Next MTS Newsletter

The next MTS Newsletter will be posted on Tuesday December 8th.

I will be featuring a Talking Point about "Working With the Difficult Sales Rep" , an article about male-to-female and female-to-male presentations and a fun Top Ten List : "You Know You're In Pre-Sales When .."

November Updates

The November content is now available. The website has been updated and the newsletter will be published on Tuesday (11/3) morning. I will be travelling this week in Europe and running a Perfect Pitch workshop in Amsterdam.

For November, the main Talking Point article is Activity Tracking for Pre-Sales Engineers. I make the case that time tracking is a useful tool, but only if sales and pre-sales leadership know how to use that tool. It should be used for driving changes inside and outside of pre-sales, not as a club to beat people with. Reminds me of a boss I used to have, who practiced “kiss up, kick down” leadership. I also (re)introduce a change methodology known as SCAMPER! If you are looking at a complex internal process or infrastructure which needs updating – this could be a resource for you to use.

Ask John covers what to do with a sales rep who constantly interrupts your demo with “show them this, show them that, why don’t you bring up that screen …”.

Safe travels, safe demo and much discovery!

Time Tracking For Sales Engineers

I overheard a lively conversation between a group of Sales Engineers and their manager last week. The topic wasn’t compensation, bad salesreps, lousy technical support, endless RFPs or any of the usual suspects. The conversation was about the requirement that they track their time and enter it into a CRM system by activity.

“Why do I have to record my time? It’s like Big Brother watching over me. Don’t you trust me to do my job?”

The manager immediately became very defensive, and replied “it’s now a job requirement. You better get used to it.”

The conversation kept going for a few minutes more without a satisfactory conclusion. It occurred to me that it would be a great Talking Point article for November. Why is it so important that the SE organization tracks its time when Sales doesn’t? So stay tuned.

The Trade Show Tango

OK – so how many of you really enjoy staffing the booth at a trade show? Once you have been in a pre-sales for a few years it feels more like a punishment than a reward, even if you are sent to some exotic location. If you are sent to run a trade show booth for day or two, how do you maximize the return on investment for both your company and your career? Here are some personal best practices for the Sales Engineer to get the most out of the Trade Show Tango.

One addition to this list of best practices is to take notes on every “A” and “B” prospect you meet. Don’t rely on your memory to make notes afterwards, take them on the spot so you can pass them on to the rep or marketing department.

31 Tips For Webcast Best Practices

The Mastering Technical Sales site has been updated with new October content. Of special interest is a one-pager which lists 31 actionable tips to make your remote demos more watchable and to compete more effectively against people doing their email while you are presenting. If you want to learn how having a photo of a group of people on your desk, and your photo on the title slide can make a difference – read on!

This month's "Ask John" deals with the difficult salesrep. You know the one who always does his/her email at the book of the room as you do your "technical stuff". How do you get the rep to pay attention and help you to perform at your best?

Certification for the Pre-Sales Engineer

There have been a few questions about certification programs for Sales Engineers bouncing around the LinkedIn discussion boards recently. I started wondering about whether it would be practical to have a national, or even global, certification program for SE’s.

Over the years I have designed, in full or in part, at least a half-dozen company-specific programs, but never gave much thought to the applicability of the programs outside my company, or whether there would even be any value to the certification. We could set up SCAPE – the Society of Certified American Presales Engineers, and then add international chapters! I challenge you to come up with some other acronym…

Musings aside, there are many common skills required of the pre-sales engineer – whether they be in software, hardware, services, finance or heavy industry. The most basic skill is Discovery – understanding exactly what your prospect needs, why they need it, and then figuring out why you are uniquely qualified to solve that business need. Next you need to place that skill in the setting of some sales methodology such as Solution Selling. There are Presentation and Demonstration skills – in various flavors such as Whiteboard, PowerPoint, Story Telling, Short Demo, Long Demo, Web-Based Demo, Competitive Lock-Out. You have precursors like responding to RFIs and RFPs. Potentially handling Trials, Proofs of Concept and Evaluations. Business skills around Finance, ROI, Asset Management and Vertical-specific Subject Matter Expertise. Throw in some optional classes around “handling the salesrep”, “Global accounts”, “buyer psychology”.

You’ll notice we haven’t even touched the technology of your product/service/solution yet.

This is why being a Pre-Sales Engineer can be the greatest job in the world.

POC Provisioning & Demo Delivery

A few months ago I was working on a project looking at how to completely reconfigure the entire demo creation, setup and distribution capabilities of a large software company. While doing some research I came across a SaaS solution from start-up company IT Structures.

They effectively allow you to instantly provision Proof-Of-Concepts and deliver demos with just a few set-up clicks. When I think of all the frustrating hours SE's spend doing exactly those tasks I realized these guys were onto something. If your company is struggling with the infrastructure around the distribution of demos both internally and to customers/partners, or with provisioning a POC environment, setting up standardized training environments I'd encourage you to investigate their solution - it may be a real time and money saver for you.