It pre-sales experience

In the IT field, the sales staff, pre-sales staff, project implementers (developers), and after-sales service personnel are required to successfully complete a project. This article describes the process of pre-sales technical support from the perspective of pre-sales technical support personnel. Based on the author's pre-sales experience, it puts forward the key points that should be paid attention to in each link, we hope to help the presales staff.

1. Quality required by presales personnel

Pre-sales personnel should be bridges between project developers and business sales personnel. In the eyes of business sales personnel, pre-sales personnel assume the role of technical personnel or technical experts; in the eyes of developers in project implementation, pre-sales personnel are sales personnel who focus on technology; in the eyes of users, pre-sales personnel are technical experts representing the company's technical level. In a specific pre-sales technical support activity, pre-sales personnel coordinate the relationship among sales personnel, users, and later developers, present the company's technical strength to users, and listen to users' initial needs, discuss with users the preliminary framework of the Project System, and assist sales personnel in recommending the company's product and technical advantages to users, it is the initial design of the project's technical framework to shield developers from unreasonable users and bring technical risks to project implementation in the future.

Presales personnel must possess both technical personnel and sales personnel., As follows:

● Be familiar with your own products.

● Comprehensive technical expertise. Familiar with the current IT technology development direction.

● Have a clear understanding of the company's development capabilities, technical advantages and disadvantages.

● As software sales in the industry, you must be familiar with the business of this industry, have a certain understanding of the current situation and development direction of informatization in this industry, and understand the basic information of other professional software in the industry.

● Be familiar with the technology and product trends of the industry, and understand the situation and characteristics of similar products and their competitors.

● Proficiency in the use of text and graphic editors for the compilation of solutions and tenders.

● Be familiar with general project bidding procedures.

● Good at communication and good communication skills.

Generally, a person cannot have such comprehensive knowledge and skills. Therefore, for large-scale projects, in order to communicate with customers in an all-round way, show the company's strength, and conduct preliminary demonstration and design of the system, pre-sales is often a team. This team may have industry business experts according to project requirements, database experts, operating system experts, information security experts, network architects, software system analysts, and project management experts.

2. project bidding activity process description

The project is tracked and signed from the early stage. As a pre-sales personnel, it must work closely with the sales personnel. The preliminary process of a project is usually as follows:

1. The sales staff visit the users, learn about the basic information about the user's projects, introduce the products of the company and the company to the users, and establish a good relationship with the users.

2. prior to the user's bidding, the sales staff should introduce pre-sales technical support personnel to communicate with the user technically, to understand the user's requirements on the project and the technical architecture of preference, this process may need to be repeated many times to guide users to the company's technical ideas. At least users must be interested in the company and are willing to invite you to the bidding.

3. the user sends a bidding document, And the presales personnel prepares the bidding documents based on the requirements of the bidding documents and the communication with the user in the early stage.

4. participate in the bidding meeting for technical and commercial explanations and Q &.

5. participate in business and technical negotiation and draft the project business contract and technical agreement.

6. Sign the contract, implement and maintain the project.

. Contact with users before bidding

Contact with users before bidding, understand users' real needs and ideas, and understand users' preferences on system frameworks, platforms, and new technologies through communication, in the future, the system will be able to "give it a good bet" and "hit the key" in the bidding ". Introduce the company's technologies and products, so that users can have a clear understanding of the company's technologies and products before the tender, it directs users' needs to the company's technical and product ideas, so that users have certain technical preferences for the company.

Communication and the content to be understood generally includes:

1. users' organization and Information Status, existing hardware and equipment, network conditions, and software systems in use;

2. Planning, objectives, scale, and requirements of the new system, including users' requirements for system security, reliability, ease of use, and scalability;

3. Business Content, Current Situation of Business Process Systems, and software functional requirements;

4. Selection of platforms and databases;

5. Information security and storage requirements;

6. Understanding of software development mechanisms;

7. Hot technologies of interest to users;

The communication should be extensive and should not be limited to the specific project owner. If necessary, you can visit higher-level users, as well as the main persons in charge of each department or technical authority, try to understand the user's understanding and ideas about the project, be good at identifying the user's identity during communication and visits, and grasp the ideas of users who have the right to decide and have a great impact on the project. At the same time, you can preliminarily analyze which users may be future bidding judges and pay attention to the areas they are interested in the project. In order to be targeted in bidding and bidding.

