The Female PreSales Engineer

I've long been a big fan of getting more women into the profession of Pre Sales Engineering. Although I feel the industry has made some progress over the past 10 years, it is absolutely not enough. The overall percentage has wavered between 10-15% and I'm not seeing much of an upwards trend.

It's important because companies are missing out on a vast potential talent pool, and (accuse me of being sexist) women just listen better and generally do a better job of asking questions and conducting discovery. I'm not even going to touch the empathy situation or the attention a female SE may receive when presenting to an all-male customer/IT group. Yet I do feel I am entitled to say that as my daughter is a presales engineer (with an Engineering Degree) and I know what she has gone through.

A few recent experiences this year have brought this to bear.

1. Wow!

For the first time ever - I had a class where there were more women than men. First time. Amazing! Thanks Christine and Stephanie!!

2. Industry Variations

 

Let's say , for math simplification, that my typical workshop has 20 SE's in it.

 

The numbers I've tracked over the years show that the number of women varies from 0 to 8. Breaking that down further. IT infrastructure/"plumbing" companies have by far the lowest percentage. The more technical/geeky the product is, the lower the percentage and diversity drops and rapidly approaches zero. I've had three classes this year with zero women - and the class represented the entire national or worldwide SE team.

 

Hardware companies are little better.

 

General software companies seem to hover around that 10-15% level.

 

Application type companies (ERP, CRM and HR) trend higher and the ratio can reach 25% or more.

 

3. Hiring and Recruiting.

 

Many SE leaders tell me that they cannot even find experienced candidates to hire. So how about a grow-your-own associate program? Or look at your technical support / customer relations team?

 

4. Global Implications

 

Much as I bemoan the stats here in the US - it is even worse in most parts of the world. Asia-Pacific-Japan-China has a long way to go. Parts of Europe are better than others. Yet there is hope -  Early this year I ran 2 workshops in India and there were a significant number of young female SE's in the class. With just a little encouragement to speak up and try new things - they stole the show and put their male colleagues to shame.

 

When I look back at my career, some of the best SE's who ever worked for me (and I like to think that I did make a point of hiring women to diversify and improve my teams) were women. No question about it - and you know who you are. Two of my best ever SE managers were women.

 

Lets make a difference and take a positive step to improve the profession. Evangelize what we do - and lets recruit the next generation of SE's in a 50/50 mix - it will make us all better.

 

What do you think?

Check The Calendar!

For those of you whose fiscal year ends Dec 31^st, or even if it is just the end of the quarter it is time to check the calendar. Last week I sat in on a North America business review for a technology company that was focused on closing as much as they possibly could in their Q4. “Drain The Pipe” was the phrase of the day.

Except ..

50% of their deals were going to close between December 20^th and December 31^st. (15% were closing on December 25^th!)

90% of those late December deals were scheduled for a Proof Of Concept or heavily customized demo between now and December 20^th – (which is 35 actual days and in reality 32 or 33 business days because of the US Thanksgiving Holiday).

The math didn’t work.

First – given the timing of the holidays, a massive proportion of the buyers, recommenders, approvers and signers will be celebrating the holidays and taking off the entire week of the 23^rd and most likely the 30^th and 31^st as well. No-one is going to be there to complete the sale.

Second – looking at the number of days required to either run a POC to completion or create a custom demo (it’s a highly configurable system) , there were too many days and not enough SE’s – by an overage factor of 100%.

Something had to give. In the end we scrubbed the pipeline, developed some prioritization guidelines and “borrowed” a couple of engineers/consultants who could quickly configure a number of similar demos. They’re still 20% over.

The message – you may the greatest goals in the world for this quarter – but are they logistically and socially achievable? It’s not just the responsibility of sales to look at these things. How does your calendar look for the next 7 business weeks?

(And then next quarter we have the Chinese New Year ….)

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.

