Ability and quality required for pre-sales)

[By the author]: In China's IT industry, such a group of technical staff often work hard on the front line, work hard, and do not have much time to communicate, but they are indeed the most capable of communication, they are not as conspicuous as those developers in the company, but they are indeed the most explicit figures in the company. This is the presales engineer, or technical consultant. what's even more lamps, our experts are racking their brains to analyze and argue why there is an ERP of 10 thousand RMB? Why is only 1 million of the project's 0.2 million winning targets? The reason for this is that as a presales personnel, it is the most clear. Just as they talked about malicious competition and lamented imperfect regulations, a real presales staff can easily analyze what caused these situations!
If you still have no idea about the pre-sales role, please refer to the post by Mr. Jiang Yue Article : The Future of presales engineers
Today, I am just an ordinary presales engineer. I don't need to discuss macro things. I just want to have a good idea of better development for the presales role, at the same time, we are truly thinking about our customers, setting up those layers of fog to make our projects more smooth, making efforts for the IT industry, and responding to the IT Application Service Network Statement: "There is no need to speak out without talking about anything. We only need to take practical actions and start from an early age. Everything is for the sake of our customers ",
I think for a long time, I still adopt a casual approach, simple, from a pre-sale must have the ability and quality, in this case, we will also explain some of the situations and analysis in the IT industry during the bidding process.
I hope readers of this article will: Well-respected presales engineers who work in the front line, pre-sales engineers who want to work in the front line, managers and CEOs of those companies, CTO, and our users, and those who are curious or interested in this position.

Preface

In the current project operation, with the proposal of customers' Personalized Requirements and the emergence of various technologies, what kind of ability and quality should a good presales engineer possess? What qualities are the most important, to answer these questions, we must grasp the following points: What is the purpose of pre-sales? The core purpose of pre-sales is to fully affirm and further develop the company's products or solutions, allows you to select your products and solutions among multiple optional projects. We don't want to avoid imagining that the bidding scene is the most exciting. You may be the boss of the company, you may be cto, and you may be the company's pre-sales technical consultant, in front of users, you are actually an ordinary pre-sales engineer. users and experts have prepared their respective details in order to ask you questions and give each statement to you, even a word may be a target for attacking you. A good explanation may be a bright spot in your bidding documents. A poor explanation may be a "Dark Spot" in your bidding documents ". Once it becomes your "Dark Spot", your company's presales team spent a few nights building a beautiful tender that became several pages of waste paper. If some people say that bidding is a form of passing, they don't have to worry about it. I will discuss it in future articles, they cannot escape the "prisoner's dilemma" game. After all, they will return to the "outcome of your problems after all, what kind of outcome will they decide?" field. In order to avoid these problems, it is very necessary for me to return to our question: what kind of ability and quality should a presales have?

The following is a very acceptable Proposition Logic, which we will discuss in detail:
(1) users cannot know your company and your company's product technologies better than you.
(2) users do not necessarily understand all user needs. You do not necessarily understand all user needs.
(3) users cannot solve their own problems

The 1st proposition is very simple. If he knows your company better than you, he will be able to propose a solution for your company, whether or not you are here, it's all about him.
It is not difficult for a user to know all his/her needs. Your development manager does not need to investigate any requirements. A developed project can be launched directly, in fact, this is often not the case. users do not necessarily understand it. If they do not know it, you will not necessarily understand it.
3rd propositions are also very simple. Users are usually unable to solve their own problems, or they do not need to solve their own problems, so you have the opportunity to take these projects, the premise is that you must have this strength.

Therefore, for the 1st proposition, a presales must have the ability to present (Presentation capability). With this ability, you can fully demonstrate your company's strength and solutions, and the degree of response to all of his questions.
Therefore, for the 2nd and 3 propositions, a pre-sales engineer must know what problems the user is trying to solve and how to solve them. In this way, you must be able to discover and solve problems, this capability is finally implemented at the technical level, and one pre-sales must have another capability: Technical Skills)
This is why: "pre-sales can be done, but can be written and practiced." Therefore, it is not easy to do pre-sales. In fact, the above two capabilities are of great interest to users. However, we need to do a good job in pre-sales, make the project well, and consider the quality of our personal qualities from the pre-sales perspective. Imagine, A very technically powerful presales. If some very low-level errors are often put in the bidding documents, such as incorrect project names and missing a single quotation, etc. I'm afraid it's hard to explain to users.

