Red Hat Advanced Sales Workshop helps Presidio drive new business

Benefits:

• Encouraged more strategic customer conversations, driving new business
• Raised alertness to new sales opportunities
• Accelerated automation journeys to close deals faster
• Helped establish automation as a strategic pillar

“Technology innovation is running at a breakneck pace,” said Matt Estes, Senior Account Manager at Presidio. “IT modernization and transformation are accelerating across all market segments, but there’s a higher level of fear of change.”

Global digital services and solutions provider, Presidio, provides almost 2,000 customers across all segments with secure cloud environments that form the backbone of their digital transformation. Roughly a quarter of its customers are in the Fortune 500.

“Presidio focuses on everything from infrastructure, applications, and transformation. We are trusted advisors to our customers and experts in cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, IT automation, and IT modernization,” said Estes, noting that its offerings cover the entire IT solution lifecycle, from initial assessments, strategy, and consulting through implementation and deployment to managed services.

Presidio became a Red Hat Solution Provider Partner in 2013 to support existing customer needs since Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat OpenShift paired well with its offers. The firm decided to take its cloud consulting business to the next level with the acquisition of Coda Global in August 2020. Seeking to give customers an ideal hybrid cloud solution, Presidio strengthened its focus on Red Hat, becoming a Red Hat Apex Partner in 2021.

“Our customers are aligning with Red Hat because Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform are leaders in their space and integrate with ITSM (IT Service Management) processes and activities,” said Estes. “Presidio looks at Red Hat as a strategic partner.”

Presidio helps customers every step of the way in their IT modernization and transformation journey. For its sales team, addressing technology innovation with enterprise customers to help them transform their businesses and avoid being disrupted is essential, yet challenging.

So, when the opportunity for its sales professionals to become more involved with Red Hat technology at an in-depth level presented itself, Presidio seized it. The Red Hat Partner Training Portal offered key learnings on what specific technologies could be brought to the table to help Presidio’s customers. “I wanted to become a disciple of change; I wanted to be able to open my clients’ eyes to the power of automation,” said Estes. “So, when approached to ask who was interested in furthering their knowledge of what Red Hat is doing with IT automation, I was one of the first to raise my hand.”

The instructor-led Advanced Sales Workshop aims to help experienced sales professionals enhance their skills and overcome real-world challenges they encounter in the field. Attendees begin learning even before they attend the virtual training. “Around eight hours of self-paced learning before the workshop explained the fundamentals of Red Hat, where Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was in the market, and how IT automation is changing the landscape,” said Estes. “It was really valuable.”

The workshop itself also lasted around eight hours, divided over two days. Competitive role play, teach-back, and other methods helped participants review and improve sales discovery, objection handling, value pitch, and more. “The workshop was at the level I needed to understand the value proposition and the technology at a very high level,” said Estes. “The content was great, and the instructor delivered it well.” With the workshop focused on overcoming real-world challenges, attendees are encouraged to address their challenges throughout the course. During the self-paced learning, they are asked to identify a real customer to build out their unique customer plan. After the workshop, they complete a customer call with the goal being to identify new pipeline opportunities. “I was able to deliver the messaging from the training to one of my accounts at Presidio to open new routes and develop new opportunities,” said Estes.

As a sales professional, Estes found the workshop sufficiently but not overly technical, enabling him to talk about the vital role of digital transformation in enabling innovation. “Businesses can get disrupted at any time,” he said. “If they don’t innovate, they’re going to be left behind. Being able to have that discussion with my customers is important, and the workshop has helped me to do that.”

Presidio drives more business by engaging in strategic customer conversations

The workshop allowed Presidio to have more productive conversations with its customers, ultimately driving new business. “This training has given me a ‘talk track’ and dialogue that I did not have previously; it’s helped me to become a better evangelist of transformation and automation,” said Estes.

Today, its sales professionals feel more confident in asking customers questions about their systems, processes, and technology roadmap for creating more efficiency within their organizations. Estes said: “Thanks to the workshop, I can create a new dialogue with my customers. These days, I’m asking them high-level technology questions such as, ‘How are you managing infrastructure?’ or ‘How are you tying into IT service management to drive change and innovation?’”

Raised alertness to new sales opportunities

Presidio’s sales professionals seek to be aware of the newest opportunities to best assist customers. “The Red Hat Advanced Sales Workshop has certainly heightened my senses in finding opportunities with customers around Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat OpenShift,” said Estes. “It ensures I’m always on the lookout for novel opportunities whenever I’m helping my customers solve their problems.”

One notable opportunity that Presidio uncovered thanks to the workshop was with a new financial banking customer leveraging automation technology for both visibility and process automation. When one customer mentioned some concerns about its legacy automation technology during a meeting, Estes used learnings from the workshop to introduce Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate the same processes. “From that dialogue, I ultimately engaged sales at Red Hat, and together we closed the deal,” said Estes. “That was a year ago; the customer is now moving toward adding additional endpoint licenses.”

Accelerated automation journeys to close deals faster

Not only have customer conversations improved for Presidio but the workshop has given it the ability to gently nudge customers with technical peers to support the sales journey. And that means it can close deals faster.

“If you look at technology adoption and transformation, every customer is in a different part of the journey,” said Estes. “The workshop has enhanced my ability to propel my customers forward with Red Hat and integrate Red Hat technologies into their businesses a little faster.”

Helped establish automation as a strategic pillar

The workshop’s IT automation training has provided Presidio with a fundamental understanding of IT automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and the opportunities customers gain by adopting automation and transformation as a strategy. “I learned that the more items you automate, the more resources it frees up and the more capital it increases across the board within IT,” said Estes, echoing the workshop instructor.

The workshop has provided Presidio with consistent messaging around Red Hat products and solutions—messaging that has provided a catalyst for change. The resounding messaging coming from the workshop centered around how customers can embrace technology to automate and improve IT operations. “I learned that if you repeat the same task three times, that process needs to be automated,” said Estes. “And if we look at IT operations, we often find replicated efforts across the board.

“The consistent message and understanding the workshop has given me, together with our Red Hat partnership and my alignment with the Red Hat sales team on every single one of my accounts is going to bear fruit into the future. It’s the journey, not the destination. Presidio and Red Hat will continue to find opportunities to close business together.”