MODULE 2

Performance

LESSON 2.3

Build Your Security Solution

Solution Packages ‘Industry’ Focused

Understanding your customers’ needs is essential when selling an IT-based security solution. This knowledge allows you to offer tailored solutions, build trust, communicate effectively, enhance customer satisfaction, and gain a competitive advantage. 

Key Focus When Building Your New Solution 

Tailored Solutions: 

• Why it matters: Every organisation has unique security challenges and requirements. By understanding these specific needs, you can offer solutions that are precisely tailored to address their unique vulnerabilities and goals.

• Benefit: This increases the likelihood of your solution being effective and valued, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Customer Satisfaction: 

• Why it matters:  When customers feel that their specific security needs are being met, their satisfaction increases.

• Benefit:  Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat buyers and recommend your solution to others, leading to increased sales and positive word-of-mouth. 

By focusing on these aspects, you can ensure that your IT-based security solutions are not only well-received but also foster long-term relationships with your customers. 

START HERE

As discussed in Lesson 2, each of the five target industries has significant security needs that our solution must address when we present it.  

Thus, in developing a value-driven solution, it is crucial to focus on the features that address the primary priorities. In this context, these needs are dictated by industry regulations or legal requirements, leaving little room for flexibility in their adoption.

Alignment Between Business, Sales, and Technical Teams 

Before we proceed with selecting the base Microsoft 365 SKU for our new solution, it is crucial to first understand the dynamics of a typical IT / MSP-based organisation.

Such organisations consist of three primary drivers: the business itself, the technical team, and the sales team.  

Each group often have differing needs and perspectives, when it comes to making money, what we sell and what we implement and support. 

If these needs and perspectives are never unified into a collective direction, these differences can lead to what effectively becomes a 'development impasse,' stalling future customer and business improvements.  

This deadlock then leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

At first, a customer will join with the expectation of achieving better outcomes, but if they notice no progress over time, they are inclined to switch to a competitor that can offer the improvements they require. 

For successful solution-based selling, it is crucial for the business, sales, and technical teams within the organisation to reach a consensus on the priorities for selling, implementing, supporting, and profiting from these customer-focused solutions, rather than prioritising the interests of any single team. 

If done correctly, this has the potential to improve the business. However, it requires everyone to set aside conventional biases and mindsets, unify around a common goal, and move forward in the same direction.

A Note On Choosing Your Solution Subscription Base 

Building a value-based solution is an opportunity to break away from traditions and create a better outcome for your business, just as much as it is for your customers. 

Being in IT today brings a lot of responsibilities, mitigating against a host of security concerns particularly, all while managing these across a host of diverse systems and platforms. It has never been harder to manage, service and support a customer. 

Therefore, new outcomes must be developed to be suitable, and those solutions require new thinking in creating them, selling them, delivering them and supporting them. 

This takes skill and knowledge on your behalf, and what cost was applied to this in the past, isn’t the same today.  

Today, you are a providing an extremely valuable service, and this responsibility includes providing the right-fit subscription to address the needs each industry is expecting. 

Never be afraid to sell what is right and use industry context and their needs to justify it. 

Remember: Customers seeking or insisting on anything less should raise alarm bells in any discussion. Your subscription choice isn’t arbitrary, it will be requirement driven. Keep in mind that by conceding, you are risking your business, just as much as they are willing to risk theirs.

Identifying Features Critical to Industry Requirements 

Are Essential Security Features Excluded in Lower Plans? 

The next question is to determine what the base-level subscription should include. For this evaluation, we must balance critical features against desirable ones and ensure we do not compromise the offer, for the sake of price, for example.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

What Result Did Our Investigation Uncover?  

Based on the number required features removed, Microsoft 365 Business Premium cannot be recommended for this industry. 

Therefore, as determined by need, Microsoft 365 E5 is the necessary SKU required for the Healthcare industry – as per the requirement information gathered in Lesson 2.

If another subscription fit, the information would have shown this.

Please note: In Lesson 3.2, we will outline the certification requirements for the Security designation, and determine how the two prerequisite exams, AZ-500 and SC-200 will train your business to deliver these industry needs.

Next Lesson: 

We will examine how to set your solution price, and review the financial returns, based on selling a subscription only vs selling for value.