Peter O'BrienBarlborough, Chesterfield, United Kingdom
How do I convince Sales that they should sell project management services? How do I answer the question from Sales (passed on from clients) "Surely as a supplier you are going to have to do these things anyway - why should I, the customer, pay for them"? Ideas please!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Saving Changes...
First find the buttons t push for sales and their clients. Easier said than done.
On a more general level I would start with all the project management deliverables.
Project Plan, WBS, Risk Management Plan, Communication Plan, Quality Plan, Change Management Plan …. You get the idea. Ask who produces these? If the answer is no one then chalk one up for using a PM.
If this is IT related there are a zillion stats on how poor (or no) project management is a major cause of the project failure rates. I am sure there are similar stats for other industries. Standish Group has fresh research out. See Karen Rennick’s post on Project Failure Rates on the project management central discussion.
Talk about earned value on how it can be used. My guess is they know nothing about it. There are good stats from Dept of Defense on how EV can indicate how the project will end up after only 15-20% of the work is done. This is based on the history of 700 projects. While EV can be made to be somewhat subjective it can be a useful tool, especially when kept simple.
Talk about the fact that 90% of a PM’s work is communication related. So if someone does that in there spare time that means they should work 10% on “delivery tasks”. We all know that doe not happen. Who looks after the stakeholder’s interest? Who looks at measuring project success. The project will make order entry better. Define better. 5%? 50%? How would you measure that it is indeed 50% better? The PM can help facilitate this in the early phases.
I guess what I am try to get at is you need to put some of the tasks a PM is responsible for and put some kind of quantification to it as it relates to your project. Tune the message for your audience.
My favorite quote from a colleague is “we now know that project management is more than just being organized.”
A few ideas to start with anyway. Saving Changes...
As a follow up to sales selling PM services, does anyone have any views regarding Project Managers participating in the sales process? Anyone seeing any trends or having experience being a Project Manager assuming a sales role?
On the question asked, I think the previous reply answers the question pretty well. Why pay for Project Management services? Because it provides value. Saving Changes...
