How do you determine if a prospect is ready for IT implementation?

This is what I'm used to call "Discovery phase", being part of one of the four implementation phases Discovery, Plan and Design, Build and Implement, Validate and Transition. What is the most difficult part of this phase? Convincing the prospect that the time invested in collecting requirements is not wasted time. It happened to me to literally fight to convince prospects to sit and tell their story to me: - Tell me about your business - How are you different from your competitors? - How do you want to differentiate? - What are you struggling more with today? - What do you consider key factors for your success, short and long-term? Can you articulate your short/long-term strategy against them? - How can I be your preferred partner?

A problem can be spotted when there are gaps between where a business currently is and where they want to be. The problem could be a technology/solution problem or a culture problem. A clear analysis of a current state and definition of a proposed future state with an assessment of risks moving from current to future state will help with problem definition.

It is credibly important to understand the financial value and priority of the pain points and challenges. The financial return must reward the risks taken in (a) tackling the problem and opening up more issues and (b) positively affecting the business' performance once the solution has been delivered. And the pain priority level must be more important than fixing the roof.

For IT Implementation, First we need to Understand the Structure of Organisation, Mode of Business & Current Pain Points to Validate the IT Needs And Then we Offer Required IT Hardware, Sofware & Security Solutions to Customer in there budgetary with Quality

Budget is not only money.... The prospect stakeholders should be sensitised to how important is to determine well the boundaries of the needs and dependencies associated. Expectations and requirements come with precise tasks to be executed on both sides, needed expertises to be involved, well-defined timings, and availability of resources and people and their time. All this as a cost.

In cybersecurity sales, mastering budget assessment is key. Start by understanding the prospect's unique challenges. Quantify potential financial risks, then offer diverse security solutions to fit various budgets. Highlight long-term benefits, educate on threats, and share success stories. Collaborate with decision-makers, offer flexible payments, and maintain transparent communication. Continuously demonstrate the solution's value. These strategies help enhance security within financial parameters.

In concert with expected returns is opportunity cost, or the cost of not fixing the problem. Ensure the budget questions don't confine one to its box. Your opportunity cost of letting a competitor win the solution area could be magnitudes greater than the budget first conceived.

One of the key steps before the implementation activities start is the collection of the requirements. During this activity, it is essential to identify functional and technical owners for those requirements. It could be needed to define and clarify formally a list of tasks and responsibilities shared between the Prospect's stakeholders and the implementation team. A Tasks vs Dependency vs. Stakeholders plan, RACI Matrix together with a Peer communication Matrix can be helpful in formalizing who is going to do what, the communication flow and the tasks to be expected and their dependencies on prerequisites or others' stakeholders' outputs.

Last and certainly not least in the buyer group or decision makers is who has the power to say no. This role or person(s) often foil the best efforts of a solutioning team. In fact the buyer(s) who have the power to say no should be first in the identification process since they may take the longest to convince. Especially if they have previous failures in mind.

Stakeholder Mapping is one way to identify a decision makers. This helps to spot out who can be your internal champion, whose department, function or role may be impacted by the forthcoming change. Stakeholder Mapping, roles and Responsibilities helps to tailor communication to meet the expectations of the stakeholders receiving such communications. A well Defined Stakeholder map will help Identify the decision makers.

It happened to me and I guess to other people in the same role, to be brought in front of a prospect asking to "start tomorrow". Maybe this is happening without not even a meeting to define requirements, tasks to be executed and implementation activities, was done. I think it is responsibility of the BDM to clarify since the first contact with the prospect about the need for a structured and formal onboarding process needed to succeed. Timelines associated with the execution of precise tasks need to be established during the phase which is called Plan and Design.

Similarly to the question of what deadlines do they have an extension of this question is when does the business want or need change? This is the deadline separate from IT goals that needs to be honored for the IT solution to have the affect it wants. For example, being ready for Black Friday in the retail industry is a real deadline.

Determining if a prospect is ready for IT implementation is a critical step in the sales and project management process. Ensuring that a prospect is adequately prepared can help prevent project delays, budget overruns, and client dissatisfaction.

A fit can be confirmed by having discussions, interviews at the discovery phase. At this point it is imperative to understand the problems a customer is facing, how much its costing them as a business and their willingness to solve this problem. The is of the "Five Whys" would help to discover how deep rooted the problem is and if a solution to the problem is a nice to have or a must have.

I think there are two moments to do this: Immediately after the two initial phases of the onboarding Discovery and Plan and Design, a formal meeting with the prospect consists of presenting the solution and getting feedback. Immediately after the Build and Implement phase activities another phase, even known as Validate and Transition consists of allowing the customer to utilize the implemented and now delivered solution to see if everything works as expected. In both moments, an agile perspective and mindset help to fine-tune the solutions presented/delivered, of course, always making well clear what the difference between a small configuration fix vs. change request is.

I think something usually under-evaluated by sales are the dependencies. They need to be considered with accuracy and based on importance translate in a GO/No GO for that opportunity. An opportunity which has a high number of important dependencies is not an opportunity until they are cleared or there is a precise commitment to clear them.

Reflecting on my example above where I reflected that knowing about priorities across the business are important. IT projects can often be de-prioritized by non IT problems, like a roof caving in. That happened at a customer in my past. One's IT solution won't work in a company without a roof!