cisco services early sales sg

This document is Cisco Confidential. For Channel Partner use only. Do not distribute.

Services Guide

Selling Cisco ServicesEarly in the Sales Process

Increasing Your Opportunities to Provide Value-Adding Solutions

©2012 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Confidential. For Channel Partner use only. Do not distribute. 1< >

Topic SnapshotThis topic is for:

• Business owners/managers

• Sales staff

About the TopicThis document is designed to help all Cisco® partners, particularly owners and managers and your service specialist teams, learn how to accelerate their service business opportunities by selling Cisco® Services early in the sales process as part of a complete solution.

This guide explores the benefits of selling Cisco Services early in the sales process, and provides you with:

• Sales strategies

• Best practices

• Links to important resources

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

What You Need to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

What You Can Sell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

How to Get Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Strategies for Successful Selling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Further Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Important Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Contents

©2012 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Confidential. For Channel Partner use only. Do not distribute. 2< >

Executive Summary

Driven by market opportunities and customer requirements to improve performance in today’s business environment, the need for services has increased. Services have become the primary differentiator and profitability engine for Cisco partners and represent a substantial opportunity for you to grow your business.

By including services as a fundamental component of a complete solution that aligns with your customer’s business and IT needs early in the sales process, you can position yourself to compete and thrive by aligning solutions to help address your customer’s challenges and priorities throughout the network lifecycle.

Positioning services early in sales engagements can help your customer identify not only what technology they need to achieve their business goals, but also how to operationally address the adoption of that technology within their organization.

By always positioning services for both hardware and software, and introducing the value of services early in the sales cycle, you can set clear budget expectations before your customer determines their spend, and make sure that you are in the best position to secure the sale for the complete solution: hardware, software, service, and financing. By not including services at the beginning of the sales process, it might be difficult to introduce the value of service at a later point.

Using a solutions-led sales approach to uncover customer challenges and the role the network plays,

will help to build a case for services throughout the network lifecycle. These early engagements provide the framework for exploring opportunities for initial and ongoing consulting services, technical services, multiyear agreements, financing, Cisco professional services or your own consulting services.

As part of your initial discussions, introduce the implementation of a network discovery. Exploring a customer network with a network inventory discovery as part of the consultation can open up many service opportunities. End-to-end knowledge of your customer’s network devices enables you to up-sell, cross-sell, or explore advanced technologies and services opportunities, and will help you propose coverage and technology migration solutions to your customers to make sure that they get the full value out of their technology investment.

Selling services can help you extend, grow, and transform your business, providing you with the opportunity for higher gross and net margin dollars as well as predictable recurring revenue. To make sure you are in the best position to gain opportunities to increase your profitability and productivity, improve your customer satisfaction and loyalty, and reduce your risk in deploying and supporting new and complex technologies, the most effective approach is to promote Cisco Services and the benefit of service coverage, as part of a complete solution at the very beginning of a sales opportunity.

3< >©2012 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Confidential. For Channel Partner use only. Do not distribute.

Four major market transitions—collaboration, video, virtualization and cloud—are redefining the IT industry and creating significant services opportunities for Cisco partners. These transitions, cou-pled with expanding customer requirements and increased com-petitive pressures to reduce costs and promote greater innovation by our customers, are requiring a new service-led approach.

Services can help your customers address many important technology challenges and are integral to getting the most out of their network investment.

As a Cisco partner, you are in an excellent position to support your customers’ business issues and help solve their challenges. With more than 80% of Cisco’s annual product and services revenue flowing through our partners, services represent a significant growth opportunity. Additionally, of this $41B services market opportunity, Cisco Services currently participates in less than 20% of the market—creating an enormous opportunity for you. We expect partners to generate 5-10 times the services revenue of Cisco.

Why Position Services Early in the Sales Cycle?

Positioning services early in your sales engagement can help your customer identify not only what technology they need to achieve their business goals, but also how to operationally address the adoption of that technology within their organization.

Introducing the value of services early also enables you to set clear budget expectations before your customers determine their spend.

What You Need to Know

If you do not include services as part of the original solution, or give in to price pressures, you lose much more than just the margin on the services. Experience shows that after the equipment is installed, you are unlikely to get an opportunity to sell services. As a result, you will lose the opportunity for a recurring stream of revenue that could last five to seven years. In addition, you risk losing your customers because of lower satisfaction and loyalty.

