The "What Is" of Pre Sales

I came across this piece on http://www.offshoringmanagement.com/ and this is not my own composition but an attempt to understand pre sales as a career option. Hope you gain an insight into it as well..

What is Pre Sales?

Pre Sales includes the entire gamut of activities involved in preparing to engage with prospects, clients and others and includes specific responses to client requests. Clients or companies that need software services and project implementations generally call for proposals or expect responses from their vendors and service providers. Although it is hard to generalize on the nature of or the contents of such proposals, most documents follow a structured framework: detailing the project, asking vendors for suggestions or solutions or proposals along with cost estimates regarding the work to be done.

Typical Pre-sales support activities include:

Responding to client requests: Responses to clients could include informal responses, pointers to publications, colleterals or other references or take more specific forms like responses to proposals including: Request for Proposal (RFPs), Request for Information (RFI) and specific Statement of Work (SoW) or Work Orders

Supporting client visits: In some cases, clients or prospective clients may make a trip to offshore vendor's offices for a personal visit prior to engaging with them. This could include offshore client visits targeted at offshoring

Visiting clients and/or making presentations: Engaging clients for larger, complex deals involves a number of activities, including making presentations, meeting with clients to discuss specific aspects of their (client's) initiatives, to get a better understanding of the context in order to make specific recommendations in proposals. This may also include preparing proof-of-concept demonstrations and solution mockups.

Competitor Analysis and market scanning: This is a crucial aspect of pre-sales since many clients evaluate responses from multiple vendors, and responses should address such competitive scan. The analysis could include using online tools, subscribing and analyzing research reports, analyst studies, market research data etc.

Sales Support: Such activities may include supporting sales and account teams in responding to general client queries about solutions and capabilities. This could include partnering with onsite/client facing Sales or Business Development Managers to identify and convert prospects into customers.

Interfacing with other internal groups (within the organization): while responding to client requests. This is especially true of larger software service firms where Pre-sales people from one group/division may have to rope in Subject Matter Experts from other groups while responding to a client request or proposal

Marketing support: Large service firms work hard at differentiating themselves from others by formulating marketing messages and evolving Go-to-market solutions or customized offerings. This may also take a form of alliances with other software product development firms or niche vendors. Pre-sales activities may include leveraging such alliances to showcase extended capabilities to clients.

Sales

The Sales Cycle is the time / process between when the 1st contact with the customer is made to the time the deal is closed.

A Product Sale or a Service Sale usually would begin with maybe an enquiry from the prospective customer on the pricing of the product or the timelines for the delivery of a certain service to the point when the Prospect either accepts the terms and signs a deal or declines the offer.

A typical Sales Cycle can take anywhere from a few days to over a year! Sales Cycle times and processes vary enormously depending on the company, type of business (product/service), the effectiveness of the sales process, the market and the particular situation applying to the customer at the time of the enquiry.

The Sales Cycle time is also referred to as the Sale Gestation Period (ie from conception to birth - enquiry to sale). The sales cycle in a sweet shop is less than a minute; in the international aviation sector or civil construction market the Sales Cycle can be many months or even a few years.

A typical Sales Cycle for a moderately complex product might be:

1. Approach

2. Qualification

3. Agreement On Need

4. Sell The Company

5. Fill The Need

6. Act Of Commitment

7. Present proposal and CLOSE sale.

Sales Funnel - describes the pattern, plan or actual achievement of conversion of prospects into sales, pre-enquiry and then through the sales cycle. So-called because it includes the conversion ratio at each stage of the sales cycle, which has a funelling effect. Prospects are said to be fed into the top of the funnel, and converted sales drop out at the bottom. The extent of conversion success (ie the tightness of each ratio) reflects the quality of prospects fed into the top, and the sales skill at each conversion stage. The Sales Funnel is a very powerful sales planning and sales management tool.

More on this later...

I am On My Own !

A month ! Yes ! That is how long a time we'v spent in Luton. Long enough for me to explore places as varied as the Grocery/Vegetable Shops, The Shopping Mall, The Doctor, Nearby Parks, The Local Health Club, The Multiplex, The Train Station, Abhi's office, The Office of our Property Consultant, The Bank and my way back home any of the streets withing Luton.

A train journey to Bedford also helped me understand the Maps and figure my way home if I were left alone from some place new. Hopefully, our weekend trip to London would help me get a little more gutsy to travel alone to any interviews that I might have to attend in London.

What still remains to be explored is the Library, The Local Indian Communities and the Temples around if any. Another problem I encounter is the absence of IT Consulting Firms in Luton. I might have to travel South East to get in touch with agencies who might want to put me forward for some suitable requirements.

The clock seems to be ticking faster and I am trying hard to keep pace with time...