Many of us have a tendency of checking emails the moment we reach office but instead we should set a time aside for reverting to emails with a calm mind as email handling takes approx. 10-15% of the work day.

Any overloaded mailbox is frustrating but handling emails inadequately would waste a lot of work time. Email is usually also considered as a distraction because many of us have a habit of checking any email pop-up immediately and sometimes clicking into the inbox in order to check whether connectivity to network .

There are many email management best practices for making productive and effective reverts. But before applying any best practice you should ask yourself some sort of questions like:

• How much time do you spend daily on reverting emails?
• What type of emails do you actually receive?
• Do I need to revert all the emails?
• Which email is my first priority?
• Do I use sub folders or keep all emails in 1 folder only?

Make sure you have answers of above questions before applying any tips for effective inbox management. Here I am going to explain some of the outlook email management best practices that you can use to manage emails effectively. These email inbox management tips will simplify your day to day reply mail management or customer email management. Some people use email management softwares or email management tools to manage their inbox effectively. You can also go for some option.

Microsoft Outlook Email Management Best Practices

Find the list of points that you can use to manage your email inbox effectively.

1) Reply Mail Management: You can block your calendar for approx. 30-60 min for reverting on emails or for reply mail management and prioritize reverts basis email importance. You can also further categorize them in order to identify that which is to be reverted today or it is to be kept in follow-up. For this you can use the “flags” along with a set time notification for reminder.

2) Create Templates: We have a habit of typing emails but instead we can draft sample email responses as most of the queries received would be similar and using this template would save our time. You can also customize these templates basis the email requirement.

3) Read Pertinent Emails: If you receive 60 emails a day you are not required to read all of them as they might also include some advertising / information emails, group mailbox responses etc. You can just move them to the relevant folder and address them whenever required. This will reduce the number of emails available in the Inbox Folder.

4) Know What to Reply: Sometimes we receive lengthy emails which more or less look like an essay and most of us have a habit of reverting in the similar fashion. We should always focus into making our email content short and to the point. You can consider this point as a subpart of reply mail management.

5) Alternate Tools:  For short messages you can use alternate tools for communicating within the organization like skype etc. and avoid writing emails.

6) Email Header: This is something which should be clearly looked into whenever any email gets triggered into your mailbox. Most of the time the email is intended to someone who is marked in “To” and all marked in “CC” are just for information. You can ignore emails wherein you are marked in CC as that is just for information and no action is usually required on them. Even you can apply a rule to move all such emails in to a folder by applying below step by step process.

Tips: How to set rules for automatically transferring emails to a folder whenever in “CC” in MS Outlook?

1. Click at Home tab and go to its Ribbon area.
2. Click at Rules option
3. Select Create Rule
4. Here, you will get another window, here select Advanced options
5. Now Clink on where my name in CC
6. Select Next
7. Select folder where it is to be moved
8. Finish

7) Acknowledge emails: Whenever you receive any email and if you think this might take more than 1 day to revert, just send a small email acknowledgement to the sender. This is to notify the sender that you are working on the email and it might take a specific time for closure. This will avoid further email reminders on the subject.

8) Folders: Inbox zero is a very famous term which helps us minimizing the email count in the mailbox. You can have separate & specific folders for transferring emails for future reference. “Rules” option can be used for automatic transfer of emails to the specific mailbox folder. Read below tips to transfer emails to a specific folder automatically in Outlook.

Tips: How to transfer emails to specific folders automatically in MS Outlook?

1. Click on Home tab of Outlook and go to its Ribbon
2. Click on Rules
3. Select “Create Rule…” option
4. Select From, display New item , move item to folder
5. Click OK

9) Subject Line: Use similar subject line to track emails faster in your mailbox as tracking long email threads with different subject lines makes mail management more challenging.

10) Out-of-office replies: This is the most significant feature which you can use whenever you are on leave, left early for the day or in training and would not be able to revert to the sender instantly. By using this “OOO” feature you would be able to notify the sender about your availability and managing email response. Have a look at below tips to configure out of office in your outlook.

Tips: How to set “OOO” for specific time in MS Outlook? 

1. Click at File tab.
2. Then click at Automatic Replies (Out of Office)
3. Choose second option “Send Automatic Replies”
4. Click at the checkbox option “Only send during this time range”
5. Select Date & Time
6. Edit the content
7. Click ok

11) Email Answering: Every email which triggers the mailbox should be either answered, forwarded, archived or deleted. This will reduce the count of emails which are to be handled. You can also request for email delivery at a specific time but your outlook should be running during that time.

