November 30, 2018
Andrew Marti is a Presales Lead at SAP. Our Head of CX, Jim Kalbach, caught up with him to find out more about how his team uses MURAL for sales.
ANDREW: I manage half of our Virtual Presales Team at SAP. Presales at SAP works directly with customers and prospects to help them understand the value of our solutions. Essentially, we deliver software demos, which help customers see how the technology can improve their business. Our Virtual Team is a unique subset of the larger team in that we don’t travel. We are focused on speed and scale to get in front of more customers, quicker.
Despite being a virtual team, we still have to create a consistently memorable and engaging experience with our customers. We’re always looking at new technology and techniques to improve the customer experience. We do a lot of work with immersive camera technology (think weatherpeople, but for software), video creation and MURAL.
ANDREW: Here’s a picture of a member of our team, Lele Palomo, with the technology in action. Using 3D cameras and technology from a company called Personify, we can put ourselves into our presentations, software demos, even our murals! Just like the weatherperson.
It continuously ‘wows’ the audience and helps us establish a personal connection with the customer.
ANDREW: In our role, we need to understand a lot of things from the customer: their current landscape, their goals, business drivers, current challenges, etc. We call these discussions, 'Discovery meetings'. Traditionally, we capture that information in one-sided phone interviews, which are beneficial to us (but less so for the customer).
We now use MURAL to facilitate these discussions. This allows for Discovery conversations to be more visual and more interactive; it brings the customer into the discussion.
In some cases, the customer can contribute their own items to the template. The template becomes a living document that we can refer to in subsequent meetings. It's also easy for us to share with other members of the SAP team and with the customer.
ANDREW: There are a few reasons why we like doing Discovery this way:
ANDREW: My advice is to start small and simple. Find an early adopter or two. These should be folks who understand and are bought into the concept. Have them help you assemble the first version of the template.
This first template should be simple. Don’t try to overengineer it. Ensure it covers the main topics you need to cover with your audience and no more. Document your early successes and share them wildly. And, allow plenty of room for improvisation. Encourage your partners to add additional information and insights to the template as they emerge. Remember to share your successes!
