Detailed Course Outline
Introductions and Expectations
Intro Exercise: Using their Deal Breakdown template (see example after this outline), each delegate will discuss and document the key learnings to be gained from their two existing success stories (what was done different to normal? what impact did that have? prognosis going forward?, etc)
Module 1: Identifying Market Opportunities
- Understanding my Local Market (in co-operation with local Cisco TBM/RSM)
- Where are the Opportunities
- How can Cisco help? (who and how and with what)
- What Market Trends are impacting My Customers?
- What’s the true impact of these?
- How can we make these relevant to our Customers?
- Exercise: Think Value – Using their Delegate Workbook and the prospective customer they have brought with them to class, create an impact statement on the relevance of market drivers and trends to your prospective customer! Not all drivers and trends will be relevant to your customer, so which ones are, and why?
- Driving demand for Solutions
- Through social selling
- How can Cisco help? (who and how and with what)
- Exercise: Think Demand – A whiteboard and discussion exercise where delegates will create a plan of how to communicate opportunities, driver and trends to all of their customers (online, social, traditional). Now that we have identified what trends/drivers will impact our potential customer, how will we communicate that to the customer to help drive demand for our solutions – delegates will researching relevant articles and thought leadership online, plan how to use social media (twitter, linkedin, etc) to raise awareness as well as more traditional methods (e-shots, newsletters, etc)
Module 2: Identifying Business Opportunities
- Understanding the importance of your Customer’s customer
- The Roadmap to Business Outcomes
- Taxonomy of your Customer
- Exercise: Research and document your customer’s Business and IT Models. Using their delegate workbook, delegates will now research and document their prospective customers business model (key activities, revenue streams, cost structure, market segments, route to markets, etc) and IT model (on-prem, cloud, managed, hybrid etc)
- Identifying Your Customer’s Business Challenges and Business Impact
- Researching and Identifying our Customer’s Business Challenges
- Exercise: For your potential customer, identify what challenges exist within the business and what is the impact of having those challenges. Now that delegates have a better understanding of their customer, they can now research (phone & internet) and document their customers key business challenges
- Turning Impacts into Outcomes
- Researching and Identifying our customer’s Goals, Objectives and Priorities
- Exercise: Think Strategy - using your own knowledge and the internet, identify your Customer’s business goals and priorities for the coming 12, 24 and 36 months and how they plan to achieve those (initiatives). Using their delegate workbook, document the goals in the 4 critical areas of Financial, Strategic, Operational and Tactical and then identify what actions (initiatives, projects) your customer will take to achieve those goals
Module 3: Maximising Customer Engagement
- Identifying responsible stakeholders and buying centers
- Follow The Money (and it’s in LoB)
- When to Engage each Stakeholder (when in the sales cycle)
- Understanding the Importance of the LoB stakeholder (sales, marketing HR, customer care, etc)
- Exercise: Think Business - For their potential customer, document which stakeholders will potentially be responsible for which goals and initiatives
- What messaging to use for each
- Building a value proposition for IT
- Using business outcomes to justify the risk
- Building a value proposition for LoB
- What does LoB Care-about?
- What Business Outcomes are they looking for?
- Examples from Sales, Marketing, HR, Customer Care
- Using Business Outcomes to justify the change
- Building a value proposition for Finance
- Understanding and Overcoming financial metrics
- Using Business Outcomes to justify solution costs
- Using Cisco Capital and Cloud
- How can Cisco help? (P+ resources on Sales Connect)
- Building a value proposition for IT
- Exercise: Think Outcome – For your potential customer, select one key initiative and complete a template for each stakeholder (maximum of 3) and document how they would measure the success of that initiative with respect to the overall business goals (business outcome metrics) and how they would then tie that into an ROI discussion with Finance.
Module 4: Aligning Cisco Solutions with Business Outcomes
- Aligning solutions with Your Customer’s Business Model Challenges and Business Outcomes
- Use Case Scenarios
- Using the Cisco Business Solutions Framework
- The 4 Business Solutions
- Exercise: Think Value – Using your delegate workbook, complete a template that shows your customer’s business challenges, implications, initiatives and goals, potential timeframes, which commercial business solution would fit and what would be the impact of using that solution on their success metrics. That is, how Cisco’s commercial business solution(s) align with a key Initiative that would enable your customer to reach their Goal(s) in a quantifiable way
Module 5: Closing the Sale
- SWOT Analysis of our Proposition
- Using Partners to deliver customer value and business outcomes
- The Benefits of Partnering and the Cisco EcoSystem
- The Cisco Solution Partner Program
- Differentiating our solution with outcome-based sales
- Key Points for Different Architectures
- Dealing with typical Business and LoB Objections
- Pitching the solution for maximum effect
- Exercise: Think Value – Create an impact statement on how you will differentiate our solution with your customer and how you will deal with their top 3 objections!
Module 6: Continued Development
- Driving Change, Drives Success
- 30, 60, 90 Day Action Plans
- Partner Sales Force Development
- Assets available on Sales Connect
- Evaluation and Planning with Cisco
- Quarterly Reviews with Cisco
- Deal Reviews and Coaching Sessions
Course Wrap