You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.

Yep. It's that time of the year. For many of my customers it is the end of Q3, and Q4 is rushing upon you. That quarter when it's "all hands on deck" / "close everything in sight" - you know the drill.

It's an especially tough quarter in most parts of the world as you move into the winter holidays. Here in the US when you take account of Thanksgiving and Christmas the 63 actual selling days rapidly decrease to less than 55. China has the whole of next week off. It happens everywhere. That doesn't mean that as an SE you throw your hands in the air and panic like most of the sales force.

In the next couple of weeks - take a little bit of time to invest in yourself and your future. Back in April 2011 I wrote "The Quarter Is Over - Now What?". I received a lot of positive feedback about the article and I think its worth reading (again!). The only person who is really in charge of your career and your development is ...  YOU. When you wait for some "free time" it rarely happens. There is always some last minute POC that needs to be completed, a proposal that needs to be changed, a "just one more time presentation or demonstration" that needs to be made, or a customer support problem you have to fix.

That's a lot of "needs". Take a little control, a little direction, and selfishly invest in one of your most important assets - you!

YES!! Global Availability Of The eBook

I've heard from a number of you over the past few months that you have had extreme difficulty obtaining the Kindle version of Mastering Technical Sales outside of the US. Those problems should now be over - here is the update from my publisher as of Sept 12th.
 
1.   Kindle informed us this morning that they’ve brought your book live on their international sites. We’ve verified it is available on the UK and all European sites plus Japan. Not yet in China.
 
2.  Although Amazon is selling Kindle devices on their Japanese website, customers who want to buy a Kindle book need to register on the US site to purchase a Kindle book. Obviously not very convenient, but I’m sure this will change in the future. (this isn't just me - it's everyone!!)
 
Let me know if you have any more problems.

 

Outcomes and Results v Features

Over the past two weeks I've had the opportunity to review three "Strategic Direction" and/or "Where The Market Is Going" PowerPoint decks. Each of them was designed by Product Marketing for the Sales and Presales Engineering teams to give to their customers. Each and every one of them looked like a deck I'd expect to be used in a Gartner analysts briefing - but certainly not in front of mid to senior level people at their customers.

Why is this so horrific? Aside from slide design, 8-10 point fonts and more bullet points than an average armory - each of the decks was PITCHING FEATURES and DIRECTLY SELLING, versus looking at OUTCOMES and RESULTS.

Why is that so important? Let me tell you a story!

Benjamin Franklin, in addition to all his other inventions and achievements, is often credited with being the father of classified advertising in newspapers. One day, Ben is sitting in the offices of the Philadelphia Gazette when a local shoemaker visited him. The craftsman explained that his business was growing just as the city of Philadelphia was growing, and that he wanted to open up a second store on the other side of town. Was there any way he could pay Franklin to inform his customers, through the newspaper, about the new store?

He didn't come to buy advertising ( a feature that Ben then made up). He came to INFORM his customers that they no longer had to cross town to use his services. Instead they could use his new, second, store and save themselves time.

(Footnote: Ben, being a smart guy, figured out this was a great business, and then hired his son-in-law to go around Philadelphia businesses, knocking on their doors, to see if anyone else had something they wanted to tell the rest of the town about. And that is how the classifieds got started over 225 years ago!) No surprise that Ben graces the front of the US $100 banknote.
 

The Trusted Advisor Sales Engineer

So what exactly is a “Trusted Advisor” Sales Engineer? The position is one of those “I know it when I see it” type things. Anyone – sales or presales – who sells to at least a strategic/enterprise customer (with any hope of getting some repeat business) should aspire to become this. Yet the fact is – YOU cannot call yourself a T/A. YOUR COMPANY cannot call you a T/A. It’s YOUR CUSTOMER who has to see you as THEIR T/A in order for the label to work.

It is not that easy. There are so many things that get in the way, mainly the culture of the quarterly or monthly revenue pressure. Quota hangs over the head of a presales engineer, or at least over the head of the salespeople that you work with. Every presales engineer has probably heard the words “you have to build a relationship with your customer and become their trusted advisor”. No-one ever explains how to do that!

So – for the first time ever – there is now a workshop directed towards presales engineers that explains both the behaviors and the practical applications they need to demonstrate so that their customers will trust them. When an SE is trusted, then they can give advice that will be listened to. That usually results in higher revenue, larger deals, less competition, and better customer satisfaction.

Today I am announcing the availability of a new Mastering Technical Sales workshop – “The Trusted Sales Engineer”. The workshop will be delivered to a few early customers in October and will be generally available – in a 1 and 2-day format - in November.

Contact me for more information and an outline syllabus.

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.