Attempting to sell services after taking the product order makes it difficult to introduce the value of services at a later point. It also inaccurately sets customers’ budget expectations and adds administrative and logistics overhead to your operations. Equally as important, you might lose the opportunity to stay regularly involved in your customer’s business during times of renewal, additions, moves, and other changes.

Positioning services early can help you to:

• Providevalue-addedsolutions

• Strengthenyourcustomerrelationshipintheroleoftrusted advisor

• Createnewrevenueandprofitopportunities

• Increaseattachratesandrecurringrevenuestreams

• Riseabovethecompetitionanddifferentiate

• Reduceadministrativeandoperationalcostsassociated with selling services later

Furthermore, if your customers do not have protection for their network from day one, they will not have access to the benefits of technical support services during the deployment of their equipment.

Highlights• Selling services can extend the

length, breadth and depth of your customer engagement

• The Cisco Lifecycle Services Approach can help you increase your sales opportunities


The Cisco Lifecycle Services Approach

To meet customers’ needs and challenges, Cisco has developed the Cisco Lifecycle Services Approach (Figure 1), which defines the minimum set of activities needed by technology and by network complexity to help customers successfully deploy and operate Cisco technologies and optimize their performance.

The Cisco Lifecycle Services approach is a beginning-to-end view of the continuum of events that take place in the network lifespan. It creates a framework for defining services that is independent of who performs the service activities and provides a coordinated sequence of activities in deploying and operating technologies and optimizing their performance.

The Cisco Lifecycle Services Approach, supporting methodologies, and training provide you with opportunities to increase your profitability by helping you to improve your skills, enhance your portfolio, and expand your service practice.

For further information, refer to the Accelerate Program topic: Network Lifecycle Services Approach.

A recent independent survey found that 43 percent of deployed network equipment at large companies has already reached technology end of life.1 Equipment that has reached its technology end of life typically costs more to maintain and is more prone to downtime than newer equipment. The average cost of downtime to medium-sized firms (those with 101 to 1,000 employees) has been estimated at $1 million annually; that’s 1 percent of their annual revenues, and is much higher for certain applications and industries.2 These findings underscore the importance of having full service coverage on network equipment as early as possible.

The most effective approach is to promote Cisco Services and the benefit of service coverage, as part of a complete solution at the very beginning of a sales opportunity.

What You Need to Know (continued)

1Dimension Data Survey, 2009.2Infonetics Research, 2009.

Figure 1. The Cisco Lifecycle Services Approach

PlanPrepare Design Implement Operate Optimize

Plan Build Run


Customer Business Benefits

Services are a vital contributor towards helping your customers address many important technology challenges and gain the most out of their network investment. Services play an important role in mitigating risk and the associated costs. Cisco’s Lifecycle Services Approach and robust portfolio of services can help your customers:

• Run their business more profitably

• Meet their rising customer expectations

• Gain a competitive advantage

• Align their IT investment to their business strategies

• Support rapid business growth

Services can help your customers address many important technology challenges:

• Enablerapid,reliable,securecommunications

• Implementnewtechnologies

• Keepthenetworkoperatingefficiently

• Resolveproblems24hoursaday,7daysaweek

• Providerapidaccesstotechnicalexpertise

Your Business Benefits

Strengthen customer relationshipsFor you, selling services enhances your customer interaction beyond a product sales relationship by providing comprehensive, strategic and innovative solutions which can position you to play a greater role in your customers’ success. Adding services extends the length of your overall engagement and positions you for additional up-sell and/or cross-sales opportunities over the life of the engagement.

What You Need to Know (continued)

Differentiate your businessSelling services in addition to hardware and software also helps to position you as an expert resource and business partner who understands your customers’ concerns and overall business needs, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. By selling a complete solution you gain competitive ad-vantage by enhancing your market differentiation, plus it can help to strengthen your relationship in the role of trusted advisor, not just ‘another vendor’.

