Clarification of Question by
allenj-ga
on
10 Jun 2004 04:22 PDT
Hi,my client is a financial services company working in the 401(k)
marketplace. Specifically, they provide the investment platform and
handle all of the administrative functions for a wide range of
customers. These customers' needs can range anywhere from start-up
plans with zero participants and zero assets, to large plans with
thousands of participants and billions in assets. It has become common
in the industry to take as many as five-six (or more) people on major
sales presentations. At a minium, this is difficult to coordinate and
expensive. More importantly, it adds complexity to the planning
process and increases the risk of delivering an inconsistent and
confusing sales message. In a "finals" presentation the presentation
team could include the salesperson, the administrator that would
handle the prospective customer's relationship, his/her manager, an
investment specialist, an education specialist, the conversion
manager, sometimes someone from operations and technology, and if the
deal is large enough, someone from senior management. On the customers
side, the audience could include the head human resources officer, a
benefits manager and analyst, the chief financial officer, treasurer,
assistant treasurer,operations, etc. It's quite common, especially in
the larger end of the market, for these presentations to be carefully
orchestrated by consultants who assist in the vendor search. The
presentations themselves, can range anywhere from one to three hours
and most often take place at the customers site. While consultants
and/or customers frequently express interest in talking directly with
specialists, it's quite common for individual presenters to be limited
to fifteen minutes or less. My client's goals are to 1) increase
effectiveness i.e., sell more deals and 2) manage their resources more
effectively. We are very interested in research based data that sheds
insight into sales presentations in general and more specifically, the
composition of presentation teams.Allenj