Ahmed Ali

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Congratulations to World Wide Technology Public Sector for your Google Cloud Public Sector Partner of the Year Award for National Security! So incredibly proud of our partnership and all the work we’ve done together! What a great way to kick off Next 2024! Let’s go!

I am so excited to share that at Google Cloud Next today we are announcing the authorization of Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (GDC Hosted) to host Top Secret and Secret missions for the U.S. Intelligence Community, and Top Secret missions for the Department of Defense. This authorization marks a significant step forward in Google Cloud's mission to support the U.S. government's modernization efforts. Check out our blog: https://lnkd.in/gxuXniJ2

Pitching ROI in sales is dead. According to Gong data, presenting ROI and low close rates go hand in hand. Two things happen when most salespeople sell ROI: - they do it so naively that it backfires - it's a Hail Mary attempt to save a deal When a senior exec hear's a salesperson say "the ROI of our product is..." they write-off that salesperson. They think you’re making too big of a leap between what your product does and the expected financial return you’re waving in front of them. The best salespeople create bullet-proof business cases instead. (Read: ROI is only one element of this!) Here's how they do it, according to one of the top business case experts in the world: 1. State the Situation Define the current state. What are they trying to accomplish? What's standing in their way? Make it relevant to the exec's priorities. Make it urgent with conflicting obstacles standing in the way of their goal. 2. Define the Problem Statement This is what most sellers get wrong: They think buyers buy because of ROI. Nope. They buy to solve problems first. And the financial ramifications of those problems are far more compelling than the ROI of your product. In other words, the 'cost of inaction': - what is the problem costing them? - what the opportunity costs? - what are the indirect costs? - what are the direct costs? Capture the problem as well (or better) than your customer can. 3. Create a Bridge Read: This is not about your product. Read (again): This is not about ROI. The Bridge explains the root cause of the problem. Which then allows you to explain what the customer NEEDS to solve the problem. 4. Define Three Scenarios. This is where you start to hint at ROI. Show three possible scenarios. - no action - best case - base case Executives think in ranges and possibilities. Yet most sellers give a definitive number: "You'll get exactly 22% ROI on our product, just like our other customers!" That's a sure-fire way to lose your credibility. Build three possible scenarios instead. 5. Define the Required Resources. Explain what the customer will need to do to make this projection successful. - dedicating headcount - dedicating time - spend - etc. Most salespeople shy away from this. They want to make it seem (unrealistically) easy to deploy their product. Execs know better. Call out what you need for this to be a success, and you'll earn instant credibility. Plus, you reduce their fear of shelf-ware. Because they know what it takes to avoid that now. That's all for now. P.S. I've watched over 3,000 discovery call recordings in Gong. Here's a (free) list of 39 questions that sell I compiled along the way: https://go.pclub.io/list

World Wide Technology is the first partner approved by Google Cloud to advance the adoption of Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (GDC Hosted), a sovereign cloud solution designed for stringent data security requirements. http://ms.spr.ly/6042ccSlj #GooglePublicSector

Geezer Alert! So, I am learning Python.... Don't ask why a fully retired person is learning a new language. 😊 This is, by far, not my first language, which makes learning a new one both easy and frustrating. Why "frustrating", well because at a base-level, Python is so similar to many languages before it, and I can't figure out why it exists with languages like JavaScript (w/frameworks) in existence. But I digress. I decided to list all of the languages/frameworks that I've written code in. Can you (geezers like me) remember yours? Here's my list: School Years: COBOL Fortran 77 GW Basic   Professional Years: Ashton Tates dBase III, III+, IV Clipper Asymetrix Toolbook Apple Hypercard Visual Basic (DOS) / Visual Basic (Windows) C C++ SmallTalk Java Visual Basic.NET J# (Microsoft implementation of Java) C# (or C-Sharp) F# (or F-Sharp) Python