Selling EA

Although not that professional, today, I will turn to a sells man selling our EA product to another company. So, I need to try my best to demonstrate the advantages of EA in order to convince the company buying our product.

Before that, I need to do some research work about the company. Applying the knowledge I have learned, have a brief analysis about the business of the company. And try to find their gaps that need to be fixed with EA. Are their IT departs working consistently? Are their systems working corporately? Does any depart act as the “short slab” of the company?

After the research, I could start to have a meeting with the CIO of the company (CEO is very busy). I will help them to analyze the problems exist in the company by using the preparation. I believe no company is perfect. So, there must be some problems that I could find to analyze with EA. After finding the problem, I will try to convince them using the EA.

During the negotiation, I need to arrange my opinion from their angles, which are “Reduce costs”, “Increase revenue”, “Enter new markets” and “Increase market share”. And it also works when you talk to CEO.

How EA help them to reduce the cost? Although the company will pay us the money to do the EA. However, after reorganize the whole architecture of the company, they may make better use of the systems or have a better way to arrange their budget. In detail, I could ask them the questions like: “Is your organization spending too much money building IT systems that deliver inadequate business value?” or “Is IT systems as improving or hampering your business agility? “ If yes, I will calculate the money they will save after reorganization. I could make a model to calculate the amount of more money they will save after applying our system. And after the math work, actually I will find they could save money hiring us.

How could EA help them to increase revenue? EA will apply a global analysis to the whole organization. I will briefly analyze the whole structure of the organization using any model of EA to find the gap existing in the system. And calculate the increment of revenue after the gaps are fixed. I will ask questions like “Is there a growing divide between your business and IT personnel?” Fixing that will help them to increase the venue.

How could EA help them to increase the market share? EA will reorganize the whole supply chain or others things connecting to the market. If the organize works well in every part of their business, the market share will increase automatically.

Maybe, after all these I have convinced their CIO. And their CIO may say that “Congratulations! You can talk with our CEO when he drop by after a short moment.” Before seeing the CEO, I think I should just review the information about the company and the business etiquette. Remember to focus on the important things as the CEO is usually very busy. I think after persuading that the EA will benefit the company in several aspects, he will definitely agree my suggestion and apply my EA system.

Reference:

[1] http://blogs.forrester.com/alex_cullen/10-06-04-how_would_you_sell_business_architecture_your_ceo