The Fallacy Of "Fine!"

 "How did the sales call go?"

“it went fine.”

“How was the demo?”

“It was fine”

“How are we doing on the RFP response?”

“It’s all going fine”

As both a former pre-sales leader and former IT executive, the word “fine” sends shivers down my spine. Fine is supposed to be a term of praise relating to excellent quality as in a fine wine, or a fine-looking horse – however, it seems to becoming one of those indeterminate words that can be either good or bad. For those of you who don’t have English as a primary language I apologize for the nuances of the spoken word, because “fine” is downright dangerous in the profession of Sales Engineering. Let’s take a real life example.

“How was the sales call?” I ask.

“It went fine”, replies my SE.

I pause, raise a quizzical eyebrow, and use the power of silence.

After 5 seconds he continues, “Well, they seemed to like what we were saying, although they didn’t ask very many questions and I’m not sure that they 100% got our message.”

“So what are the next steps?” I prompt him.

“Well, we really don’t have any. They said they did not need any further information at this point while they were figuring out their budget. They’re going to get back with us for a demo date.”

“Just so I’m clear, we don’t know any of their business drivers, they really don’t see a fit for our technology solutions, they probably have no budget and there are no next steps that we can drive? That’s your definition of fine?”

Silence

I first learnt this lesson when I was teenager out with my girlfriend. I learnt that when she said everything was “fine” it really wasn’t – and after a while I could judge just how fine she was not by counting the number of “f”’s the word started with and the degree of snarl in her voice.  We are not that extreme in the business world, yet the next time someone tells you that everything is/was/went/will be fine – push back and ask the next question, as there is way more than meets the eye to a fine SE.

Why Selling Solutions Is Only Half The Sales Story

As a CIO, the only “Products” I ever bought cost $299 or less and got some user or department off my back by providing them with some helpful utility. More importantly, I never,ever, ever bought a Solution!

Yes. Everything that your marketing and sales enablement teams have been telling you isn’t exactly true. Surprise! Most of those “solution” methodologies miss the mark if you take them purely at face value.

Stunned Silence? So what do IT and Business Unit leaders actually buy from a vendor? There is relationship, security, relief from pain etc. .. but what we really buy are ..   results and outcomes.

In case you think I am playing with words, let me explain.

Many years ago I needed to make my programmers more productive, so we did the usual thing. That was build an RFP with our wish list, and send it out to 4-5 vendors with a really tight deadline for responses. The vendors all whined and complained, the smart ones got on the phone with some of my department heads, and the RFPS were submitted. The next week we paraded the vendors in for their pitches .. five of them .. so that by the end of the week our brains and our behinds were numb. Fortunately I had smart people working for me, they created an Excel score sheet, and voila!! Vendor #1 had a score of 73 points, Vendor #2 had 71, and the rest were in the mid to low sixties. Technically there wasn’t that much to choose between vendor #1 and #2, although #1 had a few more features and functions.

I had to make a decision – and chose Vendor #2, despite the lower score. Why? Two reasons – firstly I felt they had done a much better job of discovery, and secondly they didn’t try to sell me a solution that made my programmers 39.2% more productive. The sales team was smart and sold me an outcome. The back story is that my company was coming out with a new product, and that IT was on the critical path as we couldn’t reprogram our internal systems fast enough to support the launch. We would delay by a month, and that would cost us $8,000,000. I was also tired of going to executive meetings about the project and having the finger of shame pointed at me. Enough! So the outcome the sales team from Vendor #2 sold me was that of accelerating development by 5 weeks so that we could launch in time and gain an additional $8m in revenue, PLUS .. my IT department was no longer holding things up and my political risk disappeared in the executive suite. Sweet indeed.

The solution was software and processes that would make my programming staff more productive (as I’d said I want them to be more productive). But the result was those magical five weeks and some major political clout.

A more mundane example is this .. an aspirin is the solution to a headache (a literal pain!), yet what I am really buying is relief from pain – the outcome is a clear head. Don't sell aspirin (and especially don't talk about dosage levels, uptake values and side effects to a man with a bad headache).

So what do you sell – products, solutions, or results and outcomes?

November Content : Webcast Demo Crimes and More ..

Hurricane Sandy has come and gone in my part of the world (Just North of Philadelphia) and the cleanup has started. Fortunately we survived with minimal damage to the house, just a few loose roof tiles and window shutters. There are trees down on roads, cars and even houses, and much of the region is still without power even after 4 days - so we're thankful that we have power and a warm house with a solid roof over our heads.

The November Issue of The Mastering Technical Sales Edge will be released on Tuesday 6th. Here is a preview of the content:

Back in the mid-90's I created a Demo Crime list and presented it to my fellow technical managers at Sybase. Many people have picked up on the idea since then, so I thought it was time to create a Webcast/Virtual Demo Crime Files list. Review the list and see how many of these heinous crimes you see committed every day ( I also provide some ideas for good, clean virtual demos as well).

Many companies hold their annual Sales Kickoff (SKO) meeting in January or February. The Corporate Sales Meetings article provides some thoughts and ideas for making it more productive from a Sales Engineering point of view. You can also hire me to conduct a presales keynote or some Professional Skills training workshops too!