Guides users to the technical routes and product features that the company is good. You can tell the user about the situations and features of projects you have previously worked on. It is best to use the demonstration. This is what the user will tell you about and what is meaningless, what are the products of other competitors. This facilitates in-depth communication with users and finds resonance points with users.

Tracking and understanding competitors and the status quo of similar products, this is a long-term accumulation process, analysis of the potential characteristics of the competitor's products and solutions, find or propose new system highlights that attract users than competitors. Of course, the proposal of these highlights must first consider their technical strength and project investment scale.

2. Preparation of bids and bidding documents

2.2.1 establish a bidding team

When a project bidding team is set up, the core of the bidding team should be the Authorized Person of the project's legal representative. Based on the project scale, technical difficulty, and tender time requirements, the bidding plan should be formulated. The plan should be divided into each person, the work content and plan of each person should be determined, and the supervisors should be responsible for the implementation of the plan.

The bidding time is generally determined on a short date, which also tests the response speed of a company and a team. You must complete the bidding within this limited time. Otherwise, the bid will be missing due to insufficient preparation. This requires the usual technical accumulation, the accumulation of industry knowledge, and the accumulation of bidding documents, such as similar bidding documents or templates, as well as a good team spirit and atmosphere.

As an industrial application project, the technical components may involve network planners, hardware product managers, software architects, industry experts, data planning experts, and database experts, and other professional experts. The establishment of this team requires integrating the company's internal and external resources. For example, you can temporarily ask related pre-sales support (HP, IBM, etc.) from a professional company, relevant industry experts, and related university professors to assume relevant roles.

You can even consider joint bidding with other companies.

In the bidding team, it is best to establish a confidentiality system, especially for ultra-large projects, such as quotations and core technologies, to be discussed and determined in a small scope.

Closed development can be used if necessary.

2.2.2. Prepare bids

Users' bidding documents generally include: Invitation letters, business requirements, technical requirements, attachments and drawings, which are the basis for preparing bids.Before preparing the tender documents, the members of the tender team should carefully and repeatedly read the tender documents, especially the qualification requirements of the bidder. The bidding team should discuss the tender documents and find out the unclear descriptions in the tender documents, provide explanations as required to the tenderee according to the situation, determine the project qualification, bidding and implementation risks, competitor information, bidding advantages and disadvantages, and formulate bidding strategies; determine the content and method of the tender; Prepare a preliminary outline of the tender.

Note the following points during the preparation of the bidding documents:

1. The commercial bidding documents should be answered in strict accordance with the requirements of the bidding documents. The order and format of the responses should best follow the requirements of the bidding documents.

2. For content not required for the bidding documents, especially for business bidding documents, it is best not to draw a picture. If you want to increase the qualification that is helpful for the project bidding, it is best to carefully consider it to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities. The business part mainly aims to demonstrate the strength of the bidding company and ensure the qualification for participating in the bidding. First, ensure that the bidding is effective. Note that some things can be mentioned, but not all things that can be mentioned are suitable for writing.

3. handling of the difference table: for the differences between the bidding documents and the bidding documents, the tenderee usually requires to mark them in the difference table. When preparing the bidding scheme, try to find the differences, the description is clear. However, you need to be careful when sorting out and submitting the differential table. Not every difference is applicable to the formal field, some things need to maintain a vague State to improve the possibility of winning the mark. At the same time, they can leave a foreshadowing for business and technical negotiations to facilitate advances and advances in the negotiation.

4. Handling of quotations: it is best to have one or two sets of blank backups after the quotation sheet is filled, stamped, and sealed according to the formal requirements. The format of the quotation sheet is the same as that of the formal quotation sheet, but the price is not filled. Because the formal quotation is encapsulated into the period before the quotation is submitted, the sales staff may hear the competitor's price or users' opinions on the overall price of the project, this is when the price needs to be adjusted based on the project, market, competitor, user conditions, then you can use the backup quotation sheet. In particular, the time required for a company to redo a quote for bidding in different regions is basically not allowed.

