Solutions Architect Sales Plays

“Discover GitLab Solutions Architects’ Sales Plays practices”

Sales Plays for new account & teams(existing customer) lands

The SA should either be included in a discovery call or provided with Outcome / Infrastructure / Challenges information uncovered by prior interactions with the account. Occasionally, SA’s may support a combination call of discovery and technical demonstration/deep-dive on a single call, but this is suboptimal as the latter approach does not allow the SA time to prepare for and/or tailor the discussion.

The SA is also responsible for any pre-sales technical customer inquiry or audit from associated accounts, including RFI, RFP or security audits. For details on the audit process, proceed to the Security page.

The SA is always responsible for drafting Professional Services SOW’s, regardless of the account status (pre- and post-sales).

As a general guideline, no more than 2 Solutions Architects should join any single client-facing call, whether it be assistive for the topic or for learning / shadowing.

Overview

Objective - Land new accounts, logos & new teams in existing account with GitLab Ultimate.

Who is this sales play for?

  • Primary: SAEs, SDRs and SAs who handle new accounts, new teams in existing customers
  • Secondary: CSMs who help in discovery with new teams in existing customers

Who to meet

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Ideal Customer Profile - Prospects or new teams in existing customers who are listed in this qualification list for enterprise customers

  • Organizations/teams interested in shifting left & currently unhappy with their security tools OR not using security tool at all
  • Organizations/teams unhappy with their deploy times, current operational efficiency, tool chain
  • Organizations at lower maturity level undergoing or planning to undergoing tranformation
  • Siloed teams with disparate tools, especially security, lacking visibility at the individual level and executive level
  • Organizations with stringent regulatory security or compliance requirements

Target Buyer Personas

Persona role Possible titles
Economic buyers CISO or Security Manager, VP of Security, Director of Security, VP of IT or CTO, App/Dev Director
Technical influencers Chief Architect, App Dev Manager
Other Personas to consider Infrastructure Engineering Director, Release and Change Management Director

Target Account Lists

Getting Started

Consider the following questions:

  • What has prevented the customer from moving to (or considering moving to) GitLab Ultimate?
  • Does the customer have any strategic initiative or priority to which upgrading to Ultimate would align nicely?
  • Are you engaged with the right personas/teams (see Target Buyer Personas above)?
  • Do you have access to power/authority (a business decision maker)?
  • Who are your champions within the account?
  • Are the capabilities and PBOs that are enabled by GitLab Ultimate important to the customer? Why or why not? How do you know?

Stage: Qualification

Sales Play

  1. For SAEs/SDRs please make sure the customers are on the qualification list for your region. Eg: For enterprise west look at this
  2. During qualification, make sure to identify the pain points, customer profile using the collaterals highlighted below:
    1. Questions to better understand customer needs, future state & required capabilities
    2. Customer presentations & GTM use cases link here
    3. Discovery questions for GitLab Protect/Secure
    4. Potential objections from prospects/customers
  3. Review how to position gitlab’s values & why does gitlab does it better here

Expected Outcome

Discovery

Owner

Primary: SDR, SAE Secondary: SA

Stage: Discovery

Sales Play: New Customers(new logos)

  1. Choose & create a list of discovery questions based on your customer profile in order to identify pain points
    1. Discover the pain points through general discovery questions & resources below:
    2. SA technical discovery questionaire
    3. Market requirements
    4. Pick the ones that apply from value discovery pains, benefits & required capabilitieshere
    5. Discovery questions for customer currently not on secure/protect with specific entry points highlighted
    6. Please review potential objectionsfrom prospects/customers before the meeting
  2. Identify & get access to high-level DRI for security
  3. Identify & get access to high-level exec for higher-level initiatives using collateral below 1. Accelerating Digital Transformation 1. Value Stream Management 1. GitLab is optimized for cloud native
  4. Propose next steps & get some time while you are speaking with the customer ideally a demo or workshop. We DONOT recommend starting with a POV since it leads to longer sales cycles & unexpected results before doing more discovery & agreeing to success criterias.

