August News

This month’s lead article is all about Three Simple Questions that can keep you out of trouble. They are not questions that you ask the customer – they are questions that you ask yourself. If you ask yourself these questions, and have a sensible and concrete answer to them, before every single customer interaction I can guarantee your meeting will be more focused, productive and profitable.

Ready?  So What? Who Cares and Says Who?  : Not that difficult is it?

I’ve also had a few conversations in June and July with presales leaders who measure “The Technical Win”. To me, it’s an almost worthless metric, especially when exposed to sales and other organizations. Read more on my thinking about why it is a divisive measurement.

Ask John looks at Aggressively Attacking The Competition. A sales org gets brand new leadership. The new leader decides to attack their #1 competitor – in print, in sales calls and at every opportunity. What’s a poor SE who wants to develop a trusted relationship with their customer to do?

The August book is Brian Burn’s “Selling In A New MarketSpace”. After a rough start, it really hits its stride and has a couple of fabulous chapters about setting a vision. If you are an SE in a smaller non-mainstream product company or an SE looking to move into Sales – it is a good read. It gets you inside the head of a successful salesrep with a mixture of war stories, rules and overall non-standard strategy.

Finaly – a heads-up on a couple of MTS activities I am working on. The first is a couple of SE-leader specific sessions at Dreamforce in September (San Francisco Sept 19-20). The second is a teaser – get ready for my latest course announcement in the September newsletter. You’ll love it!