Increase revenue and profitabilityIn addition, selling services offers you the opportunity to earn higher margins generating a recurring revenue stream through the sale of services renewals. A typical service gross margin for a Cisco partner running a successful services business is 18 to 25 percent—an attractive alternative compared with product margins that can be as low as 1 percent. Leveraging services to develop a consistent and recurring revenue stream also enables you to reduce your customer acquisition costs, and can help make sure of continued revenue growth.

By including Cisco Services as part of a complete solution early in the sales process, you are in a better position to gain opportunities to increase your profitability and productivity, expand your competitive advantage through differentiation, strengthen relationships in your role as a trusted advisor and improve your customer satisfaction and loyalty, and reduce risk in deploying and supporting new and complex technologies.

By including services as part of a solution that aligns with your customer’s business and technology needs, you can position yourself to:

• Win additional equipment and service sales• Reduce risk in deploying and supporting new and complex

technologies• Enhance your customer satisfaction and loyalty• Move up the value chain with your customers


Cisco offers you a range of options from resale to jointly delivered collaborative services (Figure 2) that address the requirements of all phases of the network lifecycle services:

• Cisco branded services are sold by partners and delivered by Cisco experts who have extensive networking, business and technology experience in large networks. They enable you to provide your customers with support services without having to make significant investments in developing and operating your own support infrastructures.

• Collaborative services are sold and delivered by partners working collaboratively with Cisco. Designed exclusively for qualified partners, these services enable you to capitalize on Cisco intellectual assets by combining Cisco’s extensive knowledge base, smart service capabilities and global support infrastructure with your unique capabilities to develop differentiated high-value service solutions that respond to your customers’ most challenging needs. The result is increased profitability, shortened time to market and improved customer satisfaction.

What You Can Sell

Highlights• Cisco offers a variety of programs that

enable you to sell and deliver services

• Cisco helps you build a robust services practice by adding more value-added services to your portfolio mix

Note: The availability of Cisco Services for resale is dependent on your geographic region, the terms of your contract with Cisco, and whether you purchase directly from Cisco or through a Cisco Authorized Distributor.

By taking full advantage of the Cisco Lifecycle Services framework, you can add more value-added services to your portfolio mix, resulting in comprehensive, innovative bundled solutions that do not require significant investments to develop, and which allow you to operate your own support systems.

Our collaborative partner-led approach helps strengthen your trusted business advisor role as you enable your customers to successfully plan, build, and run their networks as a powerful business platform.

Figure 2. Cisco Services Options for Partners

Cisco ServicesCollaborative Services Cisco Branded Services

• Serviceofferingssoldonlytopartners

• CombinesCiscointellectualcapital,smartserviceinnovation, and service infrastructure with your services

• Serviceofferingssoldthroughpartners

• Ready-for-resaleoffersthatspeedtimetomarket,increasetechnology and geographic reach

Partner Value

Growth Differentiation Profitability


What You Can Sell (continued)

Cisco Services

Cisco’s flexible go-to-market strategy provides a wide variety of service capabilities:

Cisco Technical Services. Technical services for large enterprises as well as services for small and medium businesses. Cisco offers a broad range of traditional support services and proactive technical services. Cisco Technical Services help protect network investment and maximize availability for systems running mission-critical applications by sustaining network health and maximizing performance. Industry-leading support capabilities are at the core of Cisco Technical Services.

By including technical services in a business practice for both software and hardware, you have the ability to develop a consistent and recurring revenue stream that enables you to reduce your customer acquisition costs, increase sales, promote customer loyalty, and protect the value of the services you deliver to help make sure of continued revenue growth.

Cisco Professional Services help your customers transform their business to meet today’s demanding environment and evolve their network into an intelligent and strategic platform. Cisco Professional Services offer an architectural approach, proven best practices, and Cisco networking expertise. Cisco Profes-sional Services complement your own services practice. A range of professional services capabilities are available. The portfolio is extensive and services can be custom-tailored to meet the needs of your customers based on their specific business objec-tives. Cisco will work with you and your customer to determine the specific services that address their requirements.

To help you develop your own services offerings, Cisco offers Steps to Success which provides engagement and deployment methodologies, best practices, and technical resources that enable you to sell, deliver, and support Cisco advanced technology solutions throughout the network lifecycle.

