Patience Is An SE Virtue!

Patience is not one of the first skills you think about when it comes to the requirements of being a great SE. I’m not talking about patience in terms of:

a)     Dealing with “full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes” sales people.

b)    Handling that beta product that just won’t behave

c)     Wandering why support takes so long to handle a problem and call the customer back; or even

d)    All the other non-core activities that you have to perform as “the organization of last resort”!

I am speaking about patience in terms of dealing with your customers. Patience in forcing yourself to learn more about your customers and talking/presenting less. A couple of examples to make my point.

Customer says : “We’re looking for a solution that will enable us to ”. Can you help us?

Easy, but wrong answer: “Yes. In fact, let me show you how we can help you right now” – and you start either a demo, presentation or a long monologue.

Harder, but correct answer: “Yes we can. Tell me a little more about why you are looking for .

Customer remarks: “Last month we had to store an additional 2TB of data.”

East, but wrong response: “What kind of storage are you using?” or “How do you back that up?” or “how do you report on that?” (All good questions a little later in discovery).

Harder, but correct answer. “Wow – how do you (or your company) feel about that?”

See the difference? You are asking at least one more question before you dive into “presentation/all-about-me” mode. It makes a big difference and you’d be surprised what you can learn.

So What About So What?

Here's an interesting addition to (and warning about) the "So What?" question I wrote about in "Three Simple Questions" earlier this month. Peter Cohan, author of Great Demo! writes about the So What Fallacy. In his post he explains the dangers of using a "so what" (SW) type methodology during a demo.

His example:

Feature Statement: “We provide support for the software in 22 languages…”

So What Statement: “We provide support for the software in 22 languages, so that your team can access the software anywhere in the world using their native languages…”

The Risk: The customer says, “Everyone in our company speaks English and we want to make sure that all information is captured consistently in the system, so that everyone can access all information equally – without having to learn 21 other languages…”

The Additional Risk: The customer adds, “…and we don’t want to pay for the additional 21 languages, since we won’t be using them – so either take out the support for those languages for our implementation or reduce your price accordingly…”

 

And he is right - it can be a dangerous thing to do. "So What" is the difference? Sorry! The version of SW I wrote about is a question that you ask yourself before the demo or presentation. You need to be able to answer that question, as well as "Who Cares?", otherwise you shouldn't show or speak about the feature/capability/item etc. You should know, based upon your Discovery or Research, that mentioning the 22 languages will get you into trouble. Simplistically, you only talk about the 22 langaue support if you can add "which is something that you told us you needed."

 

Where I do disagree a little with Peter is his comment about "and we want a discount as we don't need the 21 languages." Based on what I have seen, this isn't a tactic that customers use anymore - as there is almost always something in the product/service/solution that they won't use or don't need. It's a fact of life. (I cite the example of Excel or Word - you don't get a discount from Bill Gates because you don't use all the features).

 

That's a minor point, because where we are both violently in agreement is that if you don't know why you are discussing any item/screen/feature/benefit with the customer then you are potentially walking into the unknown - and that is not a good place for an SE to be when selling!

The SE Job Market

Wow. This is the first week since 2007 I don't know a single Sales Engineer anywhere in the world who is out of work and looking for a job. That is amazing. I usually have a list of 20-30 people. The market seems so hot right now, with many SE's rotating out of the bigger names into small start-ups and mid-tier companies.

Although the job market may be horrible ( at least in the US), for anyone under 25, it seems that if you have a couple of years of SE experience you can take your pick. And the more exoerience the better. A friend showed me six (that's SIX) job offers he received in the last 4 weeks when job hunting.

Once you have bene in the business for a while you learn that these things are cyclical. The moral of the story being if you want to make a move and trade up, down or out - now is the time.

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!