5. processing of Sealing Strips: On the basis of the specified sealing strips of the bidding documents, you must prepare several spare Sealing Strips. Of course, the seals are covered. In particular, when the company bids in different regions, the market information is ever-changing, you cannot guarantee that your price and bidding documents will not be modified before the bidding.

6. the qualification and requirements of the business bidding documents must be strictly checked in accordance with the requirements of the bidding documents. errors and omissions in this Part may lead to rejection of the bidding documents, it is best to have more than two persons to check and verify.

7. if the qualifications of multiple legal entities under a group company are shared, check which qualifications are not the qualifications of the legal entity, if the qualification of the legal entity of this tender is required, the legal entity with the qualification should sign the authorization statement. Otherwise, the bidding may result in the consequence of "using the qualifications of a third-party company to cheat the tendering unit" and become a waste.

2. participate in bidding

For large projects, it is very important for the team participating in the bidding to allocate reasonable personnel.The division of labor for bidding documents can be divided into commercial personnel and technical personnel.Further details can be divided into business contact personnel, business bidding personnel, and technical personnel responsible for the network, architecture, and application system functions.

Participating bidders should wear uniform apparel, professional wear, company logo, confidence, and nature to give the bidding judges a good overall image. Strictly abide by the bidding discipline.

In general, do not talk too much to the familiar judges. Although we have full contact with users in the early stage and may be familiar with and have a good relationship with some judges, in the formal place of bidding, we usually say hello politely and just give a cold greeting, it is not easy to have too many conversations and close conversations with users. These actions may cause misunderstandings of other judges and give them a "handle" to their opponents ". Unless you are a dedicated behavior with a special purpose, for example, in some cases, you may have a close relationship with the best leaders or core personnel in the tender, it can mislead other judges that "someone may already be biased towards a company, and I should also make it happen." At the same time, it will cause more psychological pressure and burden on the opponent. However, this method has many risks. Be careful.

Before bidding, slides should be prepared for each part of the subject matter. Slides serve two purposes. One is to intuitively convey information to the judges through text, images, animations, and other methods, it is easy for the judges to understand the content of the explanation. Second, they can use slides to help them explain the ideas of the tenderee and avoid having to run the questions. Therefore, slide creation should aim at these two functions. Every slide tells you what to say and how long it takes.

It is best to have a practical demonstration. Users of industrial application software pay more attention to the performance of similar systems of the bidding manufacturer in the past. If they can show similar application systems to users, they can explain the system architecture and features in combination with instance demonstrations, it usually gets better results. However, when presenting systems in the past, you should pay attention to your strengths and circumvent weaknesses, eliminate some system vulnerabilities and defects, and pay attention to the time control of the demonstration.

The equipment used in the bidding should be protected mainly. The laptop used in the bidding should be carefully used after the demonstration system and slides are installed, prevent equipment from unexpected damage and cause equipment exceptions in the bidding. For example, pay attention to anti-virus and prevent accidental damage. Do not use your laptop to access the Internet in the internet cafe during a bid business trip, in a hotel, do not easily organize files in the computer system to prevent computer flooding and corruption. This may cause the system to fail due to accidental deletion of a file. It is best to back up the system installation disk and application system installation disk before the bid and business trip. If you have the conditions, you can use two laptops for installation.

Talk to the competitor who participates in the bidding. Maybe you will play against another bidder next time. Maybe next time, he will fight side by side with you, you can also obtain some useful information unexpectedly.

2.3.1. Tagging

The presentation should focus on the content, highlight the company's characteristics and advantages, and highlight the technical advantages and characteristics. The content should take care of every judge as much as possible.

There is usually a time limit for the presentation. In this period, how can we reasonably allocate time for company introductions, business introductions, technical introductions, project implementations, technical support and services, you need to carefully consider before the presentation. The distribution of time and content is adjusted based on the following situations:

● The company's technical advantages and features.

