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Commercial SA Engagement Model

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Commercial Solutions Architecture Engagement Model

The Commercial SA Engagement Model intends to foster collaboration and influence and even greater iteration amongst ourselves and customers.

Given that Landed Addressable Market (LAM or LAM Dev) might not always be correct and the Opportunity Net ARR isn't always indicative of the potential, this model segments an SA team's engagement by the AE role, so that the SA engagement model is aligned with the AE team structures.

Solutions architects are responsible for owning their engagement on opportunities. The "engagement model" is a general recommendation, not a rule, and will be left to the discretion of the solutions architect.

SA Engagement Considerations

SA Engagement for Mid-Market

  1. Mid-Market First Order: Early-stage 2-Scoping through 4-Proposal for opportunities where a Command Plan and Custom Pitch Deck are being leveraged where an SA is necessary. The goal is to complete the 3-Technical Evaluation prior to 15 days of the Close Date.
  2. Mid-Market Named: Opportunities (regardless of stage) where an SA is necessary through the course of the opportunity. The goal is to complete the 3-Technical Evaluation prior to 30 days of the Close Date.
  3. Mid-Market Territory: 3-Technical Evaluation for opportunities where a Command Plan and Custom Pitch Deck are being leveraged and where an SA is necessary. The goal is to complete the 3-Technical Evaluation prior to 30 days of the Close Date.

SA Engagement for SMB

  1. SMB First Order: Late-stage 2-Scoping and 3-Technical Evaluation for opportunities where a Command Plan and Custom Pitch Deck are being leveraged where an SA is necessary. The goal is to complete the 3-Technical Evaluation prior to 15 days of the Close Date.
  2. SMB Named: Late-stage 2-Scoping and 3-Technical Evaluation for opportunities where a Command Plan and Custom Pitch Deck are being leveraged where an SA is necessary. The goal is to complete the 3-Technical Evaluation within 15 days of the Close Date.
  3. SMB First Year Expand: AEs should rely on the CSM and CSEs as much as possible for First Year Expand opportunities given that the focus of a customer's first year is to adopt as much of what they have purchased as possible. If a customer has demonstrable adoption of GitLab and is looking for more of GitLab's offering to use, then AEs ought to have the opportunity reviewed by their ASM prior to getting an SA engaged.
  4. SMB Pooled: Requests ought to be brought forth by the AE and approved by the ASM and SA Manager to ensure that the need for an SA is justified.

Meeting Expectations

Async Slack support

In some cases SA support might be required in early stage or not fully qualified opportunities. Slack can be used for answering technical questions, providing additional customer outreach materials or helping an Account Executive with a narrowly-scoped customer inquiry. These requests can be served asynchronously via Slack:

These Slack channels are considered to be a safe harbor for all Commercial AE <-> SA communication. When asking questions, please ensure you provide as much context as possible; including the SFDC URL, and type of subscription (SaaS or Self-Managed). Solutions Architecture will monitor and provide best effort support on these requests.

Post-Sales Engagement

As an opportunity enters into either the Negotiating or Awaiting Signature stage, the Solutions Architect and Account Executive ought to begin introducing the customer to a Customer Success Manager following the Commercial CSM Transition Process.

Solutions Architects ought to be primarily engaged with accounts that have active opportunities in Salesforce.  When we work with customers, it's easy to build a trusted advisor relationship with them that persists past the end of the sale.  In these cases, SAs must use their judgment in determining when to redirect a customer to the proper support channel for follow-up questions.

Below are a few example responses an SA can provide customers that reach out for help after a deal closes. Please leverage your personal connection to them and their company to customize these as you see fit.

Accounts without a Customer Success Manager

Thanks for reaching out!

In order to best direct your question and provide you a timely response, can you submit a support ticket with our support team? Additionally, I have copied your Account Executive as they can help escalate your request if necessary. Below are some links to get started with GitLab support.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting a chance to work with you and role is primarily focused on our customers that are involved in pre-sales engagements; and being a person of one, I don't want to be a bottleneck to you getting a response.

You can go to support.gitlab.com and submit a new request. Please use your company email address and an account and password will be created for you. There are more details regarding reaching out to support.

Accounts with a Customer Success Manager

Thanks for reaching out!

In order to best direct your question and provide you a timely response, can you submit a support ticket with our support team? Additionally, I have copied your Customer Success Manager and Account Executive, as well, as they can help escalate your request if necessary. Below are some links to get started with GitLab support.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting a chance to work with you and role is primarily focused on our customers that are involved in pre-sales engagements; and being a person of one, I don't want to be a bottleneck to you getting a response.

You can go to support.gitlab.com and submit a new request. Please use your company email address and an account and password will be created for you. There are more details regarding reaching out to support.

Below are some additional items you can share with the customer.

Other Considerations

Team meetings
Meeting Follow up/Research

5-Minute Demo Framework

The 5-Minute Demo Framework is a method to quickly produce technical content that is easy to consume for the customer. The intent of the framework is to rapidly develop tutorials while also generating value-packed content for the customer to consume. This content can range from videos, blog posts, or tutorials. As a result of building and sharing out bit-sized videos, the Commercial SA team can scale out our reach to a broader technical audience. Moreover, as the content compounds, the Account Executive teams will have a bank of content to share asynchronously to customers used to deliver value to customers efficiently.

Topics Delivered Upon and Available to Customers

Topic Curation

Tips for searchability
Practice and review

Commercial Demo Jam

With the continuous iteration and releases of GitLab, it's important to stay up to date on the newest capabilities while staying sharp on existing use-cases to best serve customers. The Commercial Demo Jam serves as a safe forum for the Commercial SA team to practice demoing features, discuss potential customer objections, and articulate value through storytelling.

Structure

Commercial SA Win/Lost Retro

Quarterly review of wins and losses to identify patterns and things we can do to keep winning, prevent losses, and improve GitLab as a product. Encourage everyone to try to add at least one thing.

Structure

Process

Commercial SA Peer Review

An SA peer review is the exchange about an ingoing opportunities between the primary SA and one another SA within the same team. The goal is to bring better collaboration with the SA team by sharing advice, best practices and ideas for closing opportunities better and faster. Safe space to review opportunities in progress, learn from others, and share best practices based on questions and suggestions.

Structure

Process

Opportunity Selection

A good opportunity to be reviewed need to meet the following requirements:

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