11/12/2019 F5 202 Introduction

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F5 202 Introduction¶

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The 202 Pre-Sales Fundamentals Exam

The F5 Pre-Sales Fundamentals Exam is focused on assessing a Sales Architect/Engineer’s

knowledge of sales motions and sales positioning of F5 products.

This exam identi es individuals who have the skills and understanding necessary for technical
selling of F5 solutions. They will likely be a sales engineer with a proven track record of
successfully selling F5 solutions and typically have two years of sales experience. The Sales
Professional should have a working understanding of F5 solutions and the ability to articulate its
value to customers and prospective customers. The majority of the content is found on the site
links of the sections.

Section 1 - Discovery¶

Objective - 1.01 - Research the Company and Customer¶

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Understanding the customer’s company direction and initiatives can help you understand their
high-level IT infrastructure drivers. You can gather this type of information from many di erent
sources and a few of them are mentioned in this section. Not every company is publicly traded, so
not all of this type of information will be available for you to review for every customer. This is
where building a relationship with your customer comes into play. As a trusted advisor for your
customer you may be able to learn more about their needs and pressing initiatives, when no other
resource is available.

1.01 - Visit corporate website to gather information (investor relations, board of directors, press
releases, acquisitions, blogs, RSS feeds)

Investor Relations

Most publicly traded companies will have an investor relations page on their website that can give
information on current nancial performance. This information can help you better understand their
ability to take on a new large project.

If your buyer works for a public company, it might be a good idea to also check out its most recent
nancial reports on the SEC’s website. This will give you an idea of how the company is
performing, as well as the problems it’s facing (check out “risk factors” sections).

Example: http://investor.apple.com (http://investor.apple.com) <http://investor.apple.com/

(http://investor.apple.com/)>__

Board of Directors

Understanding who the in uencers and decision makers are within the organization you are trying
to sell into can help you better understand the decisions they make or may make.

Example: http://investor.apple.com/corporate-governance.cfm (http://investor.apple.com/corporate-

governance.cfm)

Press Releases

Scroll through the recent press releases and see if anything major has been announced such as
leadership changes, product releases, nancial statements, events, security concerns, or customer
wins.

Example: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/ (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/)

Acquisitions

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Acquisitions can sometimes accurately predict a company’s future directions in a market space and
can thus help you understand some of their purchasing decisions or project demands.

Example: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/09/apple-acquires-shazam-o ering-more-ways-

to-discover-and-enjoy-music/ (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/09/apple-acquires-shazam-
o ering-more-ways-to-discover-and-enjoy-music/)

Blogs

Read what your buyer reads and read what your buyer writes. If your prospect maintains a blog, be
sure to read at least the last few posts and comment on them during your call or meeting. In
addition, visit the websites of popular industry blogs and peruse the latest posts to learn more
about the trends and challenges shaping the environment.

Example: http://investor.apple.com/corporate-governance.cfm (http://investor.apple.com/corporate-

governance.cfm)

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are a type of web feed which allows users to access updates to online content in a
standardized, computer-readable format. You can look up and subscribe to the RSS feed for each
of your publicly held companies in your territory.

First look up the stock symbol *https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/lookup.asp*

(https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/lookup.asp)
Next subscribe to the RSS feed using the RSS feed reader of your choice for each stock symbol

The Company’s Twitter and LinkedIn Account

What kind of content and messaging has the company been promoting? Understanding how the
company is presenting itself to its customers can help you better understand how to present
yourself to your buyer.

https://twitter.com (https://twitter.com)

https://www.linkedin.com/ (https://www.linkedin.com/)

AngelList

If you sell to startups, AngelList is an essential researching tool. You can see the company’s
funding history, including the timing, value, and participants in each round; past and present
employees; advisory team; founders; products and launches; open jobs; and more.

https://angel.co (https://angel.co)

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1.01 - Locate job postings to identify internal initiatives and investments

Some company initiatives can be seen in the type of job roles they have open. As customers plan
for projects they will typically make sure they are hiring the expertise needed to get the job done or
support the initiative after implementation is complete. You can check a customer’s Careers page
to see what job role is in high demand.

