How to Ensure ERP Discovery Call Success

From the vendor’s perspective, the discovery call is a milestone in the sales process. It’s an opportunity to learn more about your business. This includes how it is structured and operates, what it does well and what it doesn’t, operating pain points, and what it needs to compete more effectively in both current and future market environments. Serious vendors use this opportunity to develop very specific insights so that they can determine not only which product and options to offer, but also how to facilitate a mutually rewarding relationship post-purchase. To this end, they will dive deeply into understanding your business, and your approach should be to do the same with them.

The hallmarks of a productive discovery process are strong preparation, active listening, authenticity, rapport building, and cooperative collaboration on the part of both parties. What you accomplish mutually with the vendor you ultimately choose will set the tone for your relationship post-sale.

This guide will prepare you for the discovery process, from pre-call research, to what you should accomplish on each call. The result of this process should be a confident and informed consensus about which enterprise resource planning vendor, product, and options are right for your business.

Communicate your story
Armed with pages of information about your company’s reasons for considering an ERP transition, take the time to share your company’s story. Talk about the unique ways in which you operate and your market position relative to your competition. Discuss the ways you win and the ways you lose in the marketplace, your areas of strength and your areas of weakness. Which business processes are inefficient, redundant, and overly time consuming? In which areas of your business are you not getting peak productivity from your employees? What are your most inefficient business and manufacturing processes, and how do you envision a new ERP system driving the solutions? These problems are known to salespeople as “pain points.” Talk about the leadership structure of your business, and who is responsible for what—including roles in your upcoming ERP transition. Include key personnel in your organization that will be involved in the ERP decision and implementation in the call.

Distill your “story” down to key selection criteria
To ensure that each of your prospective vendors closes the call with clear takeaways, conclude your part of the discussion with bullet points identifying your unique business needs and objectives with a new ERP solution. What are the key decision criteria upon which your decision will be based? Presenting this early enables each vendor to provide the information you need when it comes time for wrapping up the total value proposition of their solution.

Validate your research
Much of the information you have compiled during your research phase will come from vendor websites, literature, social media, and multimedia/videos. During the research phase, you need to attempt to distinguish exaggerated or vague claims from specific facts, but this is difficult to do without being able to talk directly with vendors. Look through the claims that have been made about product features and benefits, training and technical support, and updates and security. You want to be able to compare legitimate claims from vendor to vendor, so ask for substantiation or a demonstration when necessary.

Identify and prioritize product features and benefits
Once you have discussed your business needs, pain points, and potential problems with an ERP transition, talk about the features and benefits you think are most important for your business. Get each vendors’ perspective on which features and benefits they think are most important, given your needs. This is an opportunity to expand your understanding of ERP by learning from experienced experts.

Define a successful outcome in terms of key performance metrics
Communicate expectations of leadership in terms of improvement in key performance metrics and timelines in each functional area of your business. Talk about ROI and expected time to break even. Where do you draw the line between success and failure, and when do you expect to achieve certain outcomes? This is about suggesting that there will be expectations and accountability. Where are you now and where would you like to be in terms of these measurables? What does each vendor have to say about how their product and partnership can impact these metrics? Do they talk about the successes of other clients in similar circumstances?

Understand the total value proposition or unique selling proposition
Prior to your discovery calls, you may think about your ERP options in terms of product and service features and benefits. Before the phone call ends, aim to capture a bullet point list of advantages for this solution over the competition. For instance, one solution may be designed and supported by former manufacturers with years of experience in your niche. Another might have cornered the market on being able to automate more business processes than the competition, making it easier for your business to operate with a lean staff. Once you have 5–10 bullets with distinguishing features, ask the vendors to describe in just two sentences what the unique selling proposition of their proposal is, relative to competitors.

Discuss budget
Don’t feel awkward about being proactive here and initiating a discussion about your budget estimates. Talk about who owns the budget and what degree of flexibility there may be with it. What can the vendor provide within your budget, and what might have to be sacrificed? Often, the discovery process yields a different ranking of potential vendors when budget is considered than when money is no object.

Find out how they believe their solution compares with competitors’
You may find that among the vendors you’re considering, they all mention one competitor first. That should tell you something. You may find commonalities among the vendors’ appraisals of their competitors that will help you make a more informed decision. This part of the process can be enlightening, especially in terms of discovering solution and vendor shortcomings.

Assess the values of the people with whom you will have a relationship
Prior to the call, ask the vendor to include your point of contact in the call. Will there be a definitive point of contact, or will you talk to someone new and unfamiliar when you need support? You want to determine that the vendor is set up to deliver a superior customer experience, from training and support through data migration to “go-live” and beyond. Most important, you want to come away with a qualitative feel for the character of the people you will be dealing with once you are a customer; are they sincere and genuine about developing a long-term partnership, or are they focused on sales over service?

Discuss potential problems with a transition
A new ERP implementation is a complex process that requires 100% internal buy-in and cooperation, as well as a vendor with technical know-how and training resources, and experience in guiding companies through the complex phases of a transition, such as data migration. Be prepared to talk with vendors in your discovery calls about how they would mitigate each of your concerns. Make your concerns vivid and real, letting each vendor know about the potential consequences to your business and its people if certain aspects of the implementation do not go according to plan. You want your vendors emotionally invested in your success.

Synopsize your vision
Taking everything you have learned into account, this step will be similar to what the vendor provides you in step 6. Here, you will describe in 2–3 sentences, what your vision of success looks like after a year with the new ERP solution in place.

Ask for customers and references
If a solution is truly right for your business, chances are some of your most successful competitors are already using it. If not, that might be a signal that this solution is not ideally suited to your business, or that it doesn’t have enough of a track record to justify your investment. A strong vendor will proudly offer a list of clients, including some who have consented to talk with you about their experiences and provide references with candid insights on what to expect.