Technical consulting and sales in a changing customer workplace: Part One

A friend of mine shared a story recently about how he meets some of his federal customers at a Panera or Starbucks. While this is not an entirely new phenomenon, methods of interaction between salespeople and customers are always changing. Meeting with federal customers in person is becoming more challenging because modern work habits provide more flexibility in the frequency, style, and decorum of sales communication. The bigger challenge though is on the customer side: those in roles responsible for vetting, selecting and deploying technical based solutions are facing an onslaught of technology choices that is almost too much to navigate. 

For those in consulting and sales roles, it is important to communicate technical topics clearly, in ways that can be best understood by engineers and data architects as well as those without the same technical background. Program managers and those in leadership, financial and line of business roles all need to be part of the technical conversation to some degree. To make it work for everyone, less is more and the rule of three (three topics; limited to three graphics at most) is a great way to get the conversation going early in a consultative sale.  

Keeping technology concepts simple while putting together the right technical solution elements is a big challenge on its own. Additionally, customers are experiencing cultural and work-style changes each day. Deloitte shows in a 2-minute video entitled Navigating the future of work that in a world filled with technologies like AI, machine learning, vast amounts of data, and changing demographics, the opportunity for sales, engineering and consulting teams to guide the customer in nuanced and technical ways could become more and more important. That’s our job. It has become way more involved and multidimensional than sending white papers or delivering PowerPoints. 

It is the technical sales teams and architects, or put another way “technical ambassadors”, who will be increasingly called upon to assist in defining solutions, shaping plans, and explaining the role of technology to solve problems with the backdrop of a changing federal workforce and workplace. Our impact in helping customers sift through the technical choices is a major responsibility we bear in partnering with the federal government to create and deploy the most sensible and secure solutions. In part two of this series, we will examine some of the choices available for customers to define, refine and succeed in implementing technical solutions in a changing workplace while under increasing budget and policy pressure.