TAS-mania

What do you do when you come across a large complex opportunity that requires weeks of time consuming, deep pre-sales professional services in order to win the deal? If you’re like many partners, you’ll go after the deal but not quite spend the amount of time necessary to really tailor the perfect solution that can clearly pay for itself. You look at the opportunity and say, “how much of my resources can I really afford to pore into this opportunity without any guarantee that I’ll win the deal?” A balancing act right? What if you could increase your odds of winning the deal without having to chew up all of your resources for several weeks?

Enter Avaya TAS (Technical Account Services). This is a program available to Avaya partners for the most application rich opportunities you find. So I know what your next question is.. how much does it cost? The good news it doesn’t cost anything if you don’t win the deal? This means there’s zero financial risk for you. If you win the deal, you pay Avaya for the professional services already completed. Of course, you could position it the same way with your client so his/her expectations are aligned with yours. Or, maybe you do charge the client 25% of the eventual feeup front so they’re invested and you  guarantee yourself some revenue. Here’s the benefits I see from this.

• Maximize your account control — if the client commits to this level of engagement, you’re in the driver’s seat.
• Much more application rich sales. I like to think application rich is a euphemism for “margin rich”.
• You can triage your finite engineering/PS  resources where they capture revenue most quickly.
• Dramatically increase your conversion rate — I seem to recall the closure rate is somewhere in the high 80′s%.

This could represent a major shift in how you approach these larger complex opportunities. Instead of selling the customer a very complex solution that solves all of their needs, you are selling them on a no risk opportunity to develop a tailored solution that pays for itself and helps them grow their business.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Tom