{"id":367138,"date":"2019-03-14T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T19:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/?p=367138"},"modified":"2022-09-26T12:08:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T19:08:10","slug":"my-role-solutions-principal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/my-role-solutions-principal\/","title":{"rendered":"My Role as a Solutions Principal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Whiteboard-People.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"957\" height=\"531\" src=\"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Whiteboard-People.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-367143\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Whiteboard-People.png 957w, https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Whiteboard-People-300x166.png 300w, https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Whiteboard-People-768x426.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 957px) 100vw, 957px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>First  NO that is not me! &#8212; Never had that much hair but  I was young once \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Solutions Principals role within the Dell Technology Services team involves customer facing activities acting as a subject matter&nbsp; expert (SME) in their respective field.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Their key responsibility is to assist services sales and account teams drive professional services through technical expertise, thought leadership, customer interaction and solution development.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently, two kinds of Solutions Principals exist within the Dell Technology Services organization:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Data&nbsp; Center<\/strong>&nbsp;Solutions Principal (DC-SP), which focus on deployment services<br>around Data Center related technologies including: Servers, Networking, Storage<br>and Converge technologies<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>End User Computing<\/strong>&nbsp;Solutions Principal (EUC-SP) which focus on deployment and<br>management services around End User Devices including: configuration, OS<br>migration and maintenance and device management (traditional and modern)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s unpack a bit the different identified&nbsp;&nbsp;responsibilities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Technical Expertise&nbsp;<\/strong>&#8211; Typically a Solutions Principal will have had many years of \u201cin- field\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;services experience.&nbsp;&nbsp; A technologist at&nbsp;heart, they have deep understanding of the technologies (current and future),&nbsp;as well Dell Technologies portfolio and the competitive landscape within the&nbsp;market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Thought Leadership&nbsp;<\/strong>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ultimately, the goal of a Solutions&nbsp;Principal is to gain a trusted advisor role with internal teams and at the&nbsp;customer table.&nbsp;&nbsp; By doing so, he\/she will<br>get to discuss what a customer is doing before the decision has been made, to&nbsp;hear new ideas first, and to help the customer make informed and strategic decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table is-style-regular\"><table><thead><tr><th scope=\"col\"><strong>Sidebar:&nbsp; What Trusted Advisor Means?<\/strong><\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>The words \u201ctrusted advisor\u201d mean&nbsp;that you have the experience, training, knowledge, business acumen, and subject&nbsp;matter expertise to be trusted to advise your clients well.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Key attributes of being a trusted&nbsp;advisor include:&nbsp;&nbsp;Professional, disciplined, responsive, knowledge sharer and great&nbsp;communicatorHave the ability to diagnose your client\u2019s&nbsp;business problems and challenges and then to make the right recommendations to&nbsp;improve their situation.Able to negotiate win-win deals, creating more&nbsp;value for all parties than might otherwise have been agreed to;Act as a change agent, building the case for&nbsp;change and managing the politics of change within their organization and their clients;Act to ensure your client achieves the outcomes&nbsp;that you have represented<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Customer Interactions&nbsp;<\/strong>&#8211; Solutions Principals interact with two kinds of audiences:&nbsp;&nbsp; Internal and External.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For both audiences, evangelizes services<br>portfolio, conducts technical and sales presentations, white boards sessions&nbsp;&nbsp;and research. In addition, Solutions Principals answer questions and write blog<br>articles to help remove objections that arise in the sales process, while&nbsp;promoting Dell Technologies services portfolio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Solution Development&nbsp;<\/strong>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; Although the role is typicallypre-sales related, a Solutions Principal will remain engaged in the transition work&nbsp;to the delivery organization through appropriate knowledge transfer and initial&nbsp;project planning tasks.&nbsp; As part of the&nbsp;solution development process, the Solutions Principal provides SME expertise to&nbsp;develop, propose and present solutions that meet the technology and business<br>requirements of customers and help the team coordinated consultative selling&nbsp;efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Solutions Principals are assigned to specific segments of&nbsp;&nbsp;the business:&nbsp;&nbsp; Commercial (including&nbsp;SPLA) , Enterprise or Channel.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the&nbsp;Channel segment, SPs not only providing technical expertise and thought&nbsp;leadership but in addition, ensuring our Channel partners are trained on the&nbsp;full capabilities of Dell Technologies Services offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Key Value Provided by the Solutions Principal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When engaged the Solutions Principal has several goals in&nbsp;mind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Make sure customer requirements and current&nbsp;state is understood before providing guidance<\/li><li>Match current state to best practice and&nbsp;communicate gaps or areas of opportunity<\/li><li>Identify customer priorities and develop a&nbsp;phased approach for addressing using Dell Technologies Services offerings<br>portfolio<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>It is often the case that, when a Solutions Principal is&nbsp;engaged on a specific opportunity, the process and customer interactions along the&nbsp;way additional opportunities are uncovered.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Because of this, it is beneficial to engage&nbsp;the Solutions Principal early in the sales process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the next article: \u201c<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/a-week-in-my-life-as-an-euc-solutions-principal\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"367132\">A Week in The Life of an EUC Solutions\u00a0Principal<\/a><\/strong>\u201d we\u00a0 explore the what is like to shadow one of the Solutions\u00a0Principal team members over a normal work week.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First NO that is not me! &#8212; Never had that much hair but I was young once \ud83d\ude42 The Solutions Principals role within the Dell Technology Services team involves customer facing activities acting as a subject matter&nbsp; expert (SME) in their respective field.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Their key responsibility is to assist services sales and account teams drive&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[615,670,612],"class_list":["post-367138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journey","tag-personal-thoughts","tag-role","tag-workathome"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":17,"label":"Journey"}],"post_tag":[{"value":615,"label":"Personal Thoughts"},{"value":670,"label":"Role"},{"value":612,"label":"workathome"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Whiteboard-People.png",957,531,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Jorge Pereira","author_link":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/author\/jorge\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":17,"name":"Journey","slug":"journey","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":18,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":317,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":17,"category_count":317,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Journey","category_nicename":"journey","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":615,"name":"Personal Thoughts","slug":"personal-thoughts","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":625,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":60,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":670,"name":"Role","slug":"role","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":680,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":612,"name":"workathome","slug":"workathome","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":622,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":4,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jorgep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}