Objectives:

• To align ourselves as a team with the direction of the customer or partner and their business.
• Institutionalize a planning process that focuses on building customer or partner relationships and accelerating revenue.

Methodology:

Step 1: Need Assessment

Clarification of the key relationship issues and the core objectives and success measurements of our work together. Typically this involves phone interviews with key players (partner, vendor, sales team etc.) and internal meetings with program staff.

Step 2: Development of Tools, Templates and Process

Modification of consultant provided tools and templates for session preparation (Situation and Opportunity Analysis), session output (Account or Relationship Plan Summary), and ongoing management tracking processes.

Step 3: Session Facilitation

Depending upon the focus, number of participants and complexity of the situation, sessions usually run 2 - 3 days. Opportunity specific sessions or ones where there are less than 5 participants take less time. Sessions with lots of people participating or where the planning horizon is long tend to take 3 days.

Step 4: Documentation of Session Output

Session notes are transcribed and then converted into the agreed upon format and distributed to all participants.

Step 5: Ongoing Post Session Follow -Up

Agreement and execution of follow-up process for action plans and issues management and ongoing telephone or in person consulting support.

Core Elements:

• All sessions use the same approach with slightly different strategies to meet the end point depending on the session objectives and include the following core elements:
  • Understanding the customer’s business including their business objectives, key competitive advantage and CSF’s, motivations and comfort zone, perceptions of vendors, organizational structure and decision making processes
  • Cultivating executive relationships through identifying and understanding their role in the buying process and position in the power structure
  • Building the revenue pipeline by assessing installed base and identifying new both qualified an ‘blue sky’ opportunities
  • Identifying and managing issues
  • Setting goals and strategies both short term and long term
  • Developing accountable action plans that clarify depth and breadth of organization resources needed
  • Institutionalizing planning activities so that planning becomes a living process

Situational Analysis (What is Going On?)

The account team and/or partner presents an overview of what they perceive to be the current situation. Typically it includes such information as:

• Company business overview and perceptions
• Current revenue history and potential opportunities (Revenue Map)
• Key buying influences or market segments and their attitudes
• Team vision and key sales strategies
• Current strengths and weaknesses, issues and roadblocks to success

Brainstorming (What are our options?)

A series of discussions are held focusing on the following:

• Success and failure analysis
• Strategic assumptions for the future
• Competitive advantages/challenges
• New strengths we need and critical success factors
• Where should we go from here (assuming unlimited money, time and resources)

Decision Making (Which options should we pursue and how?)

Collective agreement on how to move forward with measurable goals and action plans. Expected results always include the following:

• Clarification/refocusing of long term statement of direction/mission
• Identification of short term vs long term strategies and objectives
• Scoping out of key tactical action plans (tasks, owner, timeframe, resources)
• Definition of a detailed multi-year revenue roadmap
• Clarification of key decision making processes and relationship building needs
• Documentation of the competitive situation
• Priority issue identification and ranking
• Feedback and follow-up processes agreed to

In order to focus our work together, Globalinkage uses a structure two-phase qualitative research process and methodology.

Objectives

Develop a body of market intelligence data that will ensure that the current business strategies are consistent with overall market opportunity including a review of key market trends and issues, segmentation and channel strategies, competitive situation, the key barriers to selling, marketing and sales tools needed to facilitate success etc.

Methodology

Clarification of Strategic Issues

• This usually involves detailed discussions with key senior management to define, revise and clarify the appropriate strategic questions and issues that are to be addressed by the project. It also enables the identification of any differing points of view internal to the firm.

  Internal and External Data Collection

• This step most often involves some or all of the following types of activities:
  • Broad based literature search and analysis of available industry reports to identify trends, issues, market sizing and key competitors.
  • Internal interviews with key operating staff to identify internal relevant documents and presentations; to understand current direction and strategy, perceived strengths and weaknesses and known market dynamics. Where appropriate impressions of key issues, trends, and key competitors are identified.
  • Detailed interviews with industry experts to understand perceptions of the competitive landscape as well as current industry direction and strategy, perceived strengths and weaknesses and known market dynamics key issues and trends.
  • Detailed interviews with customers and/or prospects to address specific strategic issues raised, and confirm, clarify issues, trends, company strengths, weaknesses and new ideas.
• Conduct focused “Best of Breed” analysis of competitor services marketing programs and strategy.

  Fact Base Development

• All information is then rationalized into a comprehensive “FactBase” structured around answering the strategic issues raised.