Expected Outcome

  1. Additional Discovery
  2. Technical Evaluation ideally a demo or hands on workshop

Owner

SA and SAE

Sales Play: New Teams(existing customers)

  1. Choose & create a list of discovery questions based on your customer profile in order to identify pain points
    1. Discover the pain points through general discovery questions & resources below:
    2. SA technical discovery questionaire
    3. Market requirements
    4. Pick the ones that apply from value discovery pains, benefits & required capabilitieshere
    5. Discovery questions for customer currently not on secure/protect with specific entry points highlighted
    6. Please review potential objectionsfrom prospects/customers before the meeting
    7. Please review all the this sales play if your customer is already on Premium
  2. Identify & get access to high-level DRI for security
  3. Identify & get access to high-level exec for higher-level initiatives using collateral below 1. Accelerating Digital Transformation 1. Value Stream Management 1. GitLab is optimized for cloud native
  4. Propose next steps & get some time while you are speaking with the customer ideally a demo or workshop. We DONOT recommend starting with a POV since it leads to longer sales cycles & unexpected results before doing more discovery & agreeing to success criterias.

Expected Outcome

  1. Additional Discovery
  2. Technical Evaluation ideally a demo or hands on workshop

Owner

SA and SAE

Stage: Technical Evaluations

  1. Strategize with your sales team on which play would you like to run & agree on the expected outcome before the meeting. We dont recommend starting a technical evaluation with a POV.
    • Demo/Deck: Vision & transformation play, where you would likely focus on GitLab holistically
    1. Customer facing slides
    2. Why choose ultimate
    3. Customer proof point
    4. How GitLab meets market requirements
    5. Differentiators - Feel free to pick as many you would like
    6. SA Demo Repo : break this down into multiple play
    7. Demo catalog
    8. End to End TCO planning workshop, Recording
    9. [End to end demo with secure]
    • Nuts/Bolts play where you will focus on specific secure/ultimate capabilities
    1. DevSecOps Nuts & Bolts deck by Darwin Sanoy
    2. Building a continuous remediation habit
    3. Additional info including TCO workshop
    • Demo/Deck: Integrate vs Compete play
    1. Compete : Argo CD/TeamCity
    2. GitLab advantages over competitors

Expected Outcome

  1. Deeper Dive Demo
  2. Workshops
  3. POV
  4. Professional Services Engagement

Owner

SA and SAE

Additional Resources to use

Will have specific resources under actions above. This is for additional resources.

Professional Service Resources

Customer Persona Services to Consider Customer Desired Outcomes
CISO, CTO, VP Engineering, Director of DevOps Platform or Developer Experience, Head of Digital/DevOps Transformation Transformative services, slides reducing functional silos, proactive risk management (e.g. shift left), standardizing CI/CD workflows, and innersourcing collaboration.
Sr. Manager App Dev, Director of Engineering Standard service packages or Custom Scoped Offerings Customers who are interested in training on one ore more specific topic. Customers who need help in implementing GitLab Self Managed or need data to be migrated to GitLab

Not sure? Get in contact with your region’s PS Engagement Manager in #professional-services to discuss specific customer opportunities.

Measuring progress

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Please copy this checklist per opportunity & update as needed.

Consider these milestones and adjust stages in SDLC as you progress.

Milestones

  • Gameplan with GitLab champion (MEDDPPICC)
  • Meeting with Security team or other economic buyer
  • Agreement to do technical evaluations
  • Technical evaluations requirements defined
  • Successful technical evaluation
  • Proposal

Metrics:

  • Avg days per stage to progress
  • Longest step (common blockage?)
  • Economic buyer titles - common factor?
  • Retro on sales play
Last modified March 28, 2024: Resolve "Move Solutions Architecture outside of Customer Success" (1b1a8189)
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