Cisco Remote Management Services are a suite of services that help accelerate the business benefits from Cisco advanced and emerging technologies. Cisco Remote Management Services provide comprehensive monitoring and management of the devices in a converged network-24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These services cover the out-tasked management and monitoring of network infrastructure, system devices, and applications across:

• Cisco Digital Media Systems

• Cisco Unified Communications (including Unified Contact Center)

• Cisco Data Center

• Cisco TelePresence® Conferencing™

• Cisco Security

• Cisco Foundation Technology

You have the option to resell these services or use Cisco’s expertise, tools, and processes to grow your own capabilities and collaborate in the delivery of the services to your customer. For some services, you can choose to take the lead in service delivery, monitoring the customer network from your own network operations center and further deepening your ongoing customer relationship.

Note: Not all Cisco Services are available in all regions. Contact your local Cisco account manager or Cisco Authorized Distributor for further information.

http://www.cisco.com/go/stepstosuccess


The most compelling moment to make a case for services is at the beginning of discussions with your customer to determine their overall needs. By exploring your customer’s challenges and the role the network plays in helping address those challenges, you will gain important information that will help you to build a case for services throughout the network lifecycle.

From the onset, proactively promote the value of Cisco Services and highlight the benefits a services contract provides compared to cost of providing network support internally or through the purchase of time and materials.

Endorse the benefits of Cisco Services with smart service capabilities. Describe how smart services use intelligent, automated capabilities to regularly collect operational data on deployed network devices and compare it against an extensive knowledge base to provide insight into a network’s behavior and status and proactively address potential issues. Explain to your customers that with the personalized analysis and recommendations delivered by smart services, on which they can act directly or with guidance from Cisco or our partners, they can improve their operational efficiency and make sure of predictable network and IT infrastructure performance. For your customers with limited skilled in-house IT staff, or those who depend on a managed and/or cloud services partner, point out how Cisco smart services can help improve their productivity, reduce risk, and simplify and manage their IT complexity and work load.

If you help your customer understand the value of Cisco Services and the benefit service coverage brings to their business, then selling a services contract will be easier.

For more information, refer to the Accelerate Program topics: The Value of Selling Cisco Technical Services; and Smart Services Strategy.

Cisco Services:

• Ciscooffersthewidestrangeofservices-supportednetwork technologies in the industry.

• Ciscosetsthegoldstandardforserviceandsupport,with numerous industry recognitions and awards in recognition of excellence in technology service and support.

• Ciscoconsistentlyrateshighincustomersatisfaction,which has been proven to lead to building trusted adviser relationships with greater profit potential and greater customer loyalty, resulting in long term customer relationships.

How to Get Started

Highlights• Selling a services contract will be

easier if your customer understands the value and benefits of service coverage

• Exploring a customer network with a network inventory discovery can open up many service opportunities

Figure 3. Cisco Award Winning Services


Use a solutions-led sales approach to explore opportunities for initial and ongoing consulting services, technical services, professional services, multiyear service agreements, and financing. A goals-oriented discussion helps you establish yourself as a trusted advisor and pave the way for a solution-selling engagement.

Exploring your customers’ network support requirements will pro-vide you with an opportunity to discuss your customers’ questions about cost of ownership, the effects of unexpected downtime, their need to show a return on technology investments, and what a reliable network solution means to the long-term success of their organization. Discussing these issues will help you discover the complete solution that will best fit your customers’ overall needs: hardware, software, services, and financing.

A solution-led approach usually starts with a network discovery or assessment. A network discovery is a process that involves the collection and initial validation of data about the devices running on your customer’s network and results in business intelligence that can be used as a foundation for decision making. As part of your initial discussions, introduce the implementation of a network discovery. Exploring a customer network with a network inventory discovery as part of the consultation can open up many service opportunities. End-to-end knowledge of a customer’s network devices enables you to up-sell, cross-sell, or explore advanced technologies and services opportunities.

Cisco offers a number of network collection and inventory reporting capabilities. Before your customer engagement find out what is available in your region by contacting your local Cisco account manager or Cisco Authorized Distributor. You can also use your own network collector during the process of network discovery to generate data that can be used to assess business opportunities in your customer’s network.

Focus your selling activities on securing consulting engagements that will ultimately promote sales of all product, advanced technology, and follow-on services. Securing the initial consulting services engagement is crucial to achieving the greatest revenue potential and generating future revenue from sales of both product and services.

