Tag: Overcome objections

What every Salesforce Partner should know:

Positioning Project Managers during the sales cycle when clients object

It’s a fact in consulting, many small and medium size clients don’t want to pay for Project Managers. Clients will say any or all of the following:

  • They will manage all of the PM work. And your team should be able to manage themselves.
  • It was assumed the Sales Engineer will do the PM work for free.

Ultimately the client doesn’t value what a project manager does on your projects.  And the downstream effect to a professional services firm is insidious. I’ve see all of the following occur and it negatively affected profitability and revenue.

  • The Sales Engineer was taken out of some sales cycles. And that slowed down the pipeline, and paying clients.
  • The Sales Engineer was pulled into too many directions. She/he did not have enough time to manage the project. And so some risks were unidentified, and worse, they turned into issues. The project went red. The  client was unhappy, as was the team. 
  • The client stated they would not pay for the issues. And to save the account, free work was done. That degraded the profitability of the project. And the ability to place those consultants on other projects. 

When you perform work for free, it reinforces to the client that it’s less legitimate work, that your time isn’t worth their money. Because they don’t value your time, your skills, or your expertise, they will expect this as “business as usual” going forward.

Below are some techniques to first embed in your project organization and how to deflect objections during the sales cycle.

PROJECT ORGANIZATION
  1. Don’t label the PM role a Project Manager. Instead use Technical Lead or Solution Lead as the role name.
  2. If you share a resource plan or listing of roles, put the “PM” role near the bottom of the list. It should never be first or second. This also applies to any sales collateral used during the sales cycle containing this information. 
  3. A Technical/Solution Lead, must have proven Salesforce expertise.  So in addition to the PM work, the person in this role must do the following:
    • Have the Salesforce Admin or Platform certification and have done some configuration. 
    • Attends the majority of discovery sessions, contributes notes, assists in managing agenda and scope throughout. 
    • Leads or co-leads at least one of the discovery sessions. 
    • Has a large role in the Test Plan.
    • Joins all test triage calls, and ensures the processes and definitions are followed.
    • Attends the end user training sessions and answers questions about Salesforce that the Trainer can not answer.
    • Manages the deployment plan document and ensures it’s in order, thorough. Adds data where needed. Updates the document during deployment. Runs any deployment check in meetings with the client (along with the consultants who are doing the deployment).
SALES CYCLE

In using the project organization elements above, it should make things easier for the Sales Team to overcome most objections. That said, some clients will continue to push back. Below are some techniques you can use during those conversations to overcome their concerns.

As usual when dealing with objections, validate and empathize what they have said, you understand them, and show gratitude to the prospect for bringing the objection forward.

  1. SITUATION: If the prospect states, THEY have a PM who can manage the project. Ask for a deeper understanding of their concerns and why. 
    • ASK if their PM has a SF Platform or Admin certification and experience configuring SF.
      • CLIENT’S ANSWER: The majority of the time this person will not have a Salesforce certification and the client will state they’re very good at their job and have managed other projects. They will probably say this person will have the certification by the time the project starts. 
      • EXPRESS: That the timeline and therefore cost assumed a person with the cert and experienced skill set in this role. 
    • ASK if their staffer has implemented a project with a hybrid methodology such as the one specified for this project. 
      • CLIENT’S ANSWER: They will state their staffer is exceptionally talented and can handle any methodology.
      • EXPRESS: Mention that detailed knowledge of how your projects are run was assumed. And this familiarity was embedded into the quote. Knows what has to come and when, gating items, internal quality controls, etc.
    • ASK if their PM has run the following meetings
      • Discovery meetings (and name some of the functional areas)
      • Run the salesforce demos (hands on).
      • Run test triage
      • Has run Salesforce training sessions and answered additional technical questions during the sessions.
      • Has experience managing and doing deployment
      • CLIENT’S ANSWER: They will most likely negate the need for the PM to do this and that the rest of the project team should take this on. 
      • EXPRESS: The quote was designed for someone to do the work and the hours would need to be done by someone and that the other roles do not have the bandwidth to do this work. 
    • ASK if they have written and managed the following types of deliverables (again these should not be the standard pm deliverables).
      • Test Strategy Plan
      • Deployment Plan
      • CLIENT’S ANSWER: Give us the templates and coach us on each one, and our PM will be able to do this. 
      • EXPRESS: The project quote did not include hours for this. (And chances are they will not bring up coaching of this work, and if not, mention it).  Our team has seen many final deliverables and they know what complete and good ones must detail.
  • 2. SITUATION: If the prospect states, THE SALES ENGINEER CAN MANAGE THE PM WORK (for free) or it’s not needed.
    • ASK: for a deeper understanding of their concerns and why. 
    • CLIENT ANSWER: It’ll only take a few minutes of your time. Or, there is a lot of future work.
    • EXPRESS: I’m glad you see the value in how we work, and how it will bring project success. And that success will translate into business success. That’s core to how we work with clients. Many of our competitors will put anything on paper just to sign a client. In their wake, they leave failed projects and disappointed customers. What we do is ensure every one of the project team members have considerable and proven, technical Salesforce expertise. This is core to how we deliver successful projects and the reason why we score XXX on our NPS surveys and have repeat business. 

SUM UP YOUR COMMENTS ABOVE:

  • Our Tech Leads are just that, technical leads. They have experience with configuring Salesforce and maintaining their certifications. It’s mandatory.
  • Also the project was scoped so that our team does not have to explain how to run sessions, provide templates, explain templates. They’re expecting this person to be an experienced technical resource. 
  • If they still don’t want your staffer, you’ll need to explain you will still need to add extra hours to the project so that your project team can take the PM through each item as they come up.  It could cost more than adding the PM to the project. 
  • Lastly if they still push back, know that this will be a VERY CHALLENGING PROJECT if you move forward without a Technical Lead. They’re not taking your statements seriously, consider walking away. It will not be a profitable project and it could affect employee attrition.

If interested in discussing further, direct message me at: [email protected].

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