Customers validate offerings against technical requirements, e.g., features and capabilities, to achieve business outcomes and to integrate the Disruptive Innovation into their existing environment. For this the Disruptor must provide extensive education to the market especially in the early stages of the Innovation Adoption Lifecycle. We summarize this function as Technology Management, in companies there are different names for it, including Solution Architect, Solution Consultant, Pre Sales Consultant and many more.
To provide this education function, a successful Disruptor must provide:
Product knowledge: In-depth understanding of features, functions, technical specifications, and potential application scenarios. In addition to the knowledge about the company’s own products, Technology Management must also understand products of the main competitors (new and incumbent) and adjacent technology areas (e.g. Observability and public cloud).
Assessment of customer needs: Evaluate the technical requisites and difficulties faced by customers, collect information about the customer's existing systems, infrastructure, and specific needs to customize product demonstrations or solution proposals.
Solution design: Personalized solutions or configurations that showcase how the product can cater to the customer's distinct needs. In addition to the proposed technical components it is important to also consider how the proposed technology will improve the way prospects work.
Technical Presentations: Presenting technical information and conducting demonstrations for potential customers highlighting key features, functions, and advantages of the product. Rather than presenting a “bill of materials” think of how a day in the life of your prospects gets easier or better.
Proof of Concept (PoC): Development of PoCs to assess and validate the product's capabilities within the customer’s operational environment. Include a mutually agreed plan about who does what before, during and after the POC as well as the success criteria and create a simple written report covering the results.
Feedback loop: Providing feedback to the product development teams, drawing from their interactions with customers for enhancing the product and aligning it with the evolving needs of the market. Obviously, there are more product feature requests than the provider is able to fulfill. The Disruptor can use a decision matrix with relevant criteria for their company to decide which requests will be fulfilled. These include current backlog, calculated effort, estimated time of delivery, size of opportunity of requesting customer or how much additional customer commitment is required to proceed, is it a necessity (e.g. security or compliance requirement).
At Disruption Selling we know from experience that success starts with hiring the right talent. To allow our customers to make the right hiring decisions we have created a range of useful tools. These tools include roles & responsibilities, job leveling guides, effective onboarding programs, how to conduct exceptional interviews and many more.
To round off this post about Technology Management roles we want to highlight one specific trait to look for when making a hire: Look for empathic and possibly extroverted candidates. It will make life so much easier for you.
Comments