One of the biggest disconnects I see between sales and
pre-sales teams lies in the area of Discovery. In many sales organization there
is a chasm between the sales implementation of Discovery and what pre-sales
think they actually need. One of my clients said “my rep thinks that Discovery is telling me who is on the phone before a
webex demo starts”. Thankfully it’s not always that bad.
Here is the basic problem, and I am generalizing a little
here:- Sales views Discovery as something that gets in the way of the deal and
slows it down. “Why do you need to ask all those questions – all they want is a
demo.” Sales is also concerned that they may discover something that will
prevent the deal from happening or may totally unqualify the deal out of the
pipeline. (I have never figured out why they regard that as a bad thing – doesn’t
it make sense to stop wasting time on something you are never going to win?)
Pre-sales engineers believe that there is no such thing as
too much Discovery. The more you learn about a customer the better you can
target the demo/presentation/proof-of-concept. That’s true – up to a certain
point. Repeating the questions that someone else may have asked, or simply
asking them a different way, can really annoy the customer and make it look
like there is no co-ordination. SEs also start to stray into deal qualification (do they have a budget?) which is the #1 way to annoy a rep as they hear that from their manager all the time.
The trouble is – there is no perfect line to be drawn
between sales and presales responsibilities in this area. Given the usual sales:presales
ratio it is virtually impossible for the SE to be included in every single
first call or discovery call that sales conducts. There are not enough hours in
the day. Plus the relationship between every account rep and every SE is
different. Some reps are more technical than others and some SE’s are more
business/sales oriented that others – you need to adjust.
My usual advice is this:
1.
Discovery is a mandatory and necessary phase of
the sales cycle. It is not to be rushed through. It’s also a constant process
as you should always be learning more about the customer in every interaction.
2.
Sales and Presales need to agree on what needs
to be ‘Discovered’ before a demo / presentation / pitch takes place.
3.
It doesn’t matter who does it, or if it is a
combination of rep/SE – as long as it is done well.
4.
If you don’t understand why the customer might
want to buy from you, and what the business drivers are behind the technology decision
– then you shouldn’t move into the next phase of the sales cycle. Known collectively
as The Dash To Demo, The Push to Present or the Sprint to Solution.
5.
Put a simple process in place to capture the
info agreed upon in (2)
The outcome will be much better sales calls (and probably
fewer of them) , less unqualified deals, a better pipeline and fewer
back-to-back-to-back-to-back demos by SEs. Everyone wins.