Tips: How to set delay delivery in MS Outlook?

1. Open New Email
2. Click on Options tab.
3. choose Delay delivery option.
4. Update details in the compose message window

12) Different Signatures: You can have different signatures for different set of replies sent to specific people. This will save time of drafting signatures.

Tips: How to manage signatures in MS Outlook?

1. Click at File tab of MS outlook.
2. Click at the Options
3. Another window will appear on your screen. Now click at Mail tab from left side pane.
4. Now click at Signatures tab from right side pane.
5. Click New to create signature
6. Click ok
7. Edit signature content
8. Click save

13) Use Voting Option: We usually sent a lot of emails wherein we have to collate responses in yes/no, true/false etc., so instead of doing manual work we can use the voting option available in outlook

Tips: How to set voting option in MS Outlook? 

1. Open new email
2. Click at Options
3. Now again click at Use voting options to select voting option.
4. Customize if required
5. Send email

Here, I have explained best way to manage emails in outlook. I hope you like this article. Please follow our Facebook page and Twitter handle to get latest updates.

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• 4 Areas you can focus to boost your Self Confidence
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• How to Deal with Arrogant People at Work?

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Related Article:

• Presales Interview Questions & Answers – Part 1
• IT Presales Interview Questions & Answers – Part 2

What is Presales in IT?

Pre-sales team work hard to accomplish the client requirement which includes Solutioning, Costing, Resourcing, Presentation etc. There are dedicated, passionate and Technical Presales resources behind every deal won by any organization.

These days Presales has been providing very fascinating and promising career prospects in IT/ITes. Maximum beginners are not aware of this career option. It’s not mandate to be an MBA for starting your career as presales consultant but it’s always an added advantage.

Presales resources are individual contributor and work closely with sales teams. The focus of Presales job profile is essentially in gathering requirement, running feasibility checks, design and build solutions.

Effective career as pre-sales consultant is a blend of technology and finance, as an Individual contributor this team is part of CoE (Center of excellence) in many organization.The basic job of pre-sales folks is to understand client requirement from a business standpoint is significant and then leveraging your writing, presenting and designing skills to stich the solution into a proposal.

The nature of the job is so dynamic that every Request for Information (RFI), Request for proposal (RFP) comes with new challenges and set of prerequisite, so need humans to analyze and manage the client requirement. Hence the presales job cannot be automated or done by robots but there is always a scope of automation that can be done at process or task level.

Presales Job Responsibilities

The benefits Pre-Sales resources get in front of client is that they can show actual expertise on the products or solutions they sell. Below are the list of responsibilities an organization expects from a Presales resource:

• Main responsibilities of Pre-Sales executives are to design a cost effective and competent solution that captures client requirement. Showcase your company achievements, experience and position in providing best quality service.
• A Presales consultant need to present customer finest solution which covers their need and future aspects considering market trend and forecast.
• Sales executives generally don’t have the forte in solution, hence Presales Team needs to be vigilant in designing solution which fulfill client requirement as well as  be cost effective and bring profit to their organization. It’s not just about winning deal it’s more about increasing company revenue.
• Presales consultant mostly need to be assertive for a constructive conflict with sales and delivery team both, and at times in some exceptional cases with the customer as well.
• The Pre-Sales must have good content writing skills.
• Presales accountability should be taken very serious as final scope of work(SOW) gets documented by Presales guys that becomes Bible for delivery and customer teams.

Read below article If you are preparing for a Presales Job Interview.

• Presales Interview Questions & Answers

Understanding Terminology used in Pre-Sales

Request for Information (RFI)

This is the first stage of any deal. Many Organization release RFI to understand their vendor eligibility to fulfill their project/deal/job requirement. In RFI documents client/customer may ask any of the following information to decide the eligibility criteria:

1. Technical expertise
2. Financial history
3. Overall User base
4. Credentials
5. Artefacts
6. Certifications
7. Technical Questionnaire
8. Legalities
9. Regional constraints
10. Strategy
11. Best possible Recommendation based on client requirement

It’s Presales Team who respond to RFI’s and make your organization eligible to bid for RFP’s. RFI’s response need to be crisp and to the point so that customer shortlist your company for next stage of bidding which is called Request for proposal (RFP)

Request for Proposal (RFP)

Once client will shortlist your organization during RFI process, you will be qualified for this stage known as Request for Proposal (RFP). Any company who wishes to hire/outsource/contract any piece of job/activity/project leveraging different vendors in market release their requirement in the form of RFP. The RFP contain all information related to client requirement such as:

1. Eligibility criteria for vendors
2. Submission dates
3. Client Requirements
4. Selection procedure
5. Confidentiality, Legal Terms and Conditions
6. Regional constraint
7. Quotations request details
8. Presentation request
9. Submission doc type in word document or Powerpoint presentation

Post successful bidding client will declare the deal Winner and as a final stage of process SOW needs to be signed between the customer and the successful Vendor who had won the deal.

