Professional Services Pre-Sales Methodology
PS Process & Methodology Mapped to the Customer Journey
The Professional Services process and methodology fits within the Customer journey that is supported by Customer Success.Professional Services contributes to the customer journey from the point of SOW Close through the Project Close phase.
Source, GitLab Team Members Only
PS Process Methodology Stages
The above diagram (slide 4) is meant to describe the Directly Responsible Individuals (DRIs), Activities, Outcomes, and Tools/Collateral for each stage of the methodology. We can also see clear categorization of stages in pre-sales and post-sales phases.
In the linked pages below, you can see a detailed drill down into the steps within each stage that individuals use to perform activities to deliver desired outcomes per each stage. These pages are split by the Phase of the selling process (Pre-sales vs Post-sales).
Pre-Sales Overview
The purpose of this page is to document the sales-assisted selling motion used by Professional Services Engagement Managers and Regional Delivery Managers. If you’re on a GitLab sales account team looking for information, try these pages on positioning professional services or selling professional services.
This page will help outline the when and how to get involved with positioning and scoping services, how to estimate, how to use SOW generation software, and the processes to gain approval.
Note: Services engagements can take two forms. This will focus on the custom SOW scoping process, not the Standard SKU process.
For custom SOWs, the workflow for SOW creation involves a partnership between the Account Team and the Professional Services Team.
Source, GitLab Team Members Only
1. Positioning
- DRI: Account Team (SAE/AE, SA, CSM)
- Supported By: Engagement Manager
MEDDPICC
Professional services can be positioned when a prospect becomes a customer (e.g. the Land of a new deal) or when an already existing customer is growing their staff or interesting in adopting new features of GitLab (e.g. expansion). The SA, SAE, AE, or CSM (e.g. “Account Team”) is primarily responsible for this process, following the Command of the Message and MEDDPICC messaging frameworks.
For the larger, more strategic customers PS Engagement Managers tend to get involved earlier in the selling process to help with discovery and provide lessons learned on rollout from past engagements. For the medium sized customers, Engagement managers tend to get involved with account teams when the SFDC stage 4 (Proposal) is achieved.
PS Opp Qualification
As the overall subscription deal is progressing, the account team should begin to qualify in or out an attached professional services opportunity. They can do this with some simple scripts to first establish value of professional services. Next they should ask qualifying questions like:
- How do you plan to execute the upcoming transition onto the GitLab platform?
- Who will manage this, both from a technical perspective and a change management standpoint?
- What will that person or people be de-prioritizing to drive this?
- Have those people worked with the intricacies of such a transition in the past?
- How do you plan to surface and manage risks throughout the transition period?
If the customer is uncertain to any of these questions, you can assert that it might make sense to bring in the PS Engagement Manager in to scope the engagement as an option to help derisk the rollout of GitLab and maximize the value/impact of the subscription purchase.
AE Creates PS Only Opp in SFDC
Once its identified that the customer will likely want to engage with professional services, its the responsibility of the Account Team to get in touch with the Engagement Manager.
2. Scoping
- DRI: Engagement Manager
- Supported By: PS Practice, Account Team (SAE/AE, SA, CSM)
Gather Data
After the services calculator is run by the Account Team, scoping issues and Project Scheduling Intake issues are automatically created and land in the PS Plan Project. Using this customer scoping issue and Project Scheduling Intake issue, the engagement manager gathers data asynchronously from the account team. Questions about the potential engagement can sometimes be answered by the Account Team from the discovery that was done already. We want to make sure we avoid asking duplicate questions to the customer. In some cases when the account team cannot provide the level of detail to create an egagement, the EM will meet with the Account team and Customer to ask additional discovery questions to get to a level of detail needed. Once the data has been gathered, the EM will populate the answers to the Project Scheduling Intake issue.
Create Engagement Estimate
A PS Engagement Estimate spreadsheet used for scoping services. The Engagement Manager uses the PS engagement estimate spreadsheet to define the services in scope and estimate the amount of time for each activity. There is a catalog of activities in the SOW generation automation project or a list of services can be found at our offerings framework page.
Iterate / Review Engagement Estimate
After the first iteration of building detail into the straw-man, the Engagement manager posts a request for review in the professional services slack channel to the Account team. Often the Engagement Manager will get on a zoom call with the customer and provide context and gather feedback from the customer.
Generate SOW
Once the Engagement Manager can get buy in from the account team and/or customer on the size and activities included in the services engagement, the SOW generation automation can be run using the straw-man as an input. The engagement manager is responsible for running this automation which can be done by following the instructions on the readme in the above project.
Iterate/Review SOW Data
Once the SOW is generated, it is ready for review by the account team. Iteration can occur here but should be minimized if the proper iteration was done on the Straw-man Steps.
SOW Review/Approval
After one or more rounds of iteration on feedback from the account team, the SOW will be ready for Review and Approval by Sr. Director of Professional Services. The review processes are signaled in the professional services slack channel and at-mention the GitLab engagement stakeholders.
3. Delivery Prep
- DRI: Project Manager
- Supported By: EM, PM, PSE, TA, Account Team
Once the engagement moves to stage 6, awaiting signature in salesforce, the engagement manager schedules an intro meeting between the PM and the customer stakeholder to discuss “how we manage projects at GitLab”. During this call, the PM will also discuss resource assignment, and scheduling details. Simultaneously, the PM will schedule an internal transition meeting with the EM, PM, PSE, TA, and Account Team to review the technical discussions that occurred during the customer scoping meetings. This is a opportunity for the entire team to discuss and disclose the inner workings and dynamics of the customer project team.
PM Introduction
Engagement managers introduce the PS Project Manager as they are in contract with the customer during the scoping exercise and are perfectly positioned to do so.
Resource Identification
The PS Proejct Coodinator, working closely with the Regional Delivery Manager, will identify the best resource to deliver the project based on skillset, timezone, personality, tenure, and availability.
Project Prep call
This is a call between the customer stakeholder and the PS Project Manager to discuss HOW we work. Where we track project progress, what status report will look like, what the meeting cadence might be, a review of the contract terms that affect how we work such as minimum hours per week, expiration dates, delay language, and most importantly, how to achieve mutual agreement with the customer on a preliminary project schedule, prior to the kick-off call which includes the entire project team.
Check out the PS Delivery methodology to understand the details around pre-sales handoff to the delivery team, to ensure a successful relationship and productive engagement.
4. SOW Execution/Close
- DRI Engagement Manager
- Supported By: PS Leader, Sr. PSE, SAE/AE, Legal, Finance, Deal Desk
Finance Approval The engagement manager can kick off the finance approval process in Salesforce. TODO: Add more details.
Legal Approval
The Engagement Manager is responsible for creating a Legal Approval Case in Salesforce from the associated opportunity. This process often involves reviewing and accepting redlines from the customer and from our legal team. The source of truth for the latest SOW is managed in the SFDC legal case. The EM should coordinate who “holds the pen” to ensure we maintain version control of the SOW with the latest redlines.
Customer Signature
Once the SOW has been approved by PS leadership, Legal and Revenue, the account team is owns the process of executing the SOW. They should take the approved SOW from the legal case and route it for signature with the customer.
Deal Desk updates SFDC
Once the SOW is fully executed, the deal desk team updates the Salesforce PS-Only opportunity to closed-won.
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