 

 

Sales, Sales Engineers and Discovery

One of the biggest disconnects I see between sales and pre-sales teams lies in the area of Discovery. In many sales organization there is a chasm between the sales implementation of Discovery and what pre-sales think they actually need. One of my clients said “my rep thinks that Discovery is telling me who is on the phone before a webex demo starts”. Thankfully it’s not always that bad.

Here is the basic problem, and I am generalizing a little here:- Sales views Discovery as something that gets in the way of the deal and slows it down. “Why do you need to ask all those questions – all they want is a demo.” Sales is also concerned that they may discover something that will prevent the deal from happening or may totally unqualify the deal out of the pipeline. (I have never figured out why they regard that as a bad thing – doesn’t it make sense to stop wasting time on something you are never going to win?)

Pre-sales engineers believe that there is no such thing as too much Discovery. The more you learn about a customer the better you can target the demo/presentation/proof-of-concept. That’s true – up to a certain point. Repeating the questions that someone else may have asked, or simply asking them a different way, can really annoy the customer and make it look like there is no co-ordination. SEs also start to stray into deal qualification (do they have a budget?) which is the #1 way to annoy a rep as they hear that from their manager all the time.

The trouble is – there is no perfect line to be drawn between sales and presales responsibilities in this area. Given the usual sales:presales ratio it is virtually impossible for the SE to be included in every single first call or discovery call that sales conducts. There are not enough hours in the day. Plus the relationship between every account rep and every SE is different. Some reps are more technical than others and some SE’s are more business/sales oriented that others – you need to adjust.

My usual advice is this:

1.       Discovery is a mandatory and necessary phase of the sales cycle. It is not to be rushed through. It’s also a constant process as you should always be learning more about the customer in every interaction.

2.       Sales and Presales need to agree on what needs to be ‘Discovered’ before a demo / presentation / pitch takes place.

3.       It doesn’t matter who does it, or if it is a combination of rep/SE – as long as it is done well.

4.       If you don’t understand why the customer might want to buy from you, and what the business drivers are behind the technology decision – then you shouldn’t move into the next phase of the sales cycle. Known collectively as The Dash To Demo, The Push to Present or the Sprint to Solution.

5.       Put a simple process in place to capture the info agreed upon in (2)

The outcome will be much better sales calls (and probably fewer of them) , less unqualified deals, a better pipeline and fewer back-to-back-to-back-to-back demos by SEs. Everyone wins.

You Are Only A Trusted Advisor When ...

You Are Only A Trusted Advisor When ... The Customer Says You Are!

I had the opportunity to participate in the Amazon Web Services for Public Sector Conference in Washington DC earlier this week. An very impressive event with over 2,500 people registered and a host of 3rd party vendors and partners in attendance.

It's very obvious that Amazon are serious about this market, and that judging by the number of customers (as opposed to prospects) present, the market is serious about them. Between the massive scale, competitive pricing, and the adoption of major US Federal and International standards they are here to stay.

The presentations were varied and informative, BUT ... as I am in a Trusted

Advisor mindset right now (writing the book) there was one slide that bothered me. It's the one where Amazon call themselves a "Trusted Advisor".

It doesn't really matter what you call yourself in a Trust relationship, it's what the customer calls you and how they view you that's important. Now, the Amazon Trusted Advisor is actually an automated system that checks your configuration and usage and makes recommendations on ways you can save money or optimize the system. Aside from the psychological human-machine implications of trusting an automated machine, you still have to deal with the issue that

a. A human programmed it with the algorithms
b. No matter what it says, you'll double-check it anyway. (Minimal Trust)

So .. You Are Only A Trusted Advisor When ... The Customer Says You Are!
(Even if you are a machine)

Should SE's Participate in SPIFF Programs?

Before I answer – a quick piece of trivia about the origin of SPIFFs. Although there have been numerous explanations about the SPIFF acronym (like the humorous Sales Performance Incentive FFund) it is not an acronym. The use of “spiff” or “spif” derives from the 1850’s. It was a term used by tailors to describe a payment in kind of fine cloth they gave to their best salespeople. The salespeople would then use the cloth to have suits or shirts made to “spif” themselves up.