Solutioning

Analyzing client requirement for a deal/job/project/contract to enhance client business so that they can meet market demands, equipped with latest trend & technology. The IT/third party/vendors /outsourcings firms provide optimal, cost effective resolution/ products/services to solve the concerns/hurdles of client. Presales resources analyze client requirements and convert that requirement in to best possible solution. They plan, design and build a layout document or powerpoint presentation to showcase the solution. Solutioning comes under RFP stage.

Costing

Every Deal/project/RFP have some budget. As per the type of deal client ask for quotes to deliver project in certain duration. The outsourcing company will provide cost for the job/activity in which the project would be completed. This includes complete budget plus margin to recover company expenses. Costing is part of RFP stage.

Costing includes the following:

• Travel expenses
• Asset procurement
• Software License cost
• Resources
• Any Trainings
• Governance

Sizing

Sizing means number of resources required to finish the project/job/activity. Sizing is the most crucial part of Pre-Sales, you must identify number of FTE (Full Time Employees) needed for respective technology, their tenure, total numbers and their Trainings need to finish the project on deadlines. In some cases, it also includes additional time for KT (Knowledge Transfer) and Reverse KT if needed.

Governance

For any deal/project/job there is a need of governance layer, who can manage any client escalation, communication along with entire project delivery management. The Governance layers will always be shared resources as they can manage multiple projects at one time. There could be some dedicated project managers depending upon the deal size and complexity.

Scope of Work (SOW)

Final stage of bidding for any contract/outsourcing/project is signing SOW. SOW is detailed document that clearly defines the following

1. Roles and Responsibility between the client and the Vendor
2. Details project plan
3. Project timelines
4. Terms and Condition (Legal)
5. Knowledge transfer plan
6. Project kick off dates
7. Travel plan If any
8. Governance
9. Contract signed as mutually agreed between partner and client

Presales Technical Skills Requirement

Person should have very good knowledge about overall IT infrastructure architecture or about your vertical. Apart from this you should have:

• Domain knowledge
• Ability to understand Client Requirement
• Content writing
• Good communication & presentation skills
• Good Knowledge of Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Visio, Excel & word)

Presales Training Courses

We live in Internet age so we have lot of options to learn any technology on Internet. These days you don’t need to buy a physical book to learn anything. You can get lot of study materials available over internet that will be helpful to learn any subject.

Udemy is one of the website that promotes digital learning. They have more than 40000 online video courses that anybody can use to learn as per their interest. I have also found one of the very good Presales course on Udemy. You can click on below link to directly access this course.

• Online Training Course on Presales Management – IT Solutions & Service Providers

Who should join Presales?

Presales is very promising field with lucrative remuneration and appreciation from management. You will help generating new business for your organization which will give you all the attention needed. Considering the above-mentioned facts if you really decided to join presales it’s important to be focus on below mentioned points:

• Passionate about Technology to pursue presales as career
• Good listener and reminisce it
• Can work under pressure as mostly they had to deal with short fused deals
• Can deal and manage communication with diverse workforce
• Decent content writer is essential part of presales
• Continuous Skill development and Sound knowledge of emerging trends and technology is must
• Decent knowledge on Costing and Finances
• An Assertive leader to deal with delivery teams
• Positive Attitude to manage success and failure graciously.
• Virtuous negotiator

Who should NOT join Presales?

Presales job will come with lots of responsibility and challenges. If you don’t like new change every day than you may not like the dynamic presales filed. The nature of this job is high pressure on delivering right solution at right time. It’s very crucial how you deal with win and miss deals. So please consider below facts before thinking of presales as career option:

1. Don’t like Dynamic job with multiple skills
2. Don’t enjoy working under pressure
3. Don’t enjoy Writing & making Powerpoint presentations
4. Don’t like sudden change
5. Don’t like travel
6. Don’t enjoy long hours calls
7. Casual Attitude

Experience needed to become Solution Architect (SA) in IT?

Generally, 5+ years in IT industry which includes domain knowledge of at least 2 years. Multi-skills and good learners’ folks can enjoy this challenging role that will give you lucrative salary and Bonus along with recognition among all teams and higher management.  You can consider Presales as your career option if you have all above mentioned skills and qualities.

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