PS business is complicated. Arriving at the right balance of delivering customer success along with commercial success is not easy. This presentation of mine attempts to highlight tried and tested strategies that have worked for me again and again.

1. New rules of Positioning PS
Ambareesh Kulkarni

2. Why Professional Services?
• Customer’s who purchase services, usually come back and
buy more software.
• Without services, we risk our software becoming shelf ware.
• Enterprise software always requires services for successful deployment.
“ When negotiating with vendors, we expect to pay for Software,
Maintenance, Services & Training” - Procurement @ Merck.

3. Why Professional Services?
• Customer’s have complex problems. And these require deep Industry
knowledge & consulting expertise to solve.
• What kind of problems do customer’s ask us to solve?
– Reduce touch points and increase automation.
– Reduce impact of software delivery to desktops.
– Help us reduce Software & Hardware spend.
– What should our next-generation desktop strategy be?
• Services is our Insurance Policy!

4. Why Professional Services?
We help shorten the sales cycle

5. Sales Cycle
Include an Acceptance Criteria in the SOW
Qualification
Qualification Give the customer
an exit clause
Lengthy &
expensive process
Move to procurement
Typically need to discount heavily
to get the deal closed faster
Acceptance Procurement
Sales Cycle
Proof of Concept /
reference calls etc.
Might move forward
with a limited purchase
TIME
Address customer’s perceived risks

6. What’s in it for the customer?
Start
Rapid Time To Value
With
Acceptance criteria
With traditional approach of a POC.
Fully
Deployed
Fully Deployed
TIME
Start

7. Coca-Cola Refreshments
Coca-Cola Bottling Company
2011 2012
Coco-Cola Enterprise
30,000 seats > 90,000 seats with multiple products
1E’s potential
expansion
90,000
seats; multiple
products
2011 2012+
30,000
seats
Shopping + Wakeup Nomad AppClarity + NWM
What a combined Sales & Services strategy can do for us

8. Rule #1: The bad economy, is so last year
• Prospects have money to buy, they are open to interesting and relevant
conversations and they are making decisions to move their business
forward.
• Many believe that they can get by without consulting.
• Clients can now draw on deeper internal bench strength to meet their
consulting needs.

9. Rule #1: The bad economy, is so last year
… You are absolutely right!
As long as you believe that the economy is bad, our
rates are too high and you keep telling yourself that
buyers are not buying ……….. guess what?

10. Take Cher’s advice

11. Rule #2: Play to Win-Win
• Don’t give away anything for free, especially services.
• Don’t spend too much time selling to organizations that are not
good targets.
• Don’t sell to people too low in the totem pole to make decisions.
• Many times we discount heavily thinking that we are positioning ourselves
to win “someday”. Guess what?
- As John Fogerty says…..“Someday Never Comes”

12. Rule #3: Re-examine your value proposition
• Prospects must want our services. Our service offerings must Resonate
with them
• Prospects have to see why we stand out from other options. We have to
differentiate ourselves.
• Prospects have to believe that we can deliver on our promises. We have to
substantiate.

13. Create new conversations: examples
• What are the top 3 things you would change about your current desktop
systems management solution?
• What are your top 3 challenges with managing your datacenters
at the moment?
• How efficient and agile is your IT compared with your competitors?

14. Rule #4: Introduce Services early
• Our prospects are busy, they want our advice immediately.
• Prospects react much more favorably to suppliers who recommend, rather
than just salute and execute.
• You have to be able to say, “This is where I think you should go (engage
our experts). This is what I think you should do (speak to our consultants).”
Don’t be afraid to say it.

15. The right time to introduce Services
1.0
Identify
2.0
Qualify
3.0
Propose
4.0
Negotiate
5.0
Deliver
6.0
Support
Lead
Sales Process Delivery process
BacklogPipeline
Opportunity Project
Sales
Services
Delivery team

16. Who are we selling to?
• Increase in number of consultants has led to so many former consultants
now being buyers (they are more sophisticated buyers).
• The odds are 1 in 3 that we will be selling our services to a former
consultant.
• Put the technical buyer at ease. We are not here to take his or her job!
• Find ways to leverage the buyer’s skills and fill the gaps with ours.

17. Create new conversations: more examples
• Our consultants can manage and deliver the 1E project from start to finish
so your resources can continue to focus on other more critical projects.
Would you like to learn how?
• Our consultants, over the years have a proven methodology, developed
best practices, repeatable solutions and workflows to accelerate project
implementation. Would you be interested in speaking to one of them?
• With the value that our consultants provide, cost of engaging our
consultants is usually less than implementing the project internally. Would
you like to know how?

18. Rule #5: Know thy tools and use them wisely
• Develop a winning and compelling SOW and describe the services in a way
that excites the prospects.
• Reference prior consulting success stories.
– “I don’t want to be ‘sold to.’ Have a good understanding of my situation, then
sit down with me and lay out a detailed solution. Show me how it’s worked
before.”
• Show them the path to success using a project plan or Gantt chart.
– Prove that we have been there, done that.

19. Rule #5: Know thy tools and use them wisely
• Become familiar with all of the different types of services offerings.
• Get to know the consultants and their background. Each and every one of
them is hand picked and have expertize in one or more areas.
• Don’t discuss rates till we have had a chance to demonstrate value.
– Our rates will be high, only if we haven’t created enough value when sitting
across the table.

20. The Team
• Over 200 years of collective Systems
Management Expertise.
• Industry & Thought leaders.
• In the last 5 years we have worked on close to
500 different projects*.
• We see the bigger picture and take a holistic
approach to delivering IT Efficiencies.

21. Consultant Profile : Mike Terrill
• Specialises in architecting, implementing SMS and
ConfigMgr solutions.
• Worked on the world’s first ConfigMgr deployment in ‘native mode’.
• Operating System migration & deployment Expert.
• Working on a project to deploy Windows 7 to over 40,000 end points.
• Successful track record of implementing full lifecycle
solution offerings.
• Proven expertise in providing innovative and resourceful, ‘outside of
the box’ solutions.
• Excellent Project Management Skills.
Customer commends
Mike Terrill at MMS
2011, for his in-depth
technical knowledge
and strong
consulting skills.
According to them
“…Mike showed us
tricks that completely
blew us
away…..engage
Mike and his team to
ensure that your
projects are
successful…”

22. Consultant Profile : Ian Godfrey
• 15 years of consulting experience in Systems Management, 30 years
in IT
• Has worked with many types and sizes of customer architecting and
implementing all versions of SMS and ConfigMgr as well as other
vendors and 1E Solutions
• Extensive range of skills including design, operations, project
management, documentation, training, programming, scripting, SQL,
reporting, analytical and troubleshooting.
• Contributes to development of products, services, methodology and
best practice
Ian Godfrey is well
known and
appreciated for his
thorough and
dedicated approach
on all projects.
Focused on quality
and success.

23. Consultant Profile : Troy Martin
• Widely recognized in the industry for his Systems Management
Expertise.
• Specialises in architecting & implementing, complex, enterprise-scale
Systems Management solutions.
• Takes a holistic view of a project and brings a variety of technical skills
to a project.
• Is working on a unique one of a kind project using SCCM to patch
over 38,000 servers.
• Over 16 years of IT experience.
Deep knowledge of
Operating System
and Software
deployment
solutions, including
zero-touch OSD.

24. Benefits of Engaging 1E
• Direct access to 1E experts.
• Reduced implementation times.
• Improved overall operational configuration.
• Increased & quicker return on their 1E investment.