What is Selling Business Outcomes*?
Today (February 17th) Cisco has announced a new certification for technology sales professionals working within Cisco’s reseller channel. The new certification is called Selling Business Outcomes (SBO)* and it is designed to replace the existing Cisco Sales Expert (CSE) certification which has been the mainstay of Cisco’s sales certification requirements for sales professionals for a long time.
What is the Difference between CSE and SBO?
So why has Cisco decided to ditch the old CSE certification and move to the new SBO one, instead of just coming out with a “dot x” upgrade, as they have done before? The answer is that SBO is a radically different certification to CSE, with a very different focus. The old CSE certification was designed to ensure a minimum level of product knowledge for all sales people (eg the ability to answer questions like “why buy Cisco products instead of products from Cisco’s competitors?”, “what is in ExamCollection 810-403 ’s portfolio of product and service offerings?” and “which product or solution set is right for my company?”). The new SBO certification does not cover these topics and instead it takes its lead from Cisco’s recent Business Transformation certification programme (Cisco Business Value Analyst, Specialist and Practitioner for sales professionals and Cisco Transformative Architecture Specialist for solutions architects)**. The focus of the SBO certification has moved from being all about Cisco and Cisco’s products and services, and instead focuses on Cisco’s customers and their need to generate business value.
Why do we Need the Change?
For the last five years or so, we have seen a massive shake-up in the technology industry. This has partly been led by disruptive innovations in technology itself (Cloud, SDN, Internet of Things, device plurality and so on) but also and equally or perhaps even more importantly by a change in customer behaviour. The way businesses think about, consume and perhaps most essentially from the technology sales professional’s perspective make purchasing decisions about technology is completely different to how it was. There used to be a time when the Technology Department made all of the decisions about what technology the organisation would purchase, who within the organisation would be able to access it and in what circumstances it would be made available to them. Long gone are those days for at least the majority of our customers. Now (and in my opinion quite rightly) it is the business itself which is in charge of these decisions and the role of the IT Department is to determine the best route for fulfilling whatever requirements the business imposes upon it. And this is the reason why Cisco needed not just to come out with a minor upgrade to its existing certification for technology sales professionals, but to completely rewrite the book and launch a very different certification that tests for very different knowledge, skills and competencies than before.
What is a “Business Outcome”?
As previously mentioned, the focus of business outcome selling is on the customer rather than the product, and this requires the technology sales professional to know and understand their customer’s business in order to be effective. And here’s the important thing – business decision makers (BDMs) make technology purchasing decisions in very different ways to technology decision makers (TDMs). As a general rule, BDMs are less interested in who makes the technology or how it works, instead they are concerned about how well the technology meets their demands for business outcomes. So what is a “business outcome”? Put simply, a business outcome is a requirement within the customer’s business that the BDMs within that organisation have determined is necessary in order to fulfil corporate strategy. Examples of business outcomes that customers might require include the following:
- Increasing customer satisfaction levels
- Maximising staff productivity
- Bringing new products/services to market more quickly
- Improving product/service quality
- Breaking into new markets
- Growing market share or defending against competitors
- Increasing levels of innovation
- Meeting new legislative requirements
- Providing business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) capability
Note that in the list above I haven’t included items such as “bring your own device”, “data centre consolidation” or “centralised security”. Why not? Because even though these are not technology products, they are still not examples of business outcomes, instead they are examples of technology solutions. In other words they describe the means to an end, but they do not describe the end itself. For example “bring your own device” might help a company to maximise staff productivity, “data centre consolidation” might assist with BCDR planning and “centralised security” might help to meet new legislation.
What is the Core Message of SBO?
The core message is this: If BDMs are less interested in technology (be that products, services or even solutions) and more interested in measurable business outcomes (things like productivity, growth, profitability, market share, etc) then as technology sales professionals, the conversations that we have, the language that we use and indeed our whole approach to the customer engagement needs to show that we understand the world that BDMs experience and that we recognise their needs and concerns. Not only that, but we also need to demonstrate that we have something useful and relevant to add to a business outcomes-focused conversation. We need to be able to develop a long term relationship with our customers, and to provide a roadmap to attain their short, mid and long term business outcomes by aligning technology to corporate strategy and by providing that technology in the most business efficient way, whether that be customer-owned and managed, customer-owned but managed as a service by us, or owned by us and provided on a pay-as-you-go, "X-as-a-service" basis.
Is SBO a Worthy Replacement for CSE?
In my opinion the answer is definitely “yes”. As a Cisco Authorized Business Instructor and as someone who has been honoured to have been invited to help Cisco with designing and developing some of its certification content, I have had the pleasure and privilege to work alongside and share best practice with some of the top account managers, solutions architects and sales specialists both from within Cisco itself and from a wide range of Cisco resellers from the smallest to the very largest across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. Time and again I have found that these technology professionals understand the need not just for technical expertise (a given for every technology sales professional) but also for the ability to research and analyse the customer’s business and to consult with and manage the needs of business stakeholders from across the entire spectrum from the “C” level through to Line of Business Heads and down to operational staff.
Alongside these skills they also understand and recognise the need to design creative, innovative and (most importantly) business outcomes-led technology solutions roadmaps and to be able to articulate the business value of these roadmaps to key stakeholders – those BDMs who are the new gatekeepers for technology investment decision making within their customers’ organisations 810-403 VCE. The above is precisely what the SBO course and certification sets out to provide; the knowledge, skills and competencies to help our customers attain business value from their technology purchases. There has obviously been a lot of time that has gone into determining the subject matter and its flow, and the result is a well thought out and well written course that covers the right ground and flows well. The material both provokes and guides technology sales professionals into understanding the need for change and gaining a high level insight into how this change can be engendered.
Is SBO Enough on Its Own?
Can the SBO course, exam and certification provide all of the knowledge, skills and competencies that a technology sales professional needs to understand and communicate with business decision makers and develop business value-focused technology solution roadmaps? At just one day of classroom training (or six hours of self-study time) the answer of course is “no, not completely”, but in my opinion it is an excellent starting point for all technology sales professionals and a great jumping point for moving onwards to gain greater knowledge, skills and competencies either by becoming Cisco Business Transformation certified** or through your own internal learning and development programmes.
Do I need SBO?
Leaving aside any discussion on the relative merits of a business outcomes-led sales approach, and even assuming that your sales force is already well versed in how to sell business value rather than technology products and services, if you are a Cisco reseller partner then the answer to the above question is still a definite "yes". As of August 1st 2015 (or sooner for some specializations) if you want to attain or renew any Cisco Specialization then the Account Manager role must hold the new SBO certification, regardless of whether or not they hold an existing CSE certification.