Based on my many years of bidding and pre-sales experience, the author puts forward the following three quality or capability requirements for pre-sales.

Presentation
(1) communication skills (2) Excellent speech ability, (3) WISE defense ability, (4) Superb writing ability,
Technical aspects
(1) Business experts, (2) Demand Analysis experts, (3) Product experts, and (4) technical experts;
Personal Quality
(1) Be careful; (2) be patient; (3) be confident; (4) be modest; (5) be diligent;

Shows the capabilities and quality of a presales project:

In order to explain so much content clearly, it is difficult to implement it, but we can use the verification method. One of the most effective methods is the key verification method. As the saying goes: "Let him be a white cat, a black cat, when a mouse is caught, it is a good cat. "A person can be correctly evaluated only when the key point is reached." A pre-sales review can also be evaluated when the bidding is made. Once the bid is evaluated, we are about to give a speech, two people from the previous company complained in a whisper, "How did you do it? Why is the header page wrong?" You see, experts can discover the underlying properties of human nature through your presentation-not very careful. If the expert goes down: this company is not rigorous enough to do things, i'm afraid it's hard to do this kind of project.
Presentation capability
When you come back to this figure, it is easy for users and experts to find out a leak. The following describes why:
In fact, your presentation determines your success or failure at this time. The presentation here includes: the quality of the bidding technical solution, the level of business quotation, service and implementation, etc, but these things are written from your mouth and in the logo book.
Sometimes, experts cannot view your bidding documents in all aspects, because there is a principle: A good bidding document, you can easily say well, you are not easy to say bad; a bad bidding document, you are not easy to say well, you are easy to say bad; imagine that you must be familiar with your bidding documents before the standard-speaking pre-sales and pre-sales. If your bidding documents are well written, according to the agreed PPT, the effect is neither good nor bad, but at least there are no vulnerabilities or handles to let users seize it, at least to let users recognize you (this is the initial purpose of pre-sales: certainly you) If your bidding documents do not fully understand the user's needs, the design is also very sloppy. Your eloquence is average, according to the agreed PPT, there is nothing to do with it, the effect exactly reflects the situation of your bidding documents-poor, users and experts are bound to raise a lot of questions or even martyrdom for you.
Therefore, if the presentation is better, the bidding documents must be written. That is why experts can listen to your speech without looking at your bidding documents.
What if your bidding documents are well written and your presentation is strong? The answer is that it's amazing. It's a key. The so-called high-tech talents are so bold that they will not be able to get on the cake. If a person is excited, the sky may fall, I shouldn't have mentioned some technologies too deeply, but he was just so happy and getting deeper and deeper. For example, if he couldn't pull back from the wild horse, there would be a dilemma. 1) The problem is easy to run, user experts are not satisfied with the delay. 2) If there is technical entanglement at this time, it will be a bad thing.

First: communication skills

If you do not know, you have no right to speak. I believe that you have a certain understanding of users in the bidding process. Instead, you know that communication is everywhere, instead of visiting users, communication should be made before bidding, communication should be made in bidding (observing and adjusting their own ideas during the bidding process), and communication should also be made after bidding. Few people see that there is no prior contact with users, but it suddenly won't happen.
Here, the author puts his own communication skills at the top. The so-called no preparations, communication is a language and behavior communication. Before fighting, the winner must understand the causes and consequences, it must be the person who participates in the bidding documents. Through this communication, you will know what you emphasize when facing your audience (users, experts) on the real battlefield, what do you need to avoid? Your speech framework will be roughly determined, and you will be able to make full use of it.
Here, I want to point out that many companies do not ask the tenderee to participate in the bidding documents, such as the sales manager, Technical Manager, or general manager, the reason for their lack of outbound calls is as follows: these positions are more focused, or the technology is better, and the leaders pay attention to them. However, if they do not know the details of the entire bidding documents, they will see the aforementioned, digress; inconsistency with the bidding documents; technical implementation out of touch with user requirements and other details; lead has been lost when these technologies require pre-sales engineers to answer questions and clarify, these situations are not uncommon. Therefore, professional companies prefer to train an excellent presales engineer to take this responsibility. For example, it is a good example for some companies to improve their presales presentation capabilities by recording images and training their speeches.

Second place: Excellent speech ability

When our presales engineers face customers, the customer's first impression is, oh, this is the technical consultant of a certain company. At this time, the presales engineers virtually represent the company's image, therefore, in this presales capability diagram, what is the feeling of being calm, elegant, gentle, and modest when a presales team faces multiple experts? If I am an expert, I will appreciate it very much. People tend to recognize a person. Even though they agree with his thoughts, the so-called "Love your house" is a weakness of human nature, many incredible situations have occurred.
I would also like to rashly point out that before you give a wonderful speech, you must be involved in the entire pre-sales project and handle the details in place to be truly worthy of the name. However, in the real world, there are still many bidding documents that are well done. During the course of explanation, you may not be able to hear clearly or even misinterpret what you mean, resulting in a great reduction in the effect.
I would like to remind you that the so-called excellent speech should never be a big talk, which is so annoying.

Third: intelligent defense

In the general Bidding Documents presentation process, the answer is indispensable. The general question to be answered is the current situation of your bidding documents. The user or expert does not understand it for a moment. I want to explain it to you, there is also a situation where some specific functions are proposed to assess how you implement them. For the previous situation, most pre-sales operations can be well handled. The latter case is often controversial, why? Because the user or expert Psychology also has a way to achieve this, while presenting your point of view, do not be too certain. I often hear the user say at this time: "Haha, the method you mentioned has not mentioned the idea yet. "Actually, users may not have good methods. They may have different understandings. If you are excited and competing with users, we often cannot get good results. Therefore, we need to be careful when dealing with these problems. Generally, before answering these questions, we must say that there are many methods. The time relationship first describes one of them, after that, you must add: "In fact, this expert has a very good question. You must have other methods. We can continue to discuss this ", experts also have a mindset. He may reveal his thoughts. At this time, if you are familiar with the business and technology, you can take over and continue to play the role: "Oh, yes, your idea is similar to our 2nd methods ......" In this way, at least there will be no cold talk for you.
I have prepared many cases about how to handle these questions and will post them in future articles. I will not discuss them in depth here.

Fourth place: excellent writing skills

Do not forget that there are two kinds of presentations: one is the presentation of language, the other is the presentation of bids and speeches. A good tender document should be fluent in writing, the terms should be standardized, and the meaning should be clear, in reality, many bidding documents are referenced by each other. Too many bidding documents may cause the overall quality of the bidding documents to decline. For example, some low-level errors may occur: Text, name, the most terrible thing is the emergence of other business background things. I have no objection to the reference, but it must be targeted. Some functions and implementation methods must be tailored, the requirements must be thoroughly analyzed. Because the bidding documents are not necessarily written by one person, each person may have different texts and terms, which may lead to poor writing of the bidding documents, of course, there is also a problem of long-term cooperation. The topic for writing is too broad. I emphasize that exquisite writing plays a very good role in bidding documents. In the increasingly frequent bidding competition, in terms of comparative advantages, you will surpass your competitors.

Pre-sales technical capability

In front of users, pre-sales is an expert, especially during the bidding process. What do users want to see most is what level they represent as technical personnel of a company, all technical capabilities are being presented. The problem is that you must have technology before you can make full use of it. Here we will start to talk about it, A presales must have technical background.

First: business expert

In IT projects, the industry is becoming more and more segmented. If you are familiar with ERP, you can't do mobile boss projects, it is hard to imagine that a person who has no background in the user's business can use technology to impress the user's mind. Therefore, as a technology pre-sales service, the business has to be placed first. In recent years, many users who used to work as Party A have gone to Party B as consultants more or less. Why should party B be familiar with the business? I have been in contact with many doctors who work as medical system consultants in IT companies, it is also found that many business experts have become the company's cto, and often mining students can play a role in GIS systems more than computer students.

Second: Demand Analysis Expert

Demand analysis is not very important in many IT and system integration companies. This is due to the genetic nature of software companies and immature software companies tested in Chinese workshops, let's take a look at the answer to a pre-sales question (1) In an article I wrote earlier. It is hard to imagine that a company that does not know what the user wants to do can deliver a project to the user. A pre-sales user needs to be analyzed. Only after the user needs are analyzed can the User Design functions as needed in the solution. These functions will directly affect the product selection and quotation. If you hire a presales engineer who doesn't even have a requirement, you can try to find out which of the following companies do not have a certain requirement to report daily or jumping prices in some projects, if you adopt the solutions of these companies, you can imagine what the system will be. This is an action that is not responsible to the user and to the user. Here, I can answer why 0.2 million can also be used as a 1 million project. There are two possibilities: pre-sales (or company leaders) misinterpret users' needs, using some unsuitable products to implement those functions, greatly underestimating the development volume. Originally, hundreds of thousands of Oracle machines were used. He used free MySQL, which was originally a customized software, he launched the products that have been developed out of the box. users do not understand the demand. This is the result of ultra-low price. In addition, you do not know the demand and have no background in this industry, according to your own situation, a random price is quoted, as long as the sales can be done, the other is secondary, in addition, the attempt to maliciously damage the industry (and he has no long-term plans in the industry anyway) exceeded the price.

Third place: Technical Expert

The user's needs need to be achieved through technical means, just like how many dishes are offered, 20 yuan for you, how you do it, what kind of architecture you use, and what kind of architecture you make, without technology, you cannot cook this dish, or even be technically good. You can spend less money than others and do better than others. For a software project, do you know it is good to use J2EE. net is good. For this level of storage, is San or NAS used? Is MPLS used for this network to implement VPN or two-layer VPN technology, how do you solve the security risks raised by him, what firewall you use, and the intrusion detection system. And so on, these are all pre-sale options. Of course, a pre-sale is unlikely to cover all aspects. This requires pre-sale in multiple fields, I will elaborate in future articles.

Fourth place: product expert

A pre-sales engineer understands the user's business, analyzes the needs, determines the functions, and selects the technology. Then, there is always some raw material to make this dish. The so-called clever man is hard to cook without rice, and the technical route has been selected, databases include SQL, Oracle, Sybase, and Application Server middleware such as Tomcat, WebLogic, websphere. BI tools include Bo, Brio, and microstrategy. The prices are different, functions are different, and the application scope is different, the development difficulty is different. If you don't know before sales, how can you achieve a dish with a price of 20 yuan? What's more, experts asked coldly: "Why are you using Oracle Enterprise Edition? ", If you are familiar with the product, you must know that it is not Oracle under such features and requirements.

Personal Qualities

Many people will say that a good pre-sales is very rare. You can say that you can do it, write it, and practice it. Don't forget that pre-sales itself is a meticulous task, and bidding is a tough task, if a pre-sale is good, but he is very careless, he is very lazy, he does not necessarily make the tender for this dish, once a province bidding, there is a tender, there was a description of the current business situation in province B, and the user complained about the opening of the bidding site. As a result, the company could not normally submit the bidding documents ....... This painful experience has to remind me that in my personal qualities, being careful is the first priority. Here, I must emphasize that personal qualities are not moral qualities, I believe that no one is willing to make this mistake intentionally.

First: Careful

As mentioned above, we can discover the technical capabilities of presales and the quality attributes of presales individuals. Here, there is no need to further explain what everyone understands, if you are not careful about the pre-sales, wait for the bad luck.

Second place: Patience

An impatient presales, in addition to imperfect requirements, may also compete with the user at the Q & A site, all your presentations, you can't help but reflect your inner world. If you have the talent to give a speech and an inactive anger, you will get rid of all the work you have done. We recommend a pre-sale movie: the redemption of Xiao shenke. on the surface, he spent 15 years in his loneliness successfully jailbreaking.

Third place: Confidence

It is hard to imagine that a person who is very nervous in front of the user can do a good job of communication, speak the bidding documents well, have certain confidence, and put his mind steady. This is a personal quality that must be possessed before sales.

Fourth place: Virtual

If you agree with the previous proposition: "users do not necessarily understand all user needs, but you do not necessarily understand all user needs", then the user raises any objection, you 'd better stand on the user's side to make a good suggestion, unless you have infinite wisdom and unparalleled eloquence; modestly, it will be wide, after all, you need to design according to the user's habits.

Fifth place: diligence

A lazy pre-sale is unlikely to make the bidding documents beautiful. If the bidding documents are perfunctory, there must be loopholes. Do not forget that, when bidding, the workload is very large, there is authorization, and there is a response, when there are frequent changes in prices, a good pre-sales operation should be followed up.