In the presentation, especially when the presentation order is behind, the judges are already clear about some common things and are not interested in repeat them, he cares about the features you have compared with other competitors.

● Composition and characteristics of the tendering judges.

You must analyze the composition of the bidding judges as much as you can, including the composition and quantity of members of senior leaders, technical experts, department business experts, and other roles. Generally, senior leaders are not familiar with IT technology. They primarily rely on non-technical indicators such as the company's scale, qualifications, strength, after-sales service, and price, technical experts mainly rely on technical indicators such as system systems, new technologies, security, scalability, and software development and management mechanisms, department business experts are more concerned with software functions, ease of use, and interfaces with existing systems.

● Observe the expressions and attitudes of the Judges and adjust the depth of the content in a timely manner.

● The situation and weakness of the opponent after the bidding.

This article focuses on the issues that the judges generally reflect after their bidding. For example, the judges believe that system security and project development are very important, but other opponents who have spoken about it do not pay attention to it, you need to adjust the content in time to focus on security and project development mechanisms.

In addition, do not attack your opponent easily. Some judges may have a crush on your opponent. Your direct attack on your opponent will trigger his dislike and deliberately suppress you. The method to attack your opponent is to highlight your own advantages.

There may be a division of labor among several people in the presentation, but the overall logic should be strict. One person can first arrange all the content of the subject matter for an introduction, and then after each person finishes talking about his/her part, briefly introduce the content of the next part and introduce the next interpreter. Make the entire presentation consistent.

You should adjust your status and mentality before the presentation, relax during the presentation, and do not report the mentality of "going to the test room for examination" or "being judged and reviewed, this will bring you into a tense and sincere state. When you go to the presentation platform and see a large number of people evaluating the evaluation, you will be more nervous and more prone to errors. You should be confident in your own solutions and products. You are an expert and report "Cough! Let me introduce you to some of our good things, which can definitely solve your current problems !" Mentality, you should have an impulse to show your proud work to outsiders. The more people you are, the more proud and excited you are. At this moment, your best state is coming!

2.3.2. Q &

When answering the comments and asking questions, the principle is: It doesn't matter if you don't know it. But you must never make a mistake!

You cannot argue with the judges.

The judges cannot be despised.

Q & A personnel who cannot answer questions should cooperate with each other. When you find that your companion is asked, if you can help him answer the best questions, you should quickly think of a way, answer this question from another angle, and gradually open the topic to avoid embarrassment.

2. 4. business and technical negotiation

After pre-winning bids, business and technical negotiations will be conducted. pre-sales technical support personnel will mainly participate in the negotiation and drafting of technical agreements.

Negotiation of technical agreements is a key process to reduce project risks. The negotiation result-technical agreements are usually attached to the contract, which directly affects the difficulty and risks of project implementation. Therefore, you must be patient and meticulous. You cannot sign a contract as soon as possible.

The purpose of a technical agreement is to define functional boundaries and depth. Especially in industrial application software, there is usually a "degree" ignored in bidding documents and quotations ". For example, the depth of the application system, the specific functional boundaries, and the degree of adoption of new technologies are often vague, it is very likely that there are great differences between the two sides in understanding these aspects, which may bring risks to the subsequent project implementation. The negotiation of technical agreements is to control these "Degrees", communicate sensitive issues and technical difficulties, and reach consensus, note that you cannot use vague words such as "comprehensively solving a specific problem" or "completely solving" in the Technical Agreement. Such vague definitions will bring great risks to project development, the depth and technical means of the project must be written into the Technical Agreement, so that project risks can be fully presented and controlled before the project implementation.

3. Preparation of bidding documents

The core point of the preparation of bids is to respond to the bidding documents one by one.

As a large company or group, a unified bidding documents compilation specification and guide should also be formulated. Through accumulation, a bidding template library should be established, to ensure the quality of the tender and shorten the preparation cycle of the tender.

Many articles have a good description of the specific preparation of the bidding documents. I will not go into details here.

Source: http://blog.csdn.net/formiss/article/details/8501462

It pre-sales experience