As far as data, the one number I can share is that about 45% of software companies allow presales to participate, to some degree, in SPIFF programs. I continue to collect data within other industries as I don’t have a large enough sample size yet – but I feel that hardware, services and devices are all about the same.

That said, I am a firm believer in presales participation, when appropriate. Here is the reasoning I have always used with VPs of Sales and Finance.

1.       If we are truly engaged in team-based solution selling, then you need to encourage team-based rewards to reinforce the behavior.

2.       Salespeople bear far more risk (both financially and job stability) than presales, so they should clearly receive the largest portion of a SPIFF.

3.       Most presales people care more about inclusion in a program than the actual payout amount. (The best thing a VP of Sales can do to gain the respect of a presales team is to show that he/she considers the impact of every program and initiative on both sales and presales.)

4.       I define “where appropriate” in this manner:

a.       A SPIFF to encourage linearity of bookings in all three months of a quarter, or to include faster payment terms to reduce DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) is a SALES SPIFF only.

b.      A SPIFF to encourage the uptake of a new product, or cross-selling across multiple product sets is a joint SALES/PRESALES SPIFF.

c.       A SPIFF To encourage customers to upgrade from an old version of a product to a newer version is a PRESALES SPIFF.

5.       I define ‘sharing” using this great example. A hardware company was originally planning to rollout a 10,000 Euro SPIFF to salespeople who sold a certain amount of new product to new accounts in a quarter. Their goal was E40M. After looking at who would truly be doing most of the work (demonstrating, configuring, benchmarking etc.) they elected to modify the SPIFF. The revised version gave E7,500 to sales and E2,500 to presales. The result was maximum engagement, team selling and E62M of new product sales into the new accounts market.

6.       I once helped the finance department of a software company analyze the historical results of multiple SPIFF programs over a three-year period. Those that included presales had an average incremental effectiveness of 26% over those that did not.

So the summary is that presales should participate in SPIFFs when a case can be made that they drive a significant part of the end goal – although to a lesser extent than sales.

FINALLY – A WARNING. One of my customers decided to implement a 20% additional sales quota credit for all deals that were implemented through a new partner program. In one quarter, partner deals increased from 17% to 85% - resulting in 5/6 deals going through partners, even when they shouldn’t have – to the detriment of the customer. Presales, who received no credit – had to clean up the mess alongside services and support. Compensation drives behavior.

Why Businesses Buy Technology

I talk about “The Three Wise Men” a lot in my workshops. They are the guiding principle why businesses make technology decisions – being:

1.       Increase Revenue

2.       Reduce Costs

3.       Mitigate (Decrease) Risk

So it was heartening to read the “connect” article in the September issue of CIO Magazine, which showcased the advice of CIO’s to their peers. In particular, the advice of Rick Roy – the SVP and CIO of CUNA Mutual Group. I quote his advice in full.

“We use three macro-level business metrics to prioritize IT investment decisions and set strategy: revenue growth, cost reduction and risk management and compliance. For line of business spending, it’s rare for someone to introduce a major initiative without a strong connection to one of those. But at the enterprise level it’s more challenging. How does that Windows 7 upgrade really help the business? Whoever presents that case has to make the connection.

Risk mitigation and compliance are the hardest to quantify. We must distinguish between the need-to-have and the nice-to-have. We can’t just say we need to invest in something because the risk is high. What does that mean? Will we lose money? How much? Will we lose customers? How many? We take advantage of our in-house actuarial and risk-modeling expertise to quantify risk.

We look at IT spending in business terms, reporting our costs as an expense ratio. It changes the conversation from “IT costs too much” to a conversation about priorities. It requires more rigor, but it benefits IT to have a clear focus on our top priorities”

Beautiful – well said Rick!! A lesson in there for every single Sales Engineer and every single sales representative.