Handling That "Why Are You Better Than Your Competition?" Question

We’ve all been in that position when the customer directly asks you a question like “why should I buy from you?” or “why are you better than your competition?” It was certainly one of my favourite questions as a CIO and it still a question that I am asked today running the MTS business.

 Typically responses fall into two categories. Either you get a “let me tell you why my competition is terrible and why you cannot trust them” or “let me tell you why we are so amazing and marvelous”. Think of politicians as a proof point for that! Although both answers can be effective depending on the circumstances- and I’d always prefer the positive to the negative – there is a third approach.

 I’d like to think of this as the consultative / trusted advisor type approach that can be very effective in the hands of a knowledgeable and empathetic Sales Engineer. My suggestion is a response more like:

 “Well, Mr. Customer – I’m not really an expert on my competition as I know my own product much better. What I can share with you are the top three or four reasons that my customers have told me why they choose to do business with us. Will that work for you?

 “OK. So what my customers tell me is that   (list of features-advantages-benefits that make you look good and aren’t so great for your competition). How do you feel about those items?”

 Put that into your own natural words, adjust for local culture and make sure you have three or four really good items to share with the customer. Note that I say Features-Advantages-Benefits and not just Features. Think Value!! (Time, People and Money). The rest is up to you. The reason it is so effective is that you are referencing, even indirectly, what your customers think and not what you think.

 

“It is not your customer's job to remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don't have the chance to forget you”

How Can Presales Generate Sales Leads (and still stay "technical?")

This was the "Ask John" question from the April MTS Edge newsletter.

Hi John,

As part of a new sales initiative, my SE team has been asked to generate a set number of leads to “feed the sales pipeline”. We are a very technical team, with a very technical product, and are very hesitant about getting into cold calling prospects. In fact, my team is rather resentful of the request and I hear comments like “we don’t ask sales to do complex installs and demos, why should we do their job?” I believe some of my staff would rather quit and find a new job instead of being co-opted into direct sales.

What can we do to help the process along and be good corporate citizens without stepping too far outside of our collective comfort zone?

Thanks – “Steve” – SE Director, Europe, Middle East & Africa 

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the question. That is certainly a difficult and highly emotive situation to face. You can tell the team that it is everyone’s duty to help the company thrive, point out the ”Sales” in Sales Engineer and talk about teamwork and learning new skills .. but .. many SE’s either cannot (because they lack the skills) or will not (because they lack the belief) directly “sell”. When an SE’s sense of self, professional pride and credibility is wrapped around the technology they know and the application of that technology you are asking them to change a central set of their beliefs by explicitly selling that technology instead.

There is a middle ground. If you look at a classic land and expand strategy in accounts. Where land is driven by the rep getting an initial opportunity, and expand is driven by the SE encouraging utilization across the customer. Since the average tenure (length of service) of an SE team is typically 2-3 times that of sales – most customer knowledge and many relationships lie within the SE team anyway. It’s time to utilize that knowledge to your collective advantage.

Sit down with sales, and categorize your install base into three buckets – A,B and C. A means a likely opportunity to expand or a targeted account, B has some opportunity and C not so much. Make contact with your technical (and executive) contacts and go visit the customers without a sales presence. Position it as a courtesy visit, a health check (my favorite) or an “I’d love to see what you do with our stuff” type visit. Learn as much as you can, talk to as many people as you can, and get an idea of plans and actually ask your user base “is there anyone else you know that I should be talking to?” – you’d be surprised how often you (being the SE) get a positive response that sales would never get.

Also conduct Discovery in reverse and look at the business outcomes or results the customer gets from using your solutions. That’s your opportunity for an up or cross sell. Position that as a “have you considered..” or “you know, many of my other customers…”. Try very, very hard NOT to sell, but to inform and advise. You may get some CYJ’s (Can You Justs) as a result of these calls (to get a support ticket pushed or an enhancement lodged) but they are usually worth the time. Plus you’ll build an excellent set of personal technical “go-to” references.  As an added bonus be a little more aggressive at trade shows and user group meetings. Asking that same “is there anyone else you know?” question over breakfast, lunch or a cup of tea can be done in a very low-key techie way yet can provide amazing results.

Postscript: Steve asked this question back in October, and I’ve held back the question and answer so I could report specific results. Here is what happened. One SE quit anyway. No tears were shed over his loss. The remaining eight SE’s found five new large opportunities and about a dozen smaller ones during calendar 4Q2015. Three of those large opportunities and eight of the smaller ones closed by the end of calendar 1Q2016 resulting in a 22% increase in quota achievement for the EMEA region.

Mission accomplished and the outreach program continues.

So You Think You Are Fairly Paid??

Some interesting data from Payscale, the compensation software firm, about people's perceptions over whether they are paid a fair wage or not . It isn't Sales Engineering specific, but I've a few thoughts about that at the end.

This is the data from a survey of 71,000 . it shows that even if you are paid at or above the market rate, there is still a good chance that you feel you're underpaid relative to your peers. A massive 60% of employees who are underpaid say they intend to leave - compared to 39% of employees who are overpaid. (The report notes that presumably they are unhappy for many other reasons!).

The lesson for SE Leadership here is that if someone is being paid under the market rate - there is a 5 in 6 chance that they know it and a 60% chance they will take action. Even being paid at market (so at the 50th percentile) 2 in 3 SE's will still think they are underpaid. So .. if your pay package (it's more than just base salary + commission/bonus) is truly competitive - make sure the SE team knows it!! Reinforce it, with realism, at every opportunity.

And a word to the wise, don't rely on those comparison reports HR/Finance obtain from independent salary/consulting companies unless the companies surveyed are a true comparison to yours (and they rarely are). Remember that there is always some other company out there who is willing to "buy" your SE's and pay more for them. Money is one of the major reasons that SE's leave a company, Management is another, and Lack of Belief in the product is a close third.

Perception is reality!! Get real.

 

Age And The Sales Engineer

General statistics about the SE population have always fascinated me - particularly when they relate to age, gender, income and all those other "Human Resource" type metrics.

I've long maintained that gender diversity in the worldwide SE gene pool is atