Scenario: You have a good relationship with a mid-level IT operations manager that was recently promoted to VP,so they now have greater responsibilities. The new VP has always been an advocate for Red Hat and agreed to grab lunch to catch up as they settle into their new role to discuss where they could assist Red Hat.
Preparing for lunch, you are writing down a set of questions you want to ask. One key question is how the current budget works (who pays for what and who consumes what) for their existing centralized automation tooling—a legacy product you are positioning Ansible Automation Platform to replace. Why is this an important question to ask?
a. Understanding who is the executive sponsor or budget owner for centralized automation is important if you are positioning Ansible Automation Platform for multiple domains beyond Linux, such as Windows, networking, security, cloud, and more. Most of your relationships are with Linux users who may consume Ansible Automation Platform, but they may not be able to actually fund the project to bring in Ansible Automation Platform on their own.
b. You want to figure out which group or individual is the champion for the legacy automation tooling currently in place, and then try to meet with them to discuss the benefits of migrating to Ansible Automation Platform.
c. You want to know how much your customer pays per node so you can come in with a competitive price when you craft your Ansible Automation Platform proposal later in the year.
d. Your manager wants you to know the budget process so you can update the qualification fields in your company's CRM tool.
