How to do a good job of the project of the pre-sales work
For a company, the success of the acquisition and completion of a project requires marketing and sales staff, pre-sales technical support staff, project implementation team, after-sales service personnel and the company up and down the various departments of the close collaboration. So how to do a good job of the project's pre-sales work? Take a look!
1. Pre-sales personnel should have the basic qualities
Pre-sales personnel should be the bridge between the project developers and business sales staff, in the eyes of the business sales staff, pre-sales personnel to play the role of a technician or technical expert, and in the eyes of the developers in the implementation of the project, the pre-sales personnel is to focus on the technical aspects of the sales staff. In the eyes of the user, the pre-sales personnel, is a technical expert on behalf of the company's technical level. In a specific pre-sales technical support activities, pre-sales personnel to coordinate the sales staff, the user, the relationship between the late developers, the company's technical strength to the user to show, listen to the user's initial needs, and the user to discuss the initial framework of the project system, to assist the sales staff will be the company's products and technical advantages recommended to the user for the late developers to block the user's irrational, to the implementation of the project to bring technical risks.
The first designer of the technical framework of the project.
So the pre-sales staff should have a technical staff and sales staff of the two qualities, as follows:
● familiar with their own products.
● Have a more comprehensive technical expertise. Familiar with the current direction of IT technology development.
● Have a relatively clear understanding of the company's development capabilities, technical strengths and weaknesses.
● As the industry software sales, you must be familiar with the business of the industry, the current status and direction of development of information technology in the industry have a certain degree of understanding of the industry's basic situation of other professional software.
● Familiar with the technology and product trends in the industry, understand the situation and characteristics of similar products and their competitors.
● Ability to skillfully use text and graphic editors for the preparation of proposals and bids.
● Familiar with the general procedures of project bidding.
● Good communication skills and techniques.
It is usually impossible for a person to have such comprehensive knowledge and skills, therefore, for large projects, in order to communicate with customers in all aspects, show the company's strengths, the initial demonstration and design of the system, its pre-sales is often a team, the team, according to the needs of the project, there may be industry business experts, database specialists, operating system specialists, information security specialists, network architects, software system analysts, project managers, and so on. The role of the division, software systems analysts, project management experts and so on.
2. Matters to be noted at various stages of the project pre-sales
Usually the pre-process of obtaining a project has the following six phases:
1) Sales staff to visit the user, to understand the user's basic project, to introduce the user to the company and the company's products, and the user to establish a good relationship.
2) sales staff in the user's bidding before the introduction of pre-sales technical support staff, and users of technical exchanges and communication, to understand the user's needs in the project, the preferred technical framework, to guide the user to the company's technical ideas, the process may be the need for a number of iterations. At least to do the user has a certain interest in the company, willing to invite you to participate in the tender.
3) The user sends a request for proposal, the pre-sales staff according to the requirements of the request for proposal, combined with the situation of the previous exchange with the user, the preparation of the tender.
4) Participate in the bidding meeting, technical and commercial explanations and Q&A.
5) Participate in commercial and technical negotiations, and draft project commercial contracts and technical agreements.
6) Signing contracts, project implementation and maintenance.
2.1 Contact stage with users before bidding
Contact with users before bidding, to understand the user's real needs and ideas, through the exchange of information, to understand the user's preference for system frameworks, platforms, and new technologies, so that later on in the bidding can ? The user's preferences? Hit the nail on the head? Introduce the company's technology and products, so that the user can have a clearer understanding of the company's technology and products before bidding, and guide the user's needs to the company's . Technology and product ideas, so that the user's in the technology of the company has a certain preference.
Exchange and the need to understand the content usually include:
1) the user's organization, the status of information technology, existing hardware equipment, network conditions, the software system being used;
2) the planning of the new system, the objectives, scale, requirements, including the user's requirements for the system's security, reliability, ease of use, scalability;
3) business content, the current status of the business process system, software functional requirements;
4) platform and database selection;
5) information security, storage needs;
6) knowledge of the software development mechanism;
7) users interested in the hot technology;
The exchange should be broad, not limited to the specific project The person in charge, if there are conditions, you can visit the higher users, as well as the main person in charge of each department or technical authority, try to understand the user's understanding of the project and ideas, communication and visits to identify the user's identity, to capture the project has the right to decide, the influence of the user's ideas, at the same time, you can preliminarily analyze which users may be the future bidding jury, pay attention to their interest in the project. In order to be targeted in the bidding and bidding speech.
Guide the user to the company's expertise in the technical route and product features. Can be done in the past projects, functional features to the user, preferably with the help of the demonstration, which is the user will tell you what he is interested in, which is not interesting, what are the other opponents of the product is like and so on. This facilitates in-depth exchanges with the user to find and the user's mutual **** Ming point.
