Making Solutions a Habit

Making Solutions a Habit for the Sales Team

When I first accepted the role to build and lead a new Solutions team at CloudFactory, I knew I was joining an organization that had experienced significant success. I also knew the selling process that had taken them thus far would not scale to support the following growth milestones they hoped to achieve. 

My early assessments were as follows: 

1. Solutions involvement was uneven across the sales team. The single determining factor for a Solutions Consultant’s participation in a deal was their relationship with the Account Executive rather than the Solutions requirements of the given Opportunity. 

2. Sales had grown accustomed to following an “Organic” sales process, with only one common thread: close inbound leads as quickly as possible, which induced a behavior that I like to call a “Rush to Sign” (RTS).  

3. The consequences of RTS included incomplete client Discovery, incomplete success criteria, and inconsistent Solutions Architecture from deal to deal. 

My approach to address the assessed condition and put us on a scalable path was to pursue three main objectives.

1. Normalize the Sales-Solutions Relationship - i.e., Make Solutions a Habit

2. Define the roles and responsibilities within the PreSales Journey

3. Apply targeted standardization within the Pre-sales process. 

Making Solutions a Habit

There were three different levels of experience among the AE team, and each of these groups approached their relationship with the Solutions team in their own way. 

• The Grizzled Veterans had been around the company for a while and had each figured out a formula for sales success. To this group, Solutions Consultants added complexity and friction to their deals. They would avoid working with an SC whenever possible. 

• The Noobs had a year or two of experience in the AE role and relied heavily on the guidance of their manager and the Grizzled Veterans. Noobs had no idea who SCs were or what they did. Their interpretation was that SCs were a threat that they should avoid. 

• The New Seniors were recent hires who had been around the block a while and knew the benefits of working with SCs from past companies. The New Seniors worked with SCs whenever possible. 

My goal for normalization was to eclipse the prevailing thought that Solutions Consultant involvement was a matter of choice with a new concept: SCs were copilots for the Account Executives' deals. 

I employed a carrot-and-stick approach to achieve this normalization.

• Carrot: Document wins from the New Seniors, then use their testimonials to highlight the benefits of working with SCs.

• Stick: Actively monitor the Opportunity Pipeline for high-value opportunities without SC involvement. Engage the AEs manager to “encourage” SC engagement. Note: None of these steps are possible without Sales Leadership's full partnership and involvement. 

• Carrot: I became a fixture at Sales team meetings to share lessons learned, invite questions, and address concerns in the open for all to hear. 

• Stick: Working with RevOps, we set a rule in Salesforce that prevented qualifying Opportunities from advancing past validation without an SC assigned to the Opportunity. Note: Some AEs would game this rule (SHOCKER!), so continued vigilance in pipeline monitoring was necessary.

• Carrot: Dealwire announcements were updated to include recognition of the SC involved in all wins. I would actively monitor and comment on these wins, pointing out value added or obstacles addressed contributing to the ultimate success. 

• Stick: This stick was for my team. We promised to do no harm; i.e., we would not slow things down. Working with RevOps, we started tracking various aspects of “Close Velocity”(e.g., Time for Validation) to hold ourselves accountable to our promise. 

The results from these changes were phenomenal. Within a single quarter, the SC utilization quadrupled (as measured in both the Number of Opportunities and Pipeline MRR$), setting the stage for a record sales performance in the following quarter.

Define the Mission for the Team

As a new leader of a new Solutions organization joining a company experiencing rapid growth, I prioritized getting oriented with the people I’d be working with and the culture in which we would work together. It was time for a listening tour to explore three main questions:

1. What’s the view from up top?

2. What are the needs and expectations of our clients? 

3. What are the concerns of the team and their colleagues?

What’s the view from up top?

When coming out of the gate, it’s essential to ensure that you have a mutual understanding with senior leadership about what they expect from the Solutions organization. Notes from my interview cycle provided the background necessary to complete this process promptly. 

• What are the OKRs for the current FY? - First and foremost, these need to be In the background when defining the team’s mission. While it’s not necessary to address OKRs head-on with the mission statement, you certainly don’t want there to be a conflict. 

• What are their aspirations for the company in the marketplace? - Exploring this question with leaders may uncover new observations that had not been previously brought to the forefront. 

• Where are the pains or concerns internally?  - Whether or not they see a direct correlation between Solutions and those aspirations, such concerns are essential to know about. Solutions is such a critical function with amazing relevance throughout a technology organization that I consider anything fair game when considering Solutions as having a meaningful impact anywhere along the customer value chain. For example, are there operational headaches associated with onboarding new clients that Solutions can flag early in Discovery? 

What are the needs and expectations of our clients?

When exploring this question, I feel it’s crucial for a Solutions Leader to get a 360-degree view AND to apply the unique “Solutions Lens” to that view. In one case, I learned that a premium client had been expending significant resources transforming data we were delivering to them that we considered “complete.”  The additional work was quite a burden on our client, and exposed us to an unnecessary churn risk had we not revisited the acceptance criteria with them.

Get a complete view of the client experience by interviewing:

• Sales

• Customer Success

• Operations

• Support

• Clients (either directly or by reviewing call recordings.) 

What are the concerns of the team and their colleagues?

Here, you are looking to establish mutual conditions of satisfaction between the Solutions Team and their various partners in the organizations. 

• For Pre-Sales - 

• What do sellers feel they need to succeed in closing deals? - Are Pre-sales team members working with common goals in mind?

• Are they familiar with the Pre-Sales function? - Take nothing for granted. Inexperienced salespeople can perceive Solutions partners as threats that are reluctant to engage. 

• Are Pre-sales pros being misused? - Competent Solutions Consultants are amazingly talented, which can sometimes lead to others tasking them with responsibilities extending into Post-sales Sales or even Product Development or Support. 

• For Post-Sales

• Are they set up for success? - Have Statements of Work, handover documents, and client assets been prepared with Post-sales success in mind? 

• Are they appropriately positioned in the customer journey? - Insulating Post-sales engineers from Pre-sales conversations can lead to sluggish delivery and delayed revenue realization. 

• Is there sufficient coordination in Post-Sales? Project Management neglect lurks in the background for organizations experiencing rapid growth. 

Putting it All Together

With the listening tour complete, I had a good sense of the misalignments that existed between the team’s self-perceived responsibilities and where our organization and clients needed us to be, which gave me the guidance I needed to establish our mission; CTS is the owner of the technical relationships with CloudFactory clients. 

I shared the team’s mission widely in formal and informal settings and referred to it often in meetings as a touchstone to validate questions and requests. Within a quarter, the confusion around the teams’ place within the company had vanished, and we were ready to begin building our Solutions Practice for future success.