Develop mindshare with the client and achieve correct positioning

Demonstrate and prove considerable value in a short time  frame

Establish a beachhead or get further traction in an account

Demographics How many locations? What are the addresses? How many employees? What are the lines of business and SIC codes? Who are its customers? Who are its competitors? What is the corporate structure? How is it funded? What is its financial position?

Growth Plans What are your client’s strategic plans? What are its three- to five-year goals? What  are its top three goals and top three pain points?

Inventory What standard and non-standard hardware and software is in use? What is their pedigree? Who are their vendors? What is the support information and status?

Age Are servers or other commodity hardware ready to be refreshed (more than three years old)? Are there capacity issues or other pain points?

Software Licensing What license types are held? What compliance requirements are there? Are there obvious inefficiencies, non-compliance or pain points?

Virtualization Compatibility and Legacy Systems What needs to stay? What can go to the cloud?

Total Cost of Ownership What is the fully-loaded burden of hardware and software ownership? This is often a significant part of the financial justification for cloud.

Inventory What and how many desktops does it have? What about laptops, tablets and other mobile devices? Is there other specialized hardware?

User Types/Roles Are there telecommuters? Remote users? Mobile-only users?

Standards Are the systems uniform or mixed (e.g., acquired over time)? Are there technologies deployed, such as imaging or snapshotting that embody end-user policies? How well do they work?

Age Are end-user systems ready to be refreshed (e.g., more than three years old)? Are there known pain points?

Inventory Where is the cable plant? How many and where are the firewalls, VPNs, switches and routers? What wireless networks and protocols are used? What are the switching speeds? Obtain diagrams if available. Who are the vendors? What is the support information and status?

Architecture Are they using Windows or an equivalent? Are there multiple locations? Are there multiple domains? Is there redundancy? Is Active Directory or equivalent management in use? Are best practices being followed?

Internet, Network, Host and Data Security Is content filtering, anti-spam and malware protection in place? How about intrusion detection and prevention systems?

Enterprise Are authentication, authorization, privacy and non-repudiation technologies and policies in place? Is there room for improvement in this area?

Non-technical Risks Are there behavioral, cultural or logistical issues or requirements that can pose security problems?

Regulations and compliance Is the client in a regulated industry? If yes, are they currently compliant? Are there special security requirements pertaining to the clients business and can those requirements be met in a non-cost-prohibitive manner?

Inventory What voice and data connectivity is in place?

Capacity How much bandwidth is available? How scalable is it?

Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Is there redundancy, load balancing/distribution or failover?

Inventory What are the line-of-business applications? Are they off-the-shelf? Were they developed in-house? Were they developed or customized by a VAR?

Architecture How are the line-of-business applications architected? Are they optimized?

Virtualization What is the current application virtualization strategy, if any?

Software-as-a-Service Do the client’s independent software vendors (ISVs) have a SaaS delivery option? If so, explore its features, benefits, prices and shortcomings.

Line-of-Business Apps What are the show-stopper” business requirements that the client has with respect to LOB applications?

Architecture How are storage hardware, software and file repository architected? How are file services provided?

Capacity What are the storage growth trajectory and projections?

Collaboration What are the access and collaboration policies and requirements, including collaboration with outside third parties?

Virtualization Can storage be virtualized? Is it technically feasible and cost-effective to consider moving primary storage to the cloud?

Platform What email platform is used? What are the pain points?

Integration How is it integrated with other software or processes? Are there related messaging products in use, such as IM and presence products, voice mail and unified messaging?

Regulation and Compliance Is there a need for eDiscovery-compliant archiving?

Inventory What backup technologies are in place? What are the related policies and procedures? What is the client’s history of data loss, restore, etc.?

Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Are there solutions currently in place? What are the capabilities? Strengths and weaknesses? Who manages the solutions? Have they ever been tested and/or used under real-life conditions? Are there written Standard Operating Procedures, a written DR plan or emergency management procedures?

Metrics What is the client’s Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for each critical resource? What is the cost of downtime or business-impacting events?

Delivery Who handles end-user support and how? Is there an internal help desk or an outside vendor? What are the capabilities?

User Characteristics How tech-savvy are users? What is their historical use of the help desk? What were the service loads?

Inventory Who are the vendors? What are the contract lengths, terms and conditions? Are the deals good/fair? Are the vendors high quality? Is there room for improvement?

Compatibility Can services currently provided by third-party vendors continue and be integrated into the cloud? If not, will any prevent the move to the cloud?

Governance Are there siloes or other governance and business process issues leading to dysfunction or inefficiencies? If yes, how will these be handled in the context of the proposed cloud project?

Involve all key stakeholders in the process. Certain stakeholders may have a much greater influence over the cloud sale than they may have had over prior technology sales

Introduce exciting technologies unfamiliar to the client. Cloud technologies reach far beyond plain vanilla IaaS, Saas, PaaS and related categorizations. Over time, you can develop your practice to the point where you can get the most technically savvy IT director excited, and the value of enthusiasm in a cloud sale cannot be overstated.

Map cloud solutions directly and closely to key business challenges as articulated by the clients decision makers themselves

Make the numbers work for the client through a sophisticated TCO analysis

Incorporate solutions that position you to be the person or entity your client turns to when contracts turn over or when new technologies or vendors become available

Expect to hand over a prospect to a carrier or cloud service provider and allow them to play this role. They are not set up to do so. Furthermore, they present an obvious conflict of interest and are not a trusted third party.

Set it and forget it. You must stay involved in the account during and after the implementation to understand what is going well and what needs to be improved. Consider getting copied on every correspondence with service providers, including help desk tickets, in order to have a finger on the pulse.

Only sell products. Under any name (broker, reseller, VAR, etc.), selling or acting as middleman for products is a surefire way to have your margins squeezed and to potentially be made irrelevant as the cloud industry matures and commoditization and consolidation start. Instead, develop a practice that is capable of delivering real solutions and go up the value chain.

Dramatically increase your closing ratios in the cloud

Shorten sales cycles

Prevent wheel spinning and waste of valuable time

Increase non-recurring and monthly recurring commissions in the first sale to each client

Present unforeseen cross- and up-sell opportunities

Increase the lifetime value of  the client

Establish a strong beachhead toward evergreen revenue