"Sell it Right": from Office to Office365

What is Office 365?

As former Office 365 Product Manager I always liked to challenge people when I was presenting. It all started when I decided to use my presentation skills training that said the importance of the first 15 minutes in a 1 hour presentation, which is basically saying if you do not capture the attention of your audience at the beginning you will lose your audience forever. So, use the first 15 minutes to win your audience and you have it connected to you for 45 more minutes. I believe the same applies for a sales talk, win your customer mind during the first 15 minutes, show the impact of your message early on, and you're going to have more time to go into detail with the attention you need and win his heart.

Phase 1: the challenge

In this sense I keep challenging my partners and customers to opening any dialogue with the following question: "What is Office 365?". After 20 seconds or so someone always dares to say something, and what I have heard most of the times are things like: "Office", "Word, Excel, PowerPoint", "Office as a service", "Office in the cloud", and even answers totally wrong such as "Azure", "Virtualized Office". That's exactly what we need to start organizing ideas, addressing questions and gathering the answers to get a simple sequence like: Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc) + Exchange (email, calendar, contacts, tasks, etc) + SharePoint (intranet, portal, collaboration, cloud storage, etc) + Skype (instant messaging, presence, video conferencing, voice, etc) + Yammer (social network). 

In short, Office 365 = Office + Exchange + SharePoint + Skype + Yammer? Wrong! Wrong? How is it wrong? The right answer is: "Office 365 = Exchange + SharePoint + Skype + Yammer + Office".

And then you must be asking yourself "what's the difference?". And I come back to the technique of the 15 minutes to win a client or lose it for a whole hour. You will not gain the attention you want and need when you begin talking about Office 365 for what he already knows or ever expected. You do not need to explain what Microsoft Office is for most people, and these people were not thrilled just by the new features of Excel, or the new Word interface, or anything else that has in the most recent version of the product, because at the end it is still a Microsoft Office that everybody already knows and already uses.

Phase 2: the first 15 minutes pitch

Now, if you talk about Office 365 as a solution your client could sync e-mails on any device including Windows, Apple or Android; users will have their documents in the cloud and accessible anywhere, shared with people they control permissions, they are no longer concerned with versioning or attachments, they can edit documents directly in the browser, real-time with anyone else without a machine with Office installed on it; people will communicate easily by voice, video or creating video conferences for up to 250 people together (which is great for trainings, sales results presentations, project performance alignment, or any staff meetings for people working remotely) and this will also reduce telephony costs; the company is going to have a corporate social network, with the control and security it needs; and beyond all these great productivity tools Office 365 also comes with Microsoft Office that everybody knows and loves, but now including 5 licenses per user for PC or Mac and it will be always up to date without the need of new deployments or IT involvement.

How do you think this message will capture your customer's attention? Better? The same? Believe me, much better! 

Phase 3: connecting with a traditional Service business

Now that you have used the beginning of your conversation to show that Office 365 is much more than your customer thought and the great innovations Cloud can bring to his business are all included in Office 365, it's time to start slicing the Service (yes, because Office 365 is a Service and not a Product). In the 45 minutes remaining it's critical explain the different options to purchase Office 365, the same way we sign up for a cable TV with different packages and offers.

Using the cable TV analogy is an easy way to help your customer to understand. There is no "one size fits all" as some vendors are trying to sell, in fact they do it because their services have no value when divided as workloads services, or do not work independently from each other, or the customer only really likes one of them. Whatever the reason is, these companies package all together to win on aggregate value and reduce the final price, creating the false impression of having a competitive product to Office 365 for a smaller amount. But if you take just what the customer will in fact be using, it becomes clear that this "lower cost" actually costs more because the customer will be paying for something he does not use. This analysis is very effective and also helps to show many hidden costs in these low-cost solutions which are actually incomplete and expensive to deploy in an enterprise / commercial environment.

The best way to start slicing Office 365 is returning to its initial way to position it, service by service, but now making each one of them clear enough and clarifying they can be acquired as standalone solutions, which helps when calculating the final price ensuring customers are paying for what they have the intention to use. It would be something like: 

• Exchange Online: begin here, because e-mail is still the first workload that companies are looking to move to the Cloud. It is no longer a difference anymore, not enough for you to explain why in 10 minutes.
• Skype for Business: this has been my favorite because it shows in fact the Cloud impact on a very important solution in today's mobile world, communication. In addition to having the cloud holding all the complexity working with voice and video. Who likes to sign up a cable TV and wait one or two months for installation? No one! With Skype for Business is the same, you subscribe to it and in seconds are talking to the world and creating virtual rooms without any additional configuration or deployment project.
• SharePoint Online: if not the most powerful of all, certainly the most versatile. An intranet ready for any business, something unthinkable for smaller customers who can not afford to pay for a project of this magnitude out from scratch. But my favorite feature of SharePoint Online is perhaps OneDrive for Business, which is actually not the 1TB storage in the cloud for you to store your files. No, it's not! Is it not? No! It's much more than that, It is the Online Office (Word Online, Excel Online, PowerPoint Online and OneNote Online) in the browser, to create, edit and work in real time with anyone who has access to that document, which comes with 1TB storage to host your files (so, have you already changed the way you think and talk?).
• Yammer: a social network that you do not need to pay if you want to experience its basic features, just visit www.yammer.com and create the environment for your business. Best of all, you can use this environment to share files and also edit them using Office Online already included.
• Many other features like Delve, Power BI, Project Online, Visio Online, Groups, etc, etc, etc ... there you go talking about what makes sense to your customer and his industry.
• Office ProPlus: finally the time has come to talk about Office that everyone already knows and loves. As you also already know it I won't talk about it.

To close the conversation, it's time to say that everything you just explained can be purchased separately or in groups, as a happy meal (if you purchase multiple services together we give you a discount). Better than that, mixing and matching the packages depending on the profile of each user in the company.

How about the most complete package for the team that works in the office and something more simple as e-mail only to the external team?

Maybe a package with 5 licenses of Office for your finance and marketing teams so they can work using multiple devices, including those they use at home, while the support and administrative teams are only using Office Online that is already great for reviewing, small works or less complex editing?

Best of all, the two worlds (Office & Office Online) working on the same files without a problem, no exporting needed, not losing formatting (there are things that only the Office 365 does for you!).

Conclusion:

What I have described here is what we call "Sell it Right" motion. It is the power to position the Office 365 in its full magnitude without losing the attention of your customer, going to the extreme of its usability that is delivered by E5 (or E3 and Business Premium for less complex environments such as SMB), but mostly giving flexibility to your customer to start slowly, ensuring that he will pay for what he will be using and with a clear roadmap to go as far as he can get.

In a few weeks I will post the Part 2 talking about the impact of Usage and Consumption in the new Cloud business world and will become even more clear to understand why this sales behavior is crucial for a sustainable business in a long term customer relationship.

Happy selling!
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