Tracking and understanding of the situation of rivals, to understand the status of similar products, which is a long-term accumulation of the process of analyzing the rival products and solutions may be characterized, find or put forward than the rivals have a novelty, can attract the user's system highlights. Of course, these highlights of the proposed must first consider their own technical strength and the scale of investment in the project.
2.2 Bidding and bidding documents preparation stage
2.2.1 Set up a project bidding team
The establishment of the project bidding team, the core of the bidding team should be the legal representative of the project's authorized person. According to the size of the project, technical difficulties and the requirements of the bidding time, the development of the bidding plan, the plan will be broken down to each personnel, to determine the content of each person's work and plan, to determine the implementation of the plan to supervise the staff. Retrieved from
The time of the tender is usually a definite date, and relatively short, which is also a test of a company and the team's responsiveness, it must be completed within this limited time to produce the tender, otherwise, it will be due to the lack of preparation and loss of the bid. This requires the usual accumulation of skills, the accumulation of knowledge of the industry, the accumulation of bids, such as similar bids or templates, as well as a good team spirit and atmosphere of cooperation.
As an industry application project, the technical part may involve: network planners, hardware product managers, software architects, industry experts, data planning experts or database experts information security experts, as well as other specialized areas of experts. The establishment of this team, the need to integrate the company's internal and external relevant resources to **** with the completion. For example, you can temporarily invite professional companies related to pre-sales support (HP, IBM, etc.), experts in the relevant industries, relevant professors to play a relevant role. You can even consider joint bidding with other companies involved.
In the bidding team, the establishment of a confidentiality system, especially for mega-projects, about the offer, the core technology, etc., it is best to discuss and determine in a small range.
Closed development can be used if necessary.
2.2.2 Preparing a tender
The user's tender usually includes documents such as: invitation to tender, business requirements section, technical requirements section, annexes and accompanying drawings, etc. These documents are the basis for preparing a tender. Members of the bidding team in the preparation of the tender, should be carefully and repeatedly read the tender, especially the qualification requirements of the bidder and other content, the bidding team to discuss the tender, to find out the description of the tender is not clear, according to the situation to the bidding party to request an explanation to determine the qualification status of the project, bidding, as well as the implementation of the risk of the rivalry, the bidding of the advantages, disadvantages, and so on; the development of the bidding strategy; to determine the The content of the tender, the bidding method; the initial preparation of the outline of the tender.
In the bidding process, should pay attention to a few points:
1) Business bids should be in accordance with the requirements of the tender for a strict response to the order and format of the response is best to strictly follow the requirements of the tender.
2) For the tender does not require the content, especially business bids, it is best not to add to the snake, if you want to add to the project bidding for qualifications, it is best to be carefully considered to ensure that there are no loopholes. The main purpose of the commercial section is to demonstrate the strength of the bidding company and to ensure eligibility to participate in the bidding. The priority is to ensure that the bid is valid. Note that some things can be told, but not everything that can be told is suitable to be written. Transferred from
3) the handling of the discrepancy table: for the tender documents and bidding documents have differences in the part of the bidding party usually requires the bidding party to be marked in the discrepancy table, in the preparation of the bidding program, should be as far as possible will be the difference between the part of the find out, describe clearly, but in the final collation and submission of the discrepancy table, it is necessary to be particularly careful, and not every discrepancy is suitable for this formal venue in a formal way Presented, some things need to keep a vague state to improve the possibility of winning the bid, at the same time, but also for business and technical negotiations to leave ambush, easy to negotiate in and out.
4) for the handling of quotations: quotations in accordance with the formal requirements to fill in, stamp, seal, it is best to have one or two sets of blank backup, the format of quotations and formal quotations, but the price is not filled out. Because in the formal quotation encapsulated to submit a quotation before the period of time, the sales staff is likely to explore the price of opponents or users of the overall price of the project's views, which is waiting for the need to be based on the project, the market, the opponents, the user's situation for price adjustment, this time you can use the backup of the quotation. In particular, the company to bid in a different place, to redo the quotation, time is basically not allowed.
5) the handling of seals: in the provisions of the bidding document on the basis of seals, be sure to prepare more than a few spare seals, of course, is stamped, especially the company to bid in foreign places, the market information is ever-changing, you can not guarantee that the bidding before you do not modify your prices and tenders.
6) The qualifications in the business tender and the requirement of the company's seal must be strictly checked against the requirements of the invitation to tender, this part of the error and omission will likely result in the abolition of the bid, therefore, it is best to have more than two people specializing in checking and checking.