Example: https://f5.com/careers (https://f5.com/careers)

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Objective - 1.02 - Given a scenario, prospect customer opportunities¶

1.02 - Determine corporate challenges

Many times, understanding the implications of the challenges that a customer/company is facing
will help you pick the correct solution for that customer/company. Doing research when customer
prospecting (hunting!) is very important. Other than having face-to-face meetings where
information can be exchanged, understanding the customer’s mission, vision, and value statement
will help align your e orts when introducing technology to solve a business problem. Most of the
time, attempts to gather key information using email or “cold calling” activities will not be
successful - unless you have made a time investment in understanding the corporate and
technology infrastructure of the prospect. To earn the trust of a decision maker , you must

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understand their needs and budget so you can articulate solutions that meets those needs. Below
are two examples of positioning F5 solutions to meet a company’s cloud and compliance
challenges:

Cloud Challenges

If a company is trying to reduce capital expenditures (see section 3.02) and is not interested in
buying any new hardware for their data center because they are moving to the Cloud, F5 can help
by providing application services in the Cloud and thus moving the costs of providing application
services to operating expense.

Transition to the Cloud may not always be about CapEx vs OpEx. It can also be about agility and
speed to market. Many times, in the rush of deployment/migration the necessary application
services are not at the top of mind of a DevOps team and it can be easy for customers to just
default to the built-in Cloud Service Provider (CSP) application services regardless of capabilities.
This can put them in a hard spot if that application needs a function that the CSP service can’t
perform or if the application needs to move to a di erent Cloud provider. F5 provides the same
industry leading application services across multiple CSP with consistency and portability.

Compliancy Challenges

Security concerns are at the top of mind in many organizations and F5 is there to help them with
the application services that can protect their mission critical Applications and data. Understanding
your customers business vertical can be critical to understanding the challenges they face as a
company. Certain business verticals come with compliance regulations such as PCI and HIPPA that
can require more strict security policies.

1.02 - Correlate business and technical initiatives

Understand the correlation between the needs of a customer’s business areas and which types of
technical initiatives can meet those needs. Sometimes, when you meet with di erent business
areas within a customer’s organization, you can gain a broader understanding of the organizations
future needs across the entire company. This information can allow you to see a clearer picture of
what your customer needs and understand if you should perhaps position products that can grow
their Data Center or if you should focus on Cloud enablement products. You will need to know all
F5 products and the problems they can solve to prepare for this section of the exam.

1.02 - Determine technical organizational structure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_structure
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_structure)

Organizational Structure

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Understanding your customers organizational structure for the company as well as organizational
structure within the technical departments can help you understand who is driving requirements
and budgeting for the projects you are involved in.

Some organizations will be very structured and have a clear line of authority and role, while others
may be more loose and harder to clearly understand but mapping this out with your account team
will make your opportunities more successful.

An organizational structure is a system that outlines how certain activities are directed in order to
achieve the goals of an organization. These activities can include rules, roles and responsibilities.
The organizational structure also determines how information ows from level to level within the
company. For example, in a centralized structure, decisions ow from the top down, while in a
decentralized structure, the decisions are made at various levels.

Objective - 1.03 - Given a scenario, correlate which F5 products could solve issues or meet
customer needs¶

You will need to be able to use your knowledge of F5 product capabilities to correlate to customer
needs. This will be a wide range of questions focused on product capabilities.

1.03 - Associate customer requirements to F5 solutions

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https://www.f5.com/solutions (https://www.f5.com/solutions)

https://partners.f5.com/solutions (https://partners.f5.com/solutions)

When you do account discovery and discover the customer problems or issues that need to be
solved, your knowledge of the F5 product line will allow you to nd opportunities within the
account. Understanding the problems our products can solve will allow you to go deeper in the
account with F5 products. You will need to know all of our products and the problems they can
solve to prepare for this section of the exam.

1.03 - Align potential F5 solutions to business and technical initiatives and challenges

https://www.f5.com/solutions (https://www.f5.com/solutions)

https://partners.f5.com/solutions (https://partners.f5.com/solutions)

Sometimes when you meet with di erent business areas within a Customer’s organization you will
learn the individual business areas needs as well as direction. Many times, the funding of IT
projects come directly from the individual business areas budgets. When understanding those
needs you can overlap them with other projects needs within the customer and provide F5
solutions that not only meet one projects needs but multiple projects needs potentially expanding
budget once multiple projects are involved. Once again, you will need to know all of our products
and the problems they can solve to prepare for this section of the exam.

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