How to Add Change Management to Your Proposal Without Losing the Deal
Sales pressure often cuts change management from the SOW. Here’s how tech firms can include it in proposals without risking the deal.
In front of a room at go-live training, I was trying to win over leadership in real time.
Every role in the org, from VP to field tech, sat in the same session. The product hadn’t been incorporated into their business processes yet, so we had to work that out with other departments mid-training, then sent follow-ups to earlier attendees.
Six months earlier, the technology firm selling the product had brought me in to support its sales calls with this client. When I later heard the firm had cut change management from the SOW to close the deal, I was disappointed but understood.
Now the same partner was paying me out of their pockets to save the implementation.
I see this story often, and the fix starts long before go-live. Here’s how to include change management in the proposal without losing the deal.
How Smart Teams End Up With Software Nobody Uses
Every team in a technology company can do its job well and still leave a client with a product no one uses. Each function answers to a different incentive, and change management isn't part of any of them.
Marketing is there to bring prospects in, so the message is that the product is intuitive and easy to use. That message gets attention, and much of the time it's true.
Sales is there to close the deal. No deal means no revenue for anyone, including delivery and customer success, so anything that adds cost to the proposal puts the number at risk.
Delivery is there to get the implementation done. It inherits a client who was told the product is easy, and then has to explain why people still need support.
Customer success is there to drive usage and renewal. This is where the problem finally shows: the system is live, no one at the client is using it, and the renewal is at risk.
Each of these is reasonable on its own. The trouble is that the decision about organizational change management (OCM) gets made early, when the pressure to close is highest, and the cost shows up later in delivery and customer success. No one owns the gap between "easy to use" and "actually used."
Easy-to-Use Isn't the Same as Easy-to-Adopt
A product can be easy to use and still go unused, because ease of use is only one of three things that determine whether a client gets value.
Usability: Can someone figure out how to use it? The product team owns this, and it's what "intuitive" claims are about.
Adoption: Do people choose to use it? This depends on whether the sponsor is behind it, what's in it for the people affected, and whether they trust it.
Process change: Has the work changed around it? Roles, handoffs, approvals, and reporting now assume the new system, so going back to the old way isn't an option.
A product can pass the first and fail the other two. A 2015 survey by Knoa Software, reported by Simplus, found that only 8.4 percent of enterprise software errors were system-related. The rest came down to the user, the design, or the process.
For some products, this matters more than for others. Vendor management software, workflow tools, and anything with handoffs between teams only pay off when every stakeholder group uses them. One group holding out breaks the benefit for everyone, so low adoption isn't just a small shortcoming. It means the product isn't delivering what the client bought.
This is why a firm can keep saying its product is easy to use and still protect the outcome. The first claim is about the product. The second is about the organization using it.
How to Include OCM Without Putting the Deal at Risk
At a tech firm, nobody’s incentives point directly at change management, so each team needs a simple way to include it. Here’s what that looks like for each role.
Marketing: Keep the Message, Add the Context
There's no need to walk back "easy to use." Pair it with language about adoption, such as "easy to learn, so your team can focus on adopting it." The claim stays true, and change management later reads as part of the plan, not a contradiction.
Sales: Make It Concrete, Make It Affordable, Make It Clear
Bring an OCM person into sales calls to speak to leadership engagement and rollout, change management feels concrete before price comes up. Use AI-enabled change management to keep the cost low enough to build into the price.
You may also want to define success up front, separating the scope of what the firm controls from what depends on the client. If the client declines change management, name adoption and process change as out of scope.
Delivery: Fold the Change Work Into an Existing Role
On a small to mid-sized engagement, make the engagement manager a Delivery Manager who owns both delivery and the change work. Adoption risks then show up in the same status conversation as schedule and budget, and the client doesn't need a separate hire. Larger programs that span several business units may still need dedicated capacity.
Customer Success: Offer It After Go-Live
Offer change management as a managed service once the product is live, aimed at new enhancements and the areas where usage is lagging. It's also a natural offering at renewal when an account is at risk, because by then the client has seen the adoption problem for itself. Track which accounts had change management and which didn't, and share that with sales and marketing so the next proposal has evidence behind it.
Adoption of an Intuitive Tool isn’t Automatic
Renewal depends on adoption. Every team from marketing through customer success can do its job well and still lose the renewal if the customer isn’t actually using the tool.
Whether change management comes from your own team or a partner, it's easier to include before the deal closes than to add after go-live. Studio Change can work either way: as an advisor helping your team build the capability, as a practitioner embedded in your team, or as the partner behind managed change management for your customers after go-live.
If you have a proposal coming up where adoption worries you, book 30 minutes with us. We'll look at where change management fits and how to include it without putting the deal at risk.