7) For a group of companies under a number of legal companies, there may be a qualification **** enjoy the situation, then, should pay attention to check which qualifications are not the bidding legal entity's qualifications, if the bidding for the legal entity's qualifications, the qualification should be asked to have the legal entity to sign the statement of authorization, or else, the bidding may result in? Unauthorized use of third-party company's qualifications to deceive the bidding unit? The consequences of the bidding and become invalid.
The most central point in the preparation of the tender is to respond to the tender article by article, there can be no omission. As a large company or group, the need should also develop a unified "tender bid preparation specifications and guidelines", through the accumulation, the establishment of a tender template library, in order to ensure the quality of the tender, shorten the preparation cycle of the tender.
2.2.3 Participation in bidding
For relatively large projects, participate in the bidding team's reasonable allocation of personnel is very important, according to the specific circumstances of the project, the bidding staff can be divided into according to the preparation of the bid division of labor: business personnel, technical personnel. Continue to be subdivided into business contacts, business bidders, the technical part can be divided into those responsible for the network part of the system architecture, application system functions, and so on.
Participating in the bidding staff should be unified dress, wear uniform professional attire, wear the company's logo, self-confidence, natural, to the bidding jury a good overall image. Strictly follow the bidding discipline.
Usually, not too much on the familiar judges to communicate. Although there is sufficient contact with the user in the early stage, may be familiar with some judges and have a good relationship, but, in the bidding of the official place, usually a polite greeting, chilling can be, not easy to have too many exchanges with the user and intimate conversations, these moves may cause misunderstanding of the other judges, but also to the opponents may be? Authorized to handle? Unless you are specialized and have a special purpose of the behavior, for example, in some cases, with the tender in the best leader or core personnel to show close relationship, can cause other judges? So-and-so may have favored a certain company and I should go along with it? The misleading, at the same time, to the opponent to create more psychological pressure and burden. However, this approach has many risks, be very. Caution.
Before the bidding, each part of the bidding should be prepared to speak the corresponding slides, slides have two roles, one is through the text, pictures, animation and other ways, more intuitive to the jury to convey information to facilitate the jury to explain the content of the understanding of the second is through the slides, to help speak the bidder to standardize their own thinking, not to run out of ideas. Therefore, the slide production, to these two roles as the goal. Each slide to speak some of what content, speak how long, should be done in mind.
It is best to have a practical demonstration, combined with a demonstration of speaking standards. As the industry application software users, more emphasis on the bidding vendor's past performance of similar systems, if you can show the user similar application systems, combined with examples of demonstrations to explain the system architecture, functional characteristics, usually achieve better results. However, when showing the previous system, we should pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses, shielding some of the system's weaknesses and defects, while paying attention to the time control of the demonstration.
The equipment used in the bidding to be the main protection, bidding for the use of laptop computers, after the installation of the demonstration system and slides, to be careful use of the equipment to prevent accidental damage to the equipment caused by the bidding for the abnormalities of the equipment, for example, pay attention to the anti-virus, to prevent accidental damage to touch the bad, do not bid for the use of laptops during the business trip to the Internet cafe Internet access in hotels to prevent the computer from getting into the water, fall, do not easily organize the files of the computer system, which may cause the system not to start normally because of accidentally deleting a certain file. It is best to bid on a business trip before the installation disk of the system, the installation disk of the application system, etc. Backup, if possible, you can use two sets of laptop installation.
Properly talk to your opponents in the bidding, maybe next time you will face each other in another bidding, maybe next time he fights with you side by side, through the conversation, you can also accidentally get some useful information.
2.2.4 Business and technical negotiations
In the pre-awarded bid, there will be business and technical negotiations, pre-sales technical support staff to participate in the negotiation and drafting of technical agreements.
The negotiation of the technical agreement is the key process to reduce the project risk, and the result of the negotiation - the technical agreement is usually attached to the contract, which directly affects the difficulty and risk of project implementation. Therefore, it is important to be patient and meticulous, not to sign the contract as soon as possible, it is haphazard.
The purpose of the technical agreement is to define the functional boundaries and depth. Especially in the industry application software, bidding documents and speaking standards, usually have to ignore a ? degree? Such as the depth of the application system, the specific boundaries of the function, the degree of adoption of new technologies and other issues, is often fuzzy, the likelihood is that both sides of the understanding of these aspects of the existence of large differences in these differences will bring risks to the subsequent implementation of the project. Negotiation of the technology agreement is to these ? degree? Control, sensitive issues and technical difficulties to communicate, reach *** knowledge, pay attention to not appear in the technical agreement? Comprehensive solution to so-and-so problem? The problem is not solved in the technical agreement, but in the technical agreement. Completely solve? and other fuzzy words, this fuzzy definition will bring great risk to the project development, all must be discussed clearly, the depth of completion and the use of technical means written into the technical agreement, so that the project risk before the implementation of the project will be fully demonstrated and controlled.
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