Although many companies constantly pursue growth and development opportunities, they often overlook a promising opportunity that’s available in-house: their pre-sales team.

Pre-sales fulfills a critical function in the revenue engine because it has ownership over the proof of concept (POC) phase of the sales process. If a POC doesn’t lead to a technical win, there’s zero chance of the deal closing. In many organizations, however, the pre-sales team is left in the background as the account executive gets the credit for closing the deal.

Organizations need to shift their thinking and recognize that pre-sales activities play a critical role in the success of every opportunity and the overall financial health of the company. Businesses with solid pre-sales capabilities steadily attain win rates of 40% to 50% in new business and 80% to 90% in renewal business.

Proof of Success is the label that we’ve developed for the outcome that we should all be aspiring to. If the customer receives the benefit that they hired our product for, they will be in an improved state. Here are a few things that you can do to leverage your pre-sales team to become a bigger driver of revenue.

1. Focus on the Right Pre-Sales Allocation

According to Harvard Business Review, companies often lose the bottom 5% of leads because of inadequate pre-sales resources. In hindsight, these leads could turn out to be your most valuable prospects. Your organization can tackle this challenge through smart pre-sales allocation.

With a dedicated pre-sales process flow, you can stack and assign resources more effectively. It also allows you to reduce the time necessary for attending each lead and it is a definite factor that can impact the total ROI.

2. Create Consistency

Consider a sales team of 50 account reps where a new strategic feature is rolled out. For too many companies, they cannot ensure that their SE’s and pre-sales staff are complying with the request to highlight and present this feature. Most organizations fall back on a launch call followed by individual managers pestering their team into compliance. But there is a better way. Using the Provarity Evaluate XM product, managers are able to make a simple change to the POC workflow that is the roadmap that their team executes against for every POC and by so doing establish compliance and consistency.

A Proof of Success system is a competitive advantage by allowing simple changes to the POC workflow to be made. This ensures that the team executes properly against every POC and by so doing establishes compliance and consistency.

Benefits include:

• Management is empowered to deploy universal Play Books across the entire sales organization to make adjustments in real-time based on lessons learned, new winning techniques, or other industry and market factors.
• Best practice activities can be tracked across all POC’s.
• Your company can now gather rich sales data that has never been obtainable and intelligence can be applied giving management actionable business insights.

3. Leverage the Right Tools and Technology

When pre-sales can only rely on unwieldy spreadsheets and custom fields in your CRM, it becomes quite challenging for communication to happen within their own team and beyond. Using the right collaboration tools, pre-sales can communicate with product teams, customer service, and other teams using data to obtain clear and actionable insights.

This will allow you to manage deals on your own terms and identify what opportunities need your attention. You will also be able to quickly identify gaps that, once closed, will help you position your products and services favorably in the market.

Enhance the Efficiency of Your Pre-Sales Team with Provarity

Investing in a Proof of Success platform makes good economic sense for your organization. Consider how much you spend on marketing. One joint study by Deloitte and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business found that technology and software firms invest 25% of their overall budgets in marketing, making it one of the highest costs of running a business. Yet, very few of the leads you generate from marketing turn into viable sales pursuits.

If only 4% of your leads make it into the evaluation stage of the sales cycle, you may be spending too much on pursuits that carry a low probability to generate revenue. With a Proof of Success platform, you gain essential visibility into those high-potential deals for a fraction of the cost you spend on marketing.

Our solution is designed to integrate with a company’s CRM having technology with enhanced functionality to allow sales organizations to maximize the full potential of every single evaluation conducted every year. The evaluation environment starts with discovery – the evaluations – the delivery and adoption of their solution as well as the renewal. The renewal is the ultimate “Proof of Performance."

With Provarity by your side, you can compete and win in today's ever-evolving B2B landscape. You'll have a systematic way to track the status of every deal and make the most of your POCs. For existing customers, you'll have the insight to spot problems and take action before you risk losing accounts. The result is a well-organized sales process that helps you close new contracts while retaining customers—which can drive revenue growth and propel your company to new heights of success.

If you are looking for a viable solution that helps you streamline your pre-sales operations, choose Provarity. Our unique Proof of Success platform closes the pre-sales process gaps and fast-tracks deal closing, creating a positive impact on your bottom line.

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