Something a colleague once said always stuck with me “to improve our client service, we need to fix the front! Let’s get sales selling the right things in the right way”. I later realised after traversing my career to the front end just how much pre-sales needed to be better enabled in order to succeed in an ever-changing, more demanding and competitive IT services sector.
For the purpose of this article, I am referencing “client engagement” rather than “customer service or experience”. "Engagement" is more applicable with sales, and "client" is more appropriate than "customer" which is more akin to one-time transactional experiences. The client vs customer is a while subject in its own right, here is a great article for those that are interested https://www.crazycall.com/blog/client-vs-customer. My focus is on effectiveness of pre-sales within the IT services sector, they are key in providing highly specialised services and advice in building trusted client relationships.
Most of us in IT services would recognise that providing consistently good client engagement requires a working environment that “enables” people, not one that holds them back or even worse makes them shy away. When I visualise a working environment, I see the following inter relational areas
Alignment of company & team strategies, mission, vision, budgets and targets
New and existing Client’s, including their people, needs and solutions
People, roles, teams and organisation, locations, facilities, rewards
Process, policy, and methods
Systems, tools and templates
Services, product, catalogues data and content
Partners, suppliers, vendors, competitors
Leadership, trust, support, learning and collaboration
Quality of service, feedback and continual improvement
I recognise there are many facets to creating a truly optimal working environment for all, including many basics such as having the right amount of appropriately skilled resources in the right teams. While the scope is large, we should be striving to get the best from our teams and recognise just because one or two excel doesn’t mean everything’s ok, the few may well be just picking up the best, most high-profile work. In this article I focus on things that may not be so obvious but that can make a big difference for teams as a whole.
Let’s start by what to look for, the things that impact performance of pre-sales teams for IT service providers
Out of date, not maintained, unfit for purpose products and services
Constantly relying on “the few in the know” to get product guidance
Plagued with unplanned interruptions for the few who are in the know
Lots of delay and time spent discovering things that should be known about existing client solutions
Lack of guidance & standards for existing offerings
Lack of quality templates, methods and guidelines
Problematic handovers into solution delivery
A high volume of low-value small yet standard requests taking lots of time
Product launches with “see me for pricing” or chucked over the fence
Lots of time dealing with complex spreadsheets
Spreadsheets too large for email and insecure, crashing or can’t open remotely over VPN, funnily enough key to business continuity with today's challenges
Issues collaborating on quotes, only one person at a time able to make change
Pre-sales standing in to support pricing with manual client rate card price application
Problematic or complete lack of version control
Lack of or manually intensive workflow approval governance
High volumes of errors, with unplanned rescue or re-work
Lack of time to keep current and obtain industry certifications
Let’s now look at the typical impact of these things
Frustrated employees leading to hopelessness, avoidance and staff retention issues
Poor time, cost and quality of quoting
Poor Client NPS and eNPS feedback
Struggling to be clients trusted adviser coupled with a sense of falling behind
Lack of value adding client engage leading to drop in orders / lack of growth
Increase in competitive renewals and costs associated
Unexpected or high risk of unplanned client attrition
Pre-sales skills, education and certifications falling behind
Not able to bid on certain deals due to lack of resource availability or suitable offerings
Revenue and Cost leakage due to errors and omissions, clients sourcing elsewhere
Multitude of issues relating to retention of client knowledge
Increased inefficiency and ineffectiveness in quoting
Lack of or no time spent on continual improvement
Slow, costly and problematic solution delivery, uncovering issues, re-engaging clients on what should already be known
Inability to automate due to lack of standards
Lots of effort to regain Client trust, sometimes over a long period of time
As most of us know improving performance requires continual questioning, observation and stepping up to drive forward change to set yourselves up for success. Far from easy in today’s complex fast-paced constrained business environments. Would love to say there is a golden bullet for this, sadly not, here are some pointers as to things you should consider in order to improve
Define and publish centrally business process covering
Product Management process standard and client-driven products and services
Pre-Sales process for engaging clients and specifying client solutions
Establish and evolve standard templates, guidelines and methods for delivering on the above processes
Named person empowered and made accountable for each process and its supporting templates, guidelines and methods
Put in place continual improvement and product backlog frameworks, encourage and embrace feedback, see it as a gift!
Encourage a culture of openness to discuss the difficult, get specific, involve people, don’t generalise and always ensure follow up
Alleviate pre-sales from being stand-in’s for product managers
Make product managers/owners more accountable for enabling sales
Identify, agree and prioritise addressing issues with product and service offerings
Proactively support pre-sales with knowledge, set learning and certification targets
Replace complex excel sheets with professional Configure Price Quote (CPQ) tooling, select your vendor careful based on your drivers, needs and objectives
Capture key client knowledge, install base and detail on order history
Package your products and services to guide sales, for rapid, consistent effective quoting, unburden people to excel and provide quality client engagements
Just working harder doing the same things in the same way for most will end up detrimental long term. If you’re a service provider with the need and appetite for improving client engagement and the effectiveness of your product through pre-sales and quoting capability get in touch, we can help.