SAP - Sales Account Executive - C4C

C4C - Cloud for Customer Account Executive

What is C4C :

- Cloud-based CRM platform; comes with couple of flavors - C4C Sales, C4C Service. Typically companies are looking to measure their selling motion - track progress on the road - knowing which meetings to prioritize.

- The goal is not only to create a common customer database but also to see the progress of the opportunities. There are several competitors like Salesforce.com.

Where is C4C is different :

- Advantage over Salesforce.com - when companies check on the effectiveness of their salesforce. Based on all the inputs it can generate forecast - because the data is properly analysed. SAP owns the backend and that's our advantage - the data are loaded on our ERP - that can be used in front of house to the hands of the salesforce - which we get good feedback on. And since we have both system - they can access the information on mobile - anywhere.

Account Executive :

- This has a much narrow sales focus this is just 4 or 5 products more on transactional, volume play type of business.

- They have to be self-motivated. We would expect them to create their own pipeline together with our own sales engine running and hunting as well for leads. They have to have the discipline of cold calling; can plan their week ahead; they know how many hours they should allocate for particular task like being on the phone; or closing of deals, etc.

- They have to be self-reliant. They need to have domain expertise - they know the pain of the industry - know what the competitors of the customers are doing. Look for good customer references and see what SAP has done to be able to help similar people in that industry. A successful sales person would be someone who knows what industry/ies he could target and study it further.

- It would be great to get someone who has industry focus but if not someone who can develop his plan to target a particular industry.

Requirements :

- Experience in selling CRM - SAP is reimagining what C4C is in the market.

- CRM is the traditional view - but it is geared towards providing good customer experience.

- Experience in SaaS based solution - someone who can quickly demonstrate ways on how to improve their business in SAP

- Someone who can make conversation in the market and make the customer realize the value of SAP

- Salesforce.com, Adobe,

- Understand the chronic conversation - selling is incremental - someone who can make the customer try it - like a departmental use for 20 users - and if successful asked to be introduced to other users

- Cautiously, we can consider other guys with sales background - those who have sold 10 to 15 years might have difficulty in adjusting to cloud - as this is incremental sales - typical initial deal size would just be around 50K, than an instant 1M deal.

- We would need someone pretty agile, someone who can create his plan to be able to sell to several customers and know how to actually close this deals.

- For C4C we need people to wear the jacket - someone who can do the 1st level demo; discuss total cost of ownership; help customers to develop business cases.

- Should be able to stand up in front of sales guys - and be authentic in telling their story about CRM.

- Supportive of bringing in early talent - someone who is sharp, hungry, - realistically someone with minimum of 3 to 5 years of sales experience - ideally in SaaS environment - sold either CRM or Customer Centric Solution or a security solution - companies like Salesforce, Webtrends.

- It would be helpful for them to create a target industry to build their reputation.

Questions that will help us to qualify candidate :

Given the flexibility :

- Coming from a sales or service background - what is it that companies - when positioning C4C - what usually the companies would look to improve or make in getting a CRM- What is the reason behind it- They would need to understand the sales / service.

Keywords for answer :

- Mobilizing, improving productivity, predictability of the revenues, being able to report more accurately, introducing more rigor in discipline and training for the workforce.

- When customers are looking out in purchasing cloud - what are they thinking about - what are they asking about cloud - this is about opex vs capex. Having the candidate understand an operating expense than a capital expense - and why companies should consider IT as opex

Competitors :

- They should have done their homework they should be thinking our position in the market - and what do they know about competitors like Salesforce or if they know things happening like Microsoft / Oracle CRM / and even small players

- We are not the market leader yet in the CRM in the cloud space - so they should understand who are we having war with to be able to be the market leader

SaaS question :

- Importance of customer success rather than just closing a deal.

- For SaaS - you are looking at a land and expand type of selling the success of the customer is critical.

- If a candidate came from an on premise background they would need to identify the difference. Candidates should understand the importance of user adoption, training, upsell opportunities, and make sure they are aware of churn risks.