  Positioning Roadmaps

• In this stage, various planning sessions/discussions are held whereby the “FactBase” is presented to key internal staff and hypotheses developed as to appropriate plans of action. Where appropriate Globalinkage conclusions and recommendations are also presented.

  Roadmap Testing and Refining

• Where appropriate the Roadmap is tested against industry experts, key customers, senior management to obtain feedback and if needed sessions are facilitated to make adjustments and define specific implementation strategies and plans.

Key Deliverables

• A ‘FactBase’ summarizing the results of the primary interviews and market intelligence data points including conclusions, implications and recommendations for moving forward.

Objective:

There is great market need in better understanding in a more quantifiable way what the ‘true business value’ is for investing in information technology software, hardware and services. On the vendor side this means that there is great interest in building tools and utilities that the field organization can use to explain this ‘business value’ in both financial and non-financial ways. In addition on the sales management side, there is interest in building a repeatable sales process that can be used as a foundation for growth.

Core Elements

• Understand the current industry thinking on return on investment (ROI), return on opportunity (ROO) and total cost of ownership (TCO) as it relates to various IT market sectors. Based on that understanding, building build vs buy and other types of ROI models and sales tools to be used by management and sales people to illustrate a vendors value proposition.

Methodology

Data Collection

• Review any existing analyst reports, industry expert presentations, papers or articles that staff may have of interest
• Conduct a high level literature and Web search to determine if there are any existing tools and/or presentations from directly or indirectly related industry conferences or other vendors
• Hold internal discussions with key staff to understand existing sales process ideas, tools and vendor value proposition
• Hold discussions by phone with key partners, customers or other industry influencers to identify key vendor benefit attributes and existing customer qualitative and quantitative experience.

  Management Brainstorming

• Review results of data collection and preliminary thoughts with the vendor management team and based on those discussions conduct any additional interviews and/or data collection deemed necessary

  Tool Building

• Build the tool framework and related assumptions and review with the management team and prepare a related ‘solutions oriented’ presentation.

Key Deliverables

• Key deliverables vary depending upon the objectives of the project. Return on Business Value projects typically include a high level review of current industry thinking in this area for the specific market sector involved, solutions oriented presentations and if appropriate Excel based modeling tools. Sales tool kit projects typically involve the development of a single source document that outlines all of the key elements of the sales process including:
  • target market definitions
  • types of qualified opportunities and lead status definitions sales process workflow frameworks
  • value based selling tools (including account and territory planning templates, needs analysis tools, value proposition tools, ROI metrics and tools, implementation and training tools, competitive analysis updates)
  • tactical tools (such as references and success stories, bid response templates, objection handling documentation, marketing collateral directories)
• sales operations documentation (including revenue recognition policies, contract templates, order processing, compensation and rules of engagement practices).

Channel Management Services

Objectives:

• Identifying the attributes of appropriate channel partners for the vendors product and/or services suite
• Advancing the process of understanding potential customer needs, preferences, buying patterns and the appropriate sales process needed to reach them
• Where appropriate, identifying current market trends, issues and the competitive landscape which can be used in future marketing efforts
• Develop a set of recommendations as to how the vendor should move forward with their channel development efforts

Methodology

Internal and External Data Collection

• Identify and collect any information that currently exists to identify whom and how the vendor has been targeting their channel sales and marketing efforts to date including internal presentations, marketing collateral, white papers, attributes of existing partners, industry analyst/consultant reports (including access to any internal Web site data)
• Conduct telephone or in-person interviews with existing staff and Board members who might have some interesting insight to the vendors current channel development success and challenges
• Conduct a high level literature and web based review of the market sector and competitor channel development activities and programs to identify any relevant trends and issues, channel relationships etc.
• Conduct telephone interviews with existing partners to understand status of the relationship, sales and marketing efforts and effectiveness to date.

  Data Analysis and Recommendation Development

• Review data collected from all the above sources and build a simple sales process model/lead qualification tool that can be used to identify the attributes of appropriate channel partners
• Identify master list of potential partners and types
• Facilitate a planning meeting to review and refine definitions and attributes of appropriate partner types and obtain internal staff comments and input and apply attributes model to Master List
• Prepare a final report which summarizes all of the key market and competitive data elements collected
• Develop Partner Program parameters document including recommendations for infrastructure and longer term resource needs (staffing, technical support, training, internal systems, policy and practices guidelines etc.)

Key Deliverables

• The key deliverables typically include a high level market and competitive assessment related to their sales and partnering efforts (1-2 pages per competitor), detailed profile of an ideal partner by partner type, recommendations as to priority partners to develop relationships with, and a Partner Program Parameters Document for the execution phase.