Changing role of Deal Management professionals

In this age of Constant Change or as the saying goes, Change is the only constant, the challenge deal management professionals face is how to stay relevant and be a value add to the organization.

Compared to a decade back, the role of deal managers has evolved from that of orchestrating the deal process, writing sections of proposals and collaborating with various internal functions and external stakeholders and adhering to the organizations policies of sales engagement.

Organizations expect deal managers to be bring in additional value add to the table such as adept in engaging with Product Managers and discussing high level technical requirements and impact of cost over-runs. This is one expectation from organizations perspective and there are many others which can be discussed at length.

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking over many aspects of day to day business engagements, organizations are reciprocal to the usage of AI tools to help them perform tasks, some of which are executed by deal managers and with this, the value of deal managers are declining, to say the least.

To bring in change to the function of deal management, some skills which deal managers need to imbibe which shall help them contribute to the organization's growth are:

1. Focus on leading all commercial engagements of deals and pursuits and become a SME on financial requirements of deals. Many organizations bring in financial analyst before the commercial sign-off of deals to evaluate and perform pricing and costing. If deal managers upskill themselves with proper financial knowledge to lead commercial and pricing engagements, they will be seen as a value add to the organization.
2. Upskill in Data Analysis. Most of the organizations have information from the past deals and proposals submitted and their subsequent results. While few organizations delve deeper into this data to analyze the reasons for win/loss and changing patters of proponents, what Deal Managers can do is hone their skills in data analysis and analyze the data and present results in a manner which shall be useful for future deals and pursuits. This will help Senior Management in understanding proponent/customer behavior, reasons for win/loss, understand areas of improvement and get a good view of bidders/competitors.
3. Become proficient in technical writing. Most of the solution developers/solution architects and product managers focus on presenting the solution or the product required and finalizing the compliance section but few consider presenting or writing from a reviewers perspective. Deal Managers should utilize this opportunity and contribute towards technical writing and ease of understanding. This helps in better evaluation of the proposal and helps proposal manager be considered as a contributing member of the team.
4. Some other areas, though not applicable across all industries and verticals are gain knowledge of automation tools such as VBA,RPA, Python/Alteryx and apply them in their work spheres.

Above are few areas which deal managers shall focus on and as per individuals interest, they shall upskill themselves in different functions such as becoming an expert in solutioning in at least one technology, understanding scope of integration, get a good grasp on legal and contractual terms and conditions, cross border transactions, etc.

Deal Managers should always try and be one step ahead in contributing towards organizations growth by taking additional responsibilities & bringing in more value if not their roles will considered more of transactional in nature and will always be considered as support group or part of cost center.