1. Guidelines for Successful Product Evaluations

2. Objectives Understand how to do a successful Nexthink V5 evaluation
Understand what to deliver and avoid most common failures
Increase the evaluation success rate

3. Evaluation? PoC? PoV? NBS? …?
Whatever you name your evaluation, the song remains the same…
…the process of transforming a qualified opportunity into a deal
--> The shorter, the better! Extending an evaluation rarely paid off! 3-5 weeks is typical duration of a successful evaluation
--> The day before is critical, The first day is key, the first week is the most important, Then it’s all about closing!

4. Key success factors People @Customer
Sales <--> Presales/SE Teamwork
Phases & Milestones
Area of interest and related deliverables

5.
Involve all levels, they are equally important to our success (or failure)
Use the same data but deliver different stories and messages
Help me impacting the business
Help me to achieve corporate goals
Help me to succeed my strategic initiatives
Help me driving my projects
Help me managing my team’s deliverables
Help me communicating my delivery
Help me delivering my daily tasks
Help me satisfying my manager’s reporting needs

6. People @Customer IT staff Middle management, team leaders
Make them use the product
Generate enthusiasm not threat (not here to audit, control their jobs but make their life easier)
Help them solve existing issues, discoverer valuable intelligence to generate use cases
Gather info (current and future projects, changes)
Middle management, team leaders
Report early in the evaluation the initial progress to get them more interested and involved
They will guide to the right area of focus for next phases
Give them access to the portal, build them a few widgets that will help monitor their projects and KPIs
Decision makers
If the staff needs it, and the managers support it, executives will be ready to invest
They do not buy tools, they invest in roadmaps and vision
Key message is on how Nexthink can improve/complement other big projects and current (future planned) tools/investments

7. Sales <--> Presales/SE Teamwork
Define what will mater
Detect who should be addressed and how
Use findings to raise management interest
Guide the pre-sales.
Build the story that will resonate
Sales
Interesting findings
Detect the team’s issues
Link Nexthink to the main initiatives
Find the major cases
Make sure the story makes sense
Pre-sales

8. Phases & milestones

9. Area of interest and related deliverables
Operations
QoS
Windows Migration
Desktop Standardization
Bandwidth Usage
Software Licenses
Security & Compliance
Malware and Antivirus
Corporate Policies
Abnormal Behaviour
Network Access
Continuous Audit
Helpdesk & Support
Proactive Approach
Time to isolate problems
Software versions
Reduce Tickets
Change Management
Initiatives
Governance
ISO / ITIL
SOC, NOC
Transformation VDI / Migration
Automation

10. 10 recommendations Don’t start unless the business case is made
Don’t count on the evaluation to qualify a deal or solve a problem
3 weeks is the ideal duration, max 5 weeks. The first days are critical, be ready to work hard these days!
The evaluation project is driven by the sales because it’s a sales job, including the final presentation!
Do 80% of the evaluation in 20% of your time, only 20% max of what you do will interest the customer!
If they use the product during the evaluation, they will not be able to live without it
The last presentation is a sales meeting, not an audit submission
Address all levels during and at the final presentation of the evolution
Present cases, not list of findings; better 3 undebatable cases than 50 findings unrelated to anyone’s job, priorities, mission
The presentation takes 30min but 2 days to be prepared, a report is optional and provided only after the final presentation