Today i would like to talk about the role of Pre Sales Consultant in IT industry.

Successful career as pre sales consultant is a combination of few characteristic …Individuals part of Pre Sales in IT industry should be better a part of COE (Center of excellence) for any organization. Pre Sales Person is a combo pack of high technical acumen and business values. Understanding the Need of the client from a development perspective is important and then using the managerial skills of high communication, proactive innovation and customer delight focus to achieve the goal and bringing in the business should be a key aim of pre sales consultant. He/She should not be constrained to new learning curves tech or business wise.

Sound Knowledge of tech, domain and trade is a must in IT Pre Sales. I also feel that the companies hiring people under pre sales tag should give this team space to grow with high emphasis on training and skill development.

I started as a techie guy in Microsoft Technologies did programming for all the three areas of desktop, web and mobile application. Did my MCP certification. Then as per the company goals and need to spread its leg in ERP domain I got trained in People Soft Oracle Product Suites I chose my field of study in CRM, that mean company pitching any ERP lead for CRM will by my ownership in terms of reviewing the RFP and preparing the Proposal and Statement of Work. Then to add the flavor to my skills I got trained on Business Intelligence Tool (BO XI) and also did my study on the tech and business of data warehousing. Side by Side I was always updating myself with the new market trends and analysis.

Thus continuous learning and proactive response to client requirement and ability to foresee the bigger picture in terms of business success for the company and customer delight for the client should be key areas of consideration for pre sales consultant.

One of the main duties as a Pre-Sales consultant - apart from supporting sales to make the quote - is helping the customer to get the solution which is required. It's not a secret that sales has not the strength in solution know how. It might need some courage for a constructive conflict with sales and sometimes in exceptional cases with the customer.

The Pre-Sales is the person of trust for the customer, almost from the first to the last contact. If the customer does not trust the sales person the Pre-Sales is fairly the last account instance for the company. This responsibility should be taken very serious.

What do you think: How important is it for you that customers trust you?

People often say the Sales Rep must be the most trusted person in a sales process. I kind of agree with that but reality tells me different.

All the customers know what a sales guy is after for therefore I think it's even more important for the Pre-Sales people to have a really good relationship with the prospect.

The advantage the Pre-Sales Consultant has is that he can show real expertise on the products or solutions he sells. This gives trust to the people who need to decide if they will choose vendor A or B.

From my point of view trust is IMPORTANT and not only in Pre-Sales :-)

Thus to conclude i will write down the basic Pre Sales Consultants Attributes and Qualities

[DUTIES]
Objectives
Organise
Decide
Control, measure and evaluate
Empowerment

[UTILITIES]
Meeting
Reports, Email etc.
Job-Design, Assignment -Control
Individual working method
Budget
Performance Measurement
Systematic garbage collection

[FOCUS]
Doing the Right Things and Doing Them Right!
Understand what and how
Be responsible and communicate

Hope this article clear and make understand the role and responsibility of Pre Sales Consultant in any organization