all of the technical and operational infor- mation necessary to develop a winning pitch. Spend a few minutes drawing out your discovery process before continuing.
Let’s run through an example with a fictional SE, Jennifer. Jennifer sells products for a networking company that specializes in equipment to con- nect different corporate sites with each other and the Internet. As part of the sales process, Jennifer’s sales team has access to the network architec- ture group of their customer, a large tele communications provider. Jennifer prepares a needs analysis plan that includes interviews with the key mem- bers of the customer’s network architecture group. The telesales group is the major customer to the networking group, because the telesales group has the largest business application running on the international wide-area net- work (WAN). Each of these groups could give Jennifer some specific data on their tolerance for downtime, current and projected bandwidth needs, and per-minute estimated costs for when the network was unavailable. Jennifer would also need to review the tables included in this chapter to make sure she captures all relevant data. Her company should have detailed technical specifications that will help ensure that she gathers the necessary system information.
Adapt Your Questions to Your Audience
Much has been written about successful interviewing styles and how to ask the right questions. This section highlights some common issues and per- sonality types you will encounter when selling technology products. In most cases, your customer interviews will fall into three categories.
The first type of customer views the time spent with you as a waste of time. Frequently, this type of individual is an executive, a salesperson, or
56 Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer’s Handbook Needs Analysis and Discovery 57
someone who does not see the project as being his or her responsibility.
The second type of customer will inundate you with “useless” information;
this person may be a hard-core techie or may not understand the informa- tion well enough to sort out the relevant details. The third type of customer understands the purpose of the interview and is familiar with the business problem. These customers are the most likely to be able to give you feed- back that you can use directly.
With the first type, try to ask open-ended questions to draw them out:
“Why is the current system not sufficient?” “Are there any problems that aren’t laid out in the RFP?” “Do you feel the RFP accurately describes what’s really going on?” With customers like these, be ready to interject anecdotes describing past customer successes in order to build your credibility and their willingness to listen: “Your competitor had that exact problem. By in- stalling our hardware they lowered their cost of service by 10%. As you can imagine they were handing out promotions like candy after that…” It may be difficult to come up with a story that compelling, but there is certainly a reason your product is selling, so make sure your customer knows it.
If you are warned that a particular person falls into this category, or if you discover this in the first few minutes of the interview, change the style of the interview. Acknowledge that the individual is in a hurry and that you realize they are doing you a favor. Limit your questions to the bare mini- mum possible and don’t ask this person questions they would expect you to know the answers to.
With the second type of customer, try the opposite tactic. Ask a ques- tion that is very specific (requiring a factual answer rather than an opinion) and directly related to the problem you are trying to solve: “Gerard, those numbers sound different from what I’ve heard in the past. Can you tell me how those relate to the goals set for your division?” In some cases, the per- son you are interviewing will simply not be close enough to the heart of the problem you are trying to solve to give you information you can use. Or, if you are selling a new product, he or she may not understand enough about the class of product to envision how it would improve his or her work situa- tion. If the individual refers you to other material, make a note of appropri- ate reference data and proceed. Try to determine his or her his opinions of the situation or to make a comparison with historical data.
When working with the third type of customer, you should focus on getting information that the other sales team doesn’t have. Usually these customers are so well prepared because they have been an integral part of the evaluation process. As a result, their inclinations and data are frequent- ly part of the formal communications that have been distributed to all of the vendors. Ask such customers specific questions about what metrics they are interested in and how your solution can support delivery of those business
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results. You can also use these informed customers to give you feedback on the ideas you will later be presenting to the customer executives.
Hint: Inconsistencies Signal Political Problems
Generally, you will find that for every member of a project team, there is a different view- point to be reconciled. So look for big inconsistencies that have to do with concrete facts or data, things like available budget and funding sources, delivery timelines, or project pay- back expectations. These can point to poor alignment within a company. If this is the case, then you should expect that the sales cycle would be longer than normal. Until a project champion or executive has established specific goals, it will be very difficult for your cus- tomer to make forward progress. In these situations, your best-case scenario is selling to a high-level executive and then having to explain what happened to all of the team members after the check clears.
Summary
The discovery process represents a huge opportunity to add value as a sales consultant by bridging the product/market gap. Discovery is important to your company because it is where you customize your generic product to meet a customer’s needs. It is important to customers because the output is a solution designed to meet their unique needs. And discovery is critical to your sales team because it is when you develop your perfect pitch or unique value proposition.
Mastering this stage in the sales cycle requires a deep understanding of your products, your competitor’s offerings, and the business of your cus- tomer. If you can develop these areas of expertise and integrate them with the process we’ve described, you can nail the discovery phase. If you have accurately developed your perfect pitch, you will also be a step ahead of the competition for the next steps in the sales process.
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Skill Building
New SE Begin by working with a more experienced SE as he or she completes needs analysis sessions. Discovery is a complex enough topic that doing the job well is a suitable goal for a new SE. If your sales force doesn’t have a documented process, try to document what you observe others doing. This will help you learn the process and will represent a valuable contribution to the rest of the team.
Experienced SE As you master the basics of discovery, place more emphasis on the business justification for your solution. Begin to think of yourself as a systems integrator. Look at your solution as an integrator would; are there areas where you could better serve the customer by including external products that compete with yours? Performing this analysis will help you articulate the benefits of your solution and will enhance your credibility.
