PreSales Engineers, White Boards, and Mojo...

As an IT executive I suffered through far too many really awful PowerPoint Presentations. That was back in the days when everyone threw in a piece of clipart (remember the duck with sledgehammer?) and bullet points had to twirl, whirl and fly in from all sides of the screen.

Sadly, many sales presentations haven't improved since then. Mostly it isn't even the "fault" of sales and presales engineers, they just use what is given to them. Since customers universally say they want conversations instead of presentations - it's time for a change. And that is where the Lost Art Of White Boarding comes into play. Drawing pictures was once natural for us, yet we've grown out of that skill. Yet if you can make a customer say "I see what you mean" - you're on your way to the sale.

Last year I wrote up a study on The ROI Of WhiteBoarding. Give it a read. Because recently, a startup, Zamurai, has developed a fantastic mobile whiteboard application. I stopped by their offices and had a conversation with Michael Parker, one of their founders. This is the short 2 1/2 minute version of that conversation.