Good pre-sales consultants of domestic software companies mainly come from the following channels: First, personnel trained by international software companies. For example, the entry of SSA Company of 1992 has trained a large number of consultants, and Kelon's project has also trained some consultants, which is the beginning of the consulting industry in China software industry. Second, the cultivation of foreign enterprises. Some people who work in large foreign companies in China. They have learned a lot from the management experience of foreign companies, but these consultants often only know the management of a single industry and a single department. Third, domestic finance and MRPII companies have the ability to understand. Through years of software system implementation practice in domestic enterprises and self-study of some management knowledge, I have gradually become an excellent software consultant.
The training of consultants is a very important thing in software companies. The formation of a consultant's consciousness will experience the cultivation of product knowledge, computer knowledge, industry knowledge, management knowledge, humanities knowledge, sociology knowledge, logic knowledge, operational research knowledge and even history and geography knowledge. It takes at least three to five years to train a good consultant.
Summarizing more than ten years of software consulting experience, the author thinks that the word "communication" is the most important. Communication is divided into two levels: the first level is the communication of enterprise management concept, which is called intellectual conquest; The second level is the transmission of emotional meaning, which is the so-called military conquest.
For the second level of communication, all pre-sales personnel who have mastered the "China characteristics" sales method have it, which is also very useful for some projects. Like some financial software, small-scale invoicing software, through "one brand and two deductions, revolutionary wine every day", as long as you have good emotional communication with middle-level cadres in enterprises, you can sign the bill immediately, and naturally you don't need to do the first-level communication. "Nothing you do for sales is shameful!" This slogan put forward by a famous domestic enterprise has achieved the ultimate in secondary communication.
What we lack most is the first level of communication, that is, the communication of management concepts. It is especially prominent in some large-scale projects, especially in some enterprises with modern management consciousness. Because many domestic enterprises have realized that they have problems or may have problems, but they don't know where the reasons are, and naturally they don't know where to start solving the problems. At this time, enterprises often pin their hopes on the information management system, but they don't know that without the corresponding management structure and process, the information system can't play or can't fully play its role. At this time, if software companies use consulting as a means to help enterprises find the crux, and on this basis, increase value and help enterprises effectively improve their management level, they can communicate well with the top management of enterprises, and naturally sell the software. Of course, in the face of different enterprises, there should be different ways of communication with management concepts. For managers of state organs and state-owned enterprises, consultants may be more likely to talk about the support of software management for improving political achievements, while managers of private enterprises are more concerned about the support of software management for performance.
As the software market becomes more and more mature, customers' purchasing mentality becomes more and more stable, competitors' sales methods become more and more sophisticated, and simple software sales will become more and more difficult. Software sales based on consulting services will definitely become a game played by high IQ people. "Doctoral sales, undergraduate implementation" partner sales model will become a trend of software sales. Of course, from traditional software sales to consulting sales is not an overnight thing. The growth of pre-sales consultation often goes through the following stages: using hands (software demonstration), using brains (business process combing), using heart (management mode communication) and using words (mutual trust). Fortunately, now, the consciousness of "consulting sales" is being gradually accepted, and consulting companies have begun to pay attention to the training of consulting practitioners. I believe that with the emergence of a large number of qualified consultants, IT will become more and more important in China.