Manager Customize the task list in the worksheet to meet the needs of your sales force. Set up training to role-play progressing through the discovery process. Follow up by helping your direct-report personnel use your worksheet to plan out their strategies in specific accounts. Your goal is to deliver consistently high-quality results, which can be difficult to obtain unless you institute a formal process such as that described in this chapter.
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CHAPTER
6
Chapter Goals Business Value Discovery
One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always making surprising discoveries!
A. A. Milne
Chapter 5 provided you with a comprehen- sive view of the overall discovery process.
It’s fair to say that every client of ours possesses a solid technical discovery process, and their SEs are trained to gather the “speeds and feeds” and the technical infrastructure issues. The skill that many SE organizations seem to lack is staying focused on the business issues and not revert- ing back to technology at the first chance they get. We’re going to examine the entire flow of business value discovery and provide you with a simple, and sales process-independent, method to drill into the business issues.
Hint: Discovery Is a Continual Process
Do not view discovery as a one-time meeting or just an early step in the sales cycle. Discovery should be a continuous process throughout the sales cycle, and you should view every meeting as an opportunity to learn something more about your customer.
Learn how to avoid the three crimes of discovery.
Understand how to maintain focus on the business issues and avoid the technical distractions.
Be able to gather the prob- lems, results, impact and evidence for key business issues.
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The Three Behavioral Crimes of Discovery
The primary mindset of the SE during any discovery session is not to sell the customer; it is to help the customer. The best way to help customers is to find out what their problems are, to determine if you really can help them, and then to work with them to show how you are uniquely qualified to solve the problem. However, many discovery meetings get off-track within the first 15 minutes because the sales team exhibits one of the three behavioral crimes of discovery. Those crimes are, using the simple mnemonic of TAG:
tell, accept, and guess.
Tell
SEs see and analyze the same kind of customer problems every day. It’s very easy to fall into the assumption that the customer sees and understands them too. It can be very tempting, and perhaps viewed as a show of cred- ibility and experience, to listen to the customer for just a few minutes and then say, “It seems like you have a problem with…we see that all the time;
let me tell you how we can help you.” There are two things wrong with this approach: First, you have not let the customer fully express the current state of affairs (doesn’t it annoy you when you feel that someone isn’t actively listening to you?), and second, it’s not a problem until the customer says that it is a problem!
CASE STUDY: The Listen to Talk Ratio
I listened to a telephone discovery meeting that had been scheduled between a salesperson, her SE, and four customers from the business user side. The call was scheduled for an hour, and I’d been engaged to suggest to some improve- ments to the overall sales process and the SE-sales interaction. Breaking down the 60 minutes of the call, the sales team spoke for 48 minutes and the customer for 12 minutes. It’s extremely difficult to learn about the customer’s situation, problems, hopes, and dreams if all you do is talk. Reversing the ratio so that the sales team listened for 48 minutes and spoke for 12 would have been a far more effective use of everyone’s time.
E E E E
It is true that an experienced SE can be in a customer meeting for just a few minutes and then with 95% accuracy can diagnose a problem. However, we emphasize patience, as your goal is not to prove how smart and insight- ful you are, but to build a rapport with customers by letting them express a problem in their own manner—with just a little prompting from you.
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Accept
The second crime is that of accepting what the customer tells you without verifying the facts. When you hear something that you like, such as, “We need a way to handle endpoint protection,” and your company sells end- point protection solutions, it is easy to assume that the customer is right and to accept what he or she says at face value. The customer may be right, partially right, or even totally incorrect, so unless you dig into the reasoning behind these statements you could be solving the wrong problem.
CASE STUDY: We Need a Better Way
Our customer called us in for a meeting and told us, “We need a better way to host our external facing client delivery applications in Australia, and we need to put them into the cloud.” As it would be an obvious case of the “accept” dis- covery crime if we had just agreed to their diagnosis, we asked to conduct a very preliminary economic analysis. Our customer was pushing us to run a proof of concept and to set up test systems immediately; furthermore, the customer was very resistant to even a few days of delay. Twenty-four hours later we had de- termined that the company’s annual payback was about AUD$200,000, which, because of some strange economics and tax incentives, represented a payback period of 15 years! The project stopped immediately, and all the initiatives for the cloud solution were closely reexamined. We uncovered the real business drivers, rearchitected a totally different solution, and closed a combined hard- ware/software and cloud services transaction of over AUD$3 million with a payback of less than a year. If we had just jumped into the technical solution and evaluation and not questioned the business drivers, we would have wasted months of effort for ultimately zero revenue.
E E E E
Guess
The final crime is that of guessing. Even as experienced SEs we never learn everything we need to learn about the customer. There are gaps in our knowledge. Because we have been doing our job for a while and trust our judgment, we assume the answer, even though it is really an educated guess. One fundamental rule is “don’t guess.” If there is a piece of informa- tion that you need to know, or a question you should have asked, then find a way to ask it. Guesswork is for amateurs.
The Business Switchback
SEs will naturally migrate into their areas of comfort, and for most of us that is the technology we sell. When you match this inclination with the