How to Get Started (continued)


Strategies for Successful Selling

Adopt Best Practices

❑ Utilize a network discovery

❑ Lead with consulting services

❑ Promote the value of services over warranty

❑ Take advantage of programs, incentives and promotions

Avoid Common Mistakes

❑ Define customer spend

❑ Sell complete solutions

❑ Always offer financing solutions

❑ Preempt customer objections


Utilize a Network Discovery

In Cisco’s experience, the majority of customers do not have an accurate assessment of their Cisco network devices. A discovery of a customer’s network will often show that a significant percentage of their networking equipment (possibly as much as 30 percent to 40 percent) is not covered or is only partially covered by a service contract. In addition, often more than one quarter of a customer’s networking equipment has reached its last date of support.

Implementing a network inventory discovery process is a very strategic approach that involves using a collection-led process to explore customer networks to identify product migration and service opportunities. A network inventory discovery process allows you to thoroughly explore your customers’ networks to create an actionable inventory report.

A network discovery gives you the ability to identify gaps between a customer’s existing infrastructure and future network requirements. It provides the business intelligence necessary to assess the coverage status of a customer’s network, upgrade coverage to address current and future network support needs, and increase service revenue.

An effective discovery process uses network collection technologies to generate data that can be used to assess business opportunities in the customer’s network. The assessments can come in the form of reports that document the following information about equipment discovered in the network:

• Hardware and software that have reached lifecycle milestones

• Security advisories

• Equipment not covered by a service agreement

• Service contract expiration dates

• Service contract data issues that might affect service delivery and customer satisfaction

Implementing a network discovery provides your customer with important business intelligence needed for decision making. Utilizing this business intelligence allows you to present an actionable report that helps your customer build a reasonable plan for addressing critical network issues. This actionable report will help you propose coverage and technology migration solutions to make sure that your customer gets the full value out of their technology investment.

This business intelligence will also lay the foundation for you to propose professional services to help your customers plan, design, and deploy a network architecture solution and promote the value of network-level coverage.

Reassure your customer that the network discovery process and tools are non-obtrusive, non-intrusive and do not pose any business risks.

Cisco offers a number of network collection and inventory reporting capabilities available for mid-market to large customers. To find out what is available in your region, contact your local Cisco account manager or distributor. You can also use your own network collector during the process of network discovery to obtain the required information.

For more information, see topics covered under the Accelerate Program topic area: Know Your Customer’s Network.

Strategies for Successful Selling: Adopt Best Practices


Lead with Consulting Services

Use a solution-led selling approach that leads with consult-ing services based on Cisco Professional Services or your own brand of consulting services. These early engagements provide the framework for exploring opportunities for technical and pro-fessional services, multiyear service agreements, and financing.

Regardless of size, any business that is converting its technology infrastructure to a real-time high-technology platform to support its business needs is an excellent candidate for consulting services. Inform your customer that this consultative approach reduces their risk and accelerates their success by providing a solution that goes above and beyond the limited assessment of a simple sales approach. Explain that, even if your customer has a strong in-house technology staff, it is unlikely that they can match the expertise and support Cisco and its partners can offer.

By leading with a consulting services engagement early in the sales cycle, you can help your customers identify their challenges and opportunities and define their technology requirements, enabling you to design and deliver a solutions architecture recommendation that addresses those needs.

Cisco’s flexible go-to-market strategy enables you to offer your own brand of consulting services. You can also use Cisco intellectual property to build or expand upon your professional services practice. If you do not have plans to build a professional services practice, you can offer Cisco Professional Services.

Offering consulting services early in the sales cycle helps you learn important information about your customer that informs the entire sales process and enhances your ability to generate incremental revenue from implementation services, hardware and software sales, and support solutions.

For more information see Accelerate Program topic: Selling Professional Services.

Strategies for Successful Selling: Adopt Best Practices (continued)


Promote the Value of Services over Warranty

Companies sometimes mistakenly think of warranties as a po-tential substitute for a service agreement, and the introduction of Cisco Limited Lifetime Warranty (LLW) and Enhanced Limited Lifetime Warranty (E-LLW) has convinced some customers that they can rely solely on warranty rather than purchasing a service contract.

Warranties are limited to repair and/or replacement of the Cisco product. Warranties alone will not adequately protect your customer’s network investment and are no substitute for a Cisco Services contract.

Warranties and support contracts are different in that they serve fundamentally different purposes. Warranties protect only against defects in materials and workmanship. Support contracts however, go further by also protecting against human factors, such as configuration errors, protocol errors, and the like. The distinction is important because human errors account for up to 80 percent of all the issues that cause networks to fail or seriously falter.

Expecting a warranty to do the job of a support contract is akin to expecting the three-year drive train warranty on your car to do double duty for an auto insurance policy. In both cases, the two differ profoundly in functional scope, even when their similar features make them look alike.

A Cisco support services contract covers purchased equipment and licensed software, provides access to Cisco industry-leading expertise and extensive resources, and offers a proven track record of quality customized support. It helps make sure of a reliable, highly available, and stable network within a total system solution. Always make sure your customer is aware that warranty is not the same as a services agreement.

See: www.cisco.com/go/warranty. For further information refer to Accelerate Program topic: Positioning Services over Warranty.

Take Advantage of Programs, Incentives and Promotions

Selling services increases your margin with every service that you attach to a product sale. Cisco offers a variety of programs that enable you to sell and deliver services according to your preferred business model. By taking advantage of the partner programs, you also become eligible for more incentives and rewards.

For a list of current Cisco Services partner programs, incentives and promotions in your region, visit the Cisco Services Programs and Promotions website.

Strategies for Successful Selling: Adopt Best Practices (continued)

http://www.cisco.com/go/warranty

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/services/promos/index.html



Define Customer Spend

Always define customer spend to include services. Services provide valuable benefits to customers and introducing the value of services early enables you to set clear budget expectations before your customer determines their spend.

Prepare your customer for the additional expense of these services so they can plan appropriately. Get them thinking about the long-term value of multiyear contract discounts and build these into your initial proposal.

Offer financing solutions. Including financing can help customers of all sizes obtain the services they need. Cisco Capital® can provide flexible payment terms that match your customers’ budget cycles. This provides a strong value proposition for multi-year service agreements.

Remember, attempting to sell services after taking the product order makes it difficult to introduce the value of services at a later point, and it also inaccurately sets customers’ budget expectations.

Sell Complete Solutions

Always explore the opportunity to sell additional products and services, as well as financing. A comprehensive, strategic, and innovative Cisco solution can include best-in-class products, a portfolio of services with industry-leading support, and complete financing solutions. This equips your customers with what they need now, while helping to meet their long-term, strategic needs.

You should always focus on the issues that influence the need for a range of products or services. In this way, you will be able to help your customers see the value of a complete solution as well as the consequences of inaction.

Customers have needs that Cisco solutions can address. Make sure that discussions of products, services, and financing always map back to the higher level business needs that customers must address. You should focus attention on the value of the overall solution rather than the cost of an individual service.

Always position services, for both hardware and software, early in the sales cycle. This will help make sure your customer’s expectations are properly set and that you are in the best position to secure the sale for the complete solution: hardware, software, service, and financing.

Always Offer Financing Solutions

Always introduce the benefits of financing solutions early in discussions with your customers. Financing can greatly improve a customer’s cash flow and expense management capabilities—it can even enable them to acquire a larger or more robust solution than they think they can afford.

According to a recent survey conducted by IDC, over 77 percent of IT customers said that the availability of leasing or financing affects their choice of an equipment, software or service supplier.3

Offering a financing solution that spreads the cost over a number of years can enable your customers to deploy the state-of-the-art network solution they need to generate a more productive, collaborative environment. In these unusual times, even customers who have never financed their technology before might need to consider doing so now.

Strategies for Successful Selling: Avoid Common Mistakes

1 IDC, Telebriefing Presentation, “The Future of IT Leasing and Financing: How Capital Markets Will Continue to Shape IT Strategies”, September 24, 2009.


Introducing the benefits of financing early in your customer discussions can also help to increase the size of your deals. In addition, financing provides you with the ability to maintain better account control and pave the way for future business. It can help you keep the competition out, while helping to make sure of a timeline for future refresh opportunities.