Ask John deals with the perennial question of "how can I stop my salesperson treating me like just another sales tool?" . It's surprisng how often I get asked that question.

Book Of The Month is Sexy Little Numbers by Dimitri Maex. It's an interesting look at how companies can analyze their customer data and get more value from it. If you are engaged in Big Data, BI, Analytics, In-Memory Databases or regular CRM it's a good background read.

Stay tuned for two exciting pieces of news. The first is about a partnership that may extend the Mastering Technical Sales Brand on a full-time basis into Asia-Pacific; the second about the creation of a Professional Organization for Presales Engineers. Things are happening!

 

The Less You Know, The Better The Elevator Pitch

Yesterday I participated as a panel judge in reviewing the 2 minute elevator pitches / door openers of a 35 member presales team. The panel was the VP of Sales, VP and Director of Marketing, and me. The scenario was that you suddenly get two minutes alone (anywhere – cafeteria, lobby, elevator) with a relatively senior executive of a company that you have been working with. How do you make that executive curious enough about what you are doing, or what you have learnt, in just two minutes? Curious enough that they will grant you more time or another meeting?

The exercise is useful because it teaches you to condense your thoughts into less than two minutes and get a high level summary that may provoke or challenge the executive. This actual situation doesn’t happen as often as marketers  or sales trainers would believe, but it certainly does happen. (I once got 60 seconds with Bill Gates in an elevator!)

What was interesting is that there were two classes of people who excelled in this situation. The first type was exactly what you expect – the seasoned SE who is used to rapidly translating technology into key business issues and then clearly communicate. The second type – was the people in the audience who knew the least about the technology! Really! The sales operations staff and two new hires gave an awesome pitch. Why? Because they didn’t commit any of these “elevator” crimes.

1.       Taking one minute to get to the point. (that’s 50% of your time)

2.       Using techno-speak and jargon and acronyms.

3.       Failing to talk about current/future issues.

4.       Neglecting some vision phrase like ‘suppose’, ‘imagine’, or “what if?’

5.       Having so many points there was no focus

6.       Not asking any questions

7.       Failing to have a call to action at the end.

So let’s be positive instead. Next time you are asked to give an elevator pitch – give it the shaft. No executive wants to hear who you are and what you do – they want to know how you can help them and maybe learn something new. So, instead

1.       Bottom Line Up Front after the basic pleasantries.

2.       Speak clearly and concisely.

3.       Lay out the pain statement. But don’t overdo it.

4.       Help the exec imagine the future with the pain fixed.

5.       Single point, single focus

6.       Ask at least one question.

7.       Ask for a next step.

Is that a lot for two minutes? No. When you plan ahead you may even have 30 seconds left over. Give it a try.

A Critique Of A Fidelity Investments Webcast

This morning I sat through a 60 minute webcast, sponsored by Fidelity Investments, titled “Fidelity Bond Investing Beyond Yield: A Deeper Dive Webinar!”

The webcast was driven by two Fidelity Vice presidents – Richard Carter and Jay Schwartzberg - and was essentially a demo of how to use their Bond Investing Tool, with some interesting market commentary thrown in.

Here’s the bottom line – Richard and Jay are obviously two very well-spoken and knowledgeable individuals, who were badly let down by their demo and visuals. I’m picking on them as the “web-demo crimes” they committed are very common and can be easily avoided. In no particular order –

1.       I’ve no idea what Jay & Richard look like as there was no introductory slide that had a photo of them. So I’m left listening to two (admittedly pleasant) voices drifting out of my speakers.

2.       They decided to cover four main points in 45 minutes. Too much!

3.       Almost every slide was packed and tough to read. When you use a screen shot it should be clearly visible and use up as much of the slide as possible. Their shots were fuzzy and marooned in the middle of the screen.

4.       The “demo” was a tour of the features of the online tool. It consisted of “and if .. and if.. then …” It was very navigational with lots of talk about click and drop-downs. They would have been better off telling a story around the tool. “Imagine you are Billy The Bond Investor, and you have a problem because you want to create a municipal bond portfolio/ re-invest cash from a maturing bond.” etc.

5.       On that same topic, there wasn’t a roadmap introduced to explain what was going to happen – it was just screen after screen after screen – a recipe to encourage the audience to become lost.

6.       Each slide had the Fidelity logo , a brand symbol and text splashed over the bottom of it. As well as being annoying (I know it’s Fidelity Investments!!) it interfered with diagrams and text on several slides. Designing around that green swoosh has to be tricky.

7.       On the positive side, a couple of times when they really drilled down on a screen, they “exploded” just a part of a screen to provide context – of course it was fuzzy.

8.       Their final slide was (sorry) a little amateur and way too busy. You can see it on the right here >>

There is text outside the cube, an acronym (HNW), covered text, bullet points and too many points.

9.       I had no idea what their residual message was. Which is three days from now if there is only one thing I remember what would it be? I bet if you asked 100 people watching you would get more than 50 answers.

A classic example of two fine presenters (I bet they would be very engaging face-to-face) getting buried with a poorly designing demo/presentation. Don’t commit these crimes!!

(Disclaimer >> Fidelity is not a client of mine - I am a client of theirs)

For a more positive list of great things to do in a webcast read this.

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.