How the sheep are led to Presales

A fresh young MBA stepped into an IT Company for his first day at work, and was immediately assigned by HR to the presales team. 

How did this happen? 

In the morning, when he first went to meet HR they told him triumphantly 

'just like we told you in your campus interview, you will go straight to the cutting edge of our business, where delivery-meets-sales-meets-project-management and within two years, before you even know it, you would have become as rounded as an untampered cricket ball with all the skills that you need to manage our business successfully.'

Do you mean I can become the CEO in two years? 

Not really...you can manage 'something' in two years, end to end you know...

you mean, like a small business? 

Not exactly...but something along those lines...

Wait a minute...what really happens to me after two years? Do I get into general management since I would have learnt sales and delivery and project management?
 

Eh...not exactly, after two years you would enter one of the serious careers in IT, i.e. delivery, sales or project management. 

Ah, so for two years, I am only checking things out to see what would work for me...what a waste of time...why dont I just join delivery for example, I would get a two year head start in delivery that way...

No, kid, you are mistaken, you need to first check out the world around you and see what fits you and what you like so that your career does not fizzle out like a wet firecracker!
 

Alright, so you are telling me I should spend two years to decide what I want to do? Is that what presales is all about? A place to cool my heels waiting for the real thing?

Not really, you will check out all the three careers we can offer you so that you can decide which one is the least...sorry most suitable for you...

Here the MBA feels like he is playing Inky, Pinky, Ponky in hell and so he dares to ask one more question - 

what if I like delivery after two years, will I able to get into delivery and work on software development projects...

Actually why would you want to do that...delivery and and all is for engineers, I thought MBAs would want to do better things...aren't you...ambitious? 

Oh, okay, then suppose I want to get into project management, that would be acceptable wont it be? 

Sure, you can get into project management but to manage projects, you would need to first of all learn our business, isnt it? How can you manage something you dont know?
 

Okay, so I would get into sales then? I would get to go onsite and sell to customers in fancy locations like Constantinople and Vladivastok and yes even in my favourite location from Godfather... 'Palermo in Sicily'!!! 

Of course not (you silly!)...how can you sell without knowing what you are selling? 

But I know how to sell, like how I sold myself into this job. I can sell anything, I even sold my old stamp album for 33 rupees to my neighbour in meerut when I was all of 10 years! 

Hey dude (now HR has become his pal almost), what are you saying? Selling IT is not like selling hot dogs. You need to know what the customer wants to buy, you need to know what our delivery guys can make and most importantly, you need to know how to package what what we make to make it look like what the customer wants to buy...

here the MBA sighs in resignation and mutters 

'Oh my god...they never taught me this in Business School' 

and the HR guy closes the conversation with 

'Welcome to the IT industry kid, now you can clearly see why we have put you in presales'...

Neutral Navigators

Sharon Drew Morgan has a post in her blog with this fascinating passage:

``...it’s quite possible to have an understanding of the decision making process – the route that buyers must make through their unique decision criteria – and recalibrate our jobs to be not only solution providers, but neutral navigators – Buying Facilitators if you will – much like a buddy to a sight-impaired friend who knows where they want to go but doesn’t know the exact route to get there.``

I have often tried to be this neutral navigator to clients. There was a European client who rightly decided to save a pile of TPA (Third Party Advisors - see here for what a TPA does and one TPA´s recent perspective on their changing role ) consulting money by attempting to do an outsourcing deal with internal staff. They formed a project team and gave them sufficient operational freedom to do what it took to get the project done. The only problem was, the project team did not know how to do it. So, they took their time, met with vendors who gave them bits and pieces of information and over time, put together a solution they could bid out.

As bid manager for one of the vendors in the fray, I recognized a great opportunity to be the ´neutral navigator´ or ´buddy´ to the project team. While I still had to manage my bid and my deliverables, I realized I could play a strategic role for our company by advising the client as a truly neutral party. I would help them with templates and checklists and processes and frank advice (even things which would place our company on a weaker wicket competitively) on a variety of topics without selling them anything, activities which would appear to be strictly not in my role as bid as a bid manager. Over time, the client´s project team began to trust me and would take my opinion seriously before deciding something in the project.

Following that phase, the client bid the solution out to 4 vendors including us. What I noticed, when for example I was defending our proposal, was the amount of credibility I seemed to carry. I could coast through some of the uncomfortable moments (gaps in our ability to deliver, our readiness to deliver and son on) because of the trust the client seemed to place in me. We won almost half of the business eventually bid out.

When I look back, it was not the proposal or the bid documents or the pricing that made the crucial difference in that bid, it was that short period playing neutral advisor to the client...