CMS IT Services is one of India's top IT services firm with more than 7000 employees spread across 30 branches and 220 locations across the country, servicing customers in - banking, insurance, telecom, manufacturing and retail verticals. In this webinar conducted @ Aug 2020, CMS' Director & Head-PreSales talks about: > The role of Pre-sales in improving bid win rates and sales effectiveness > How CMS leveraged Pricebid.co to increase its bid productivity > Challenges in introducing new business processes and systems and how they handled it

1. Confidential @Copyright 2020
To improve Sales
Focus on Pre-Sales!

2. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Agenda
• About CMS IT Services
• The role of stakeholders
• Structured approach
• Severity 1 application
• Road ahead

3. Confidential @Copyright 2020
About CMS IT
Years of Epic Service
With New Age Dimensions 7000+ Employees 220 Locations 300+ Customers
Best in Class Services Innovative Approach Accomplished team Focussed Management

4. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Profile : Prasanna Rajadhyax
• Director & Head Pre-Sales
• 16 years of IT Experience delivering Customer services, transition,
system integration, complex solutions
• Solution design, integration and costing
• Collaboration and relationship management with OEM / partners
• Complex and large bid solution
• Technology and solution consulting
• Cloud solution consulting and design
• IT Advisory and consulting
• People management
• Transition Management
• Past Organizations : DXC, HP/HPE, IBM, and Wipro

5. Confidential @Copyright 2020
The role of stakeholders
- Improving pursuit quality

6. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Sales + Pre-Sales: Partners in Crime
• Observations on Sales and Presales :
• Always buddies because of travel, lunch/dinner, meetings
• together can win any deal easily
• Can improve or impact P&L
• Hide facts , risks and issues
• How can we address this:
• Documented and online process
• Transparent reviews
• Opportunity feedback
• Highlighting Missing elements / risks in
solution
• Impact on KRA

7. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Pay Attention to Presales
https://hbr.org/2015/02/to-improve-sales-pay-more-attention-to-presales
Souping up the presales engine can
yield
• 5-point improvement in conversion
rates,
• 6–13% improvement in revenue,
and
• 10–20% improvement in the speed
of moving prospects through the
sales process
1. 5% of bids were simply dropped due to insufficient presales resources
2. As much as 40% of opportunities were not assigned to bid manager five days after
receiving an RFP
3. The sales reps spent 22% of their time on proposal development—more than double
the industry standard
4. The company’s technical presales experts were not assigned to the highest- opportunity
bids
5. There were frequent disruptions to their (presales’) assignments
This approach helps
companies staff 15% more
deals with same presales
resources, and anticipate
30% more “must win”
deals
• Develop an approach that gives at-
a-glance picture of the
availability and skillsets of
presales staff
• Redesign and simplify the bid
review and approval process
• Institute a mechanism that allows
account managers to provide
suggestions and recommendations
to the presales team immediately
following a bid submission
“To Improve Sales Pay More Attention to Pre-Sales”

8. Confidential @Copyright 2020
A good ratio is 1 : 3 - 5 (depending upon the size of the opportunity)
Wins!
Customer
Sales Pre-Sales
Sr. # Organization Sales Pre-Sales
1 CMS IT 2.5 1
2 IBM 1 1
3 DXC 1 1
Sales : Pre-sales Ratio

9. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Invest in Pre-sales
Effective presales activities—the steps
that lead to qualifying, bidding on,
winning, and renewing a deal—can help
B2B companies achieve consistent win
rates of 40 to 50% percent in new
business and 80 to 90% in renewals.
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/digital-blog/good-to-great-what-b2b-companies-do-to-raise-their-digital-quotient
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/advanced-analytics-in-software-pricing-enabling-sales-to-price-with-confidence
“Embedding insightsdeep into the
commercial process—including quote
configuration, compensation, streamlined
approval levels, and a new approach to sales
performance management—can create
significant improvements in return on sales: 4
– 10% and sometimes even better is typical in
software, higher than in any other industry”
Improvements in return
on sales
(operating profit as a %
of sales)
New business win rates
Renewals

10. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Leveraged Pricebid.co -
Structured Approach

11. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Before Pricebid.co
Opportunity
Engagement
Process :
• No documented process
• Verbal qualification, no strategy
• Random bids
• Approvals on emails
• Costing floating across organization
• Unknown risks
Systems :
• No specific system
• Data used to be with Opp owner
• Sometimes on OneDrive
Challenges
• Approval Issues post closure
• Multiple version on documents
• Deal P&L grey area
• Presales productivity
• No visibility on submission dates
Negative Outcome
• Loss of productivity due to
escalations
• Multiple conflicts
• No Single source of truth
• No visibility on performance

12. Confidential @Copyright 2020
After Pricebid.co
Opportunity
Engagement
Process :
• Validation /qualification in system
• Only qualified opportunities to work
• Review and Approval process flow
• Handover process with Pricebid.co
• Risk documentation
Systems :
• Pricebid.co is a single system for bid
management
• Integration with CRM for smooth flow
of opportunities
• Enhancements are in bucket list
Visibility
• No. of opportunities running live
• Where the opportunity is halted
• Same version of documentation
• Submission dates are known
• Multiple reports for management
Positive Outcome
• Zero escalations post closure
• Single source of truth / No conflicts
• Performance analysis through reports
• Repository of all the bids for
references
• Productivity improvement by 35%

13. Confidential @Copyright 2020
CRM v/s Pricebid.co
Business
Process>>
Before the bid AND after
decisions Includes all
opportunities – suspect,
prospect, etc
For qualified opportunities only
Helps you – develop, review, approve,
and analyze – the bid response
Users>> Sales, Presales, CXOs Sales, Pre-sales/ Engineering, Delivery,
Finance, Legal, CXOs
Key
Functionality
>>
• Leads
• Contacts
• Accounts
• Deals
• Activities
• Analysis
• Bid Assignment & Tracking
• Bid Development
• Bid Review
• Risk Mitigation
• Bid Approvals
• Bid Documents
• Bid Analysis for won & lost deals
• Manage the sales pipe-line
• Customer contact repository
Benefits>> • Improved win ratio
• Single repository of bid reference
CRM Pricebid.co

14. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Just an Application to
Severity 1 Application

15. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Management of Change
Challenges Incentives / Discipline
Understanding of Application • Multiple learning sessions
• FAQ’s
• Video education
Acceptance by Sales / Ignored alerts in
Application
• Awards on opportunity creation in Pricebid.co
• Reminders
• One on one query resolution
• Stopped response on new deals
• Authorize Presales buddy to reject the deal
• Hard step on reduction of incentives
Following deal cycle • Emails / reminders for reviews
• Deal closure without review
• No email communication for deal review
CxO Focus • Reminders and alerts
• Escalation to CEO
• Complete silence on deal reviews
• Awareness campaign and online debate

16. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Blind spots vs Visibility
I did not know Benefit Type I know / I achieved
When are we submitting ? Qualitative Submission date
Where is it stuck ? Qualitative Whom to contact
What are the risks ? Quantitative Risks and its impact
Which all documents to submit ? Qualitative On click document repository
Which all opportunities you are working ? Quantitative Exact bandwidth of resource
Let me know your wins for variable pay ? Quantitative Exact number of wins
Why did we loose the opportunity ? Qualitative Oh !! This is the reason
Can you Send me all the documents to verify ? Qualitative Documentation available @ Single click
Do we have some reference of same
opportunity ?
Qualitative Reference available @ Single click
What is our win ratio ? Quantitative Analytics to show Win ratio improved by 13%

17. Confidential @Copyright 2020
Road Ahead . . .
• CRM integration
• Innovative analysis
• Automation on deal registration
• Downstream integration

18. Thank You