Cisco Capital financing solutions provide straightforward, flexible leasing and finance options, competitive rates and fast approval, documentation and funding turnarounds. This can help you build a compelling business case for your customers and help them acquire the solutions they need to be successful.

Cisco Capital offers solutions customized to the needs of customers of all sizes and provides specialized programs for different geographic regions.

To learn more, see Accelerate Program topic: “Selling Cisco Capital Finance Services” and visit the Cisco Capital Partner Portal.

Preempt Customer Objections

By effectively promoting the value of Cisco Services and cultivating your customer’s awareness of the benefits of service coverage as part of a comprehensive solution early in your customer engagement, you can preempt many common

Strategies for Successful Selling: Avoid Common Mistakes (continued)

objections. However, your customer may still have concerns that you need to address given market transitions, and the increased pressures to reduce costs and promote greater innovation.

Useful strategies for countering objections include:

• Always position services, for both hardware and software, early in the sales cycle. This will help make sure your customer’s expectations are properly set and that you are in the best position to secure the sale for the complete solution: hardware, software, service, and financing.

• Be prepared to make the case for the value of services over warranty.

• Use Cisco Capital to help counter cost objections—many customers are willing to cover all products for multiyear terms because of their competitive rates.

For the types of questions you might encounter and some insights into how to handle challenging customer objections, as well as compelling facts to help you prepare for sales discussions, refer to the Accelerate Program topic: Objection Handling.

Be aware however, that there are no standard answers. The best way to handle objections is to understand your customers’ goals and pain points so you can effectively customize your responses to accurately address your customers’ needs.

http://www.cisco.com/go/ciscocapital



Invest in Additional Training to Increase Your Knowledge and Your Ability to Sell

The following Accelerate Program topics help you expand on the knowledge you have gained during this learning topic:

• Network Lifecycle Services Approach

• The Value of Selling Cisco Technical Services

• Smart Services Strategy

• Selling Multiyear Cisco Service Agreements

• Positioning Services over Warranty

• Selling Professional Services

• Selling Cisco Capital Finance Services

• Objection Handling

• Using Steps to Success

Visit the Cisco Services Accelerate Program website to access additional training material that can enhance your knowledge related to this topic.

Further Resources

http://www.cisco.com/go/accelerate


Cisco Services Accelerate Program www.cisco.com/go/accelerate

Cisco Partner Central www.cisco.com/web/partners/index.html

Cisco Partner Marketing Central www.cisco.com/go/partnermarketing

Cisco Services for Partners www.cisco.com/web/partners/services/index.html

Cisco Services www.cisco.com/go/services

Cisco Technical Services www.cisco.com/go/ts

Cisco Advanced Services www.cisco.com/en/US/products/svcs/ps2961/serv_category_home.html

Cisco Capital www.cisco.com/go/ciscocapital

Steps to Success www.cisco.com/go/stepstosuccess

E-Consulting for Partners www.cisco.com/web/partners/services/enablement/econsulting/index.html

Services Programs and Promotions www.cisco.com/web/partners/services/promos/index.html

Partner Practice Builder www.cisco.com/web/partners/sell/enablement/partnerpracticebuilder/index.html

Legal Contract Service Descriptions www.cisco.com/go/servicedescriptions

Important Links

http://www.cisco.com/go/accelerate

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/go/partnermarketing

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/services/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/go/services

http://www.cisco.com/go/ts

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/svcs/ps2961/serv_category_home.html


http://www.cisco.com/go/stepstosuccess

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/services/enablement/econsulting/index.html


http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/sell/enablement/partnerpracticebuilder/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/go/servicedescriptions

Americas HeadquartersCisco Systems, Inc.San Jose, CA

Asia Pacific HeadquartersCisco Systems (USA) Pte. Ltd.Singapore

Europe HeadquartersCisco Systems International BV Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Cisco has more than 200 offices worldwide. Addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers are listed on the Cisco Website at www.cisco.com/go/offices.

©2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R) C07-428092-03 01/12

cisco services early sales sg

Documents

inventory reporting capabilities

product order makes

recurring revenue stream

accelerate program topic

accelerate program topics

promote greater innovation

network inventory discovery

multiyear service agreements