Making the Most of Consultative Services

March 15, 2006

By Charles Waltner, News@Cisco

Consultative services are challenging but absolutely necessary. At least that's the opinion of some of Cisco System's most successful channel partners. Significant technological, competitive, and marketplace trends have greatly reduced the overall profitability of pure product-based channel partner business models. Instead, professional services backed by sophisticated consultative and advanced technical expertise are emerging as the keys to long-term success.

There's no doubt that expertise and business consultancy skills help land customers. But professional services are expensive to run and demanding to implement. To make the most of professional services, Cisco channel partners must commitment to rigorously training both sales and technical employees while judiciously managing margins, productivity, and other business elements.

Successful professional services start with putting your best foot forward, says Tom Foley, CEO of Networked Information Systems Inc., Woburn, Mass, Cisco's 2005 U.S. channel partner of the year. He says his company has thrived by making sure that sales, professional services, and technical staff work as a team when making initial contact with a customer.

"Whenever a sales person isn't doing well, inevitably I will see that they are going on sales calls alone," Foley says. "Just telling the customer you have a wonderful technical project manager isn't going to cut it. But if a customer can talk to the manager and see first-hand how sharp he is, that's the difference maker. There's no substitute for taking the time to bring knowledgeable and experienced experts out to the customer before a sale."

Key to such initial meetings is to have a strategic vision that looks beyond the network and encompasses the customer's business goals. Foley says this approach greatly helps getting the ear of corporate executive officers and building their trust.

Foley adds that such teamwork requires putting in place the proper incentives for sales, consultative, and technical personnel. He also concedes that having such highly skilled employees involved in pre-sales assignments is expensive, but it is absolutely necessary. "There's definitely an upfront cost, but by making the investment, it raises our win rate dramatically."

To maximize the investment in professional services capabilities, Jon Jensen, CEO of Nexus IS Inc., Valencia, Calif., says channel partners must carefully manage employee time with a technique he sums up as "busy and billable." Jensen says channel partners also have to be wary of underpricing their professional services, otherwise potentially high-margin operations will bleed red ink. The key is to work with customers that have both an appreciation and a need for such advanced capabilities, Jensen says. "Not every customer sees value in having such consultative services, so we focus on those customers where our capabilities can deliver a strong return on their investments."

Professional services employees also require constant care and feeding, Foley says. Channel partners need methodical education programs to help sales reps, technicians, and consultants stay on top of business and technology issues. Networked Information Systems, for example, runs a mandatory after hours technology information class once a week. "It's really hard to keep up with the changes, and if we did such training less often, our people would just fall behind," Foley says.

While developing and managing services is challenging, Cisco channel partners don't have to undertake such a task alone. Recognizing the crucial importance of such sophisticated offerings, Cisco has developed Lifecycle Services. The goal of Cisco's Lifecycle Services training is to share with its channel partners the methods and "best practices" Cisco has develop in its two decades of designing and building networks, including its own.

Cisco has built Lifecycle Services into the training and qualification of Cisco's new channel partner program. By learning these repeatable and transferable skills, channel partners can raise the professional services capabilities of all of their employees while bringing greater efficiencies and productivities to their businesses.

Charles Waltner is a freelance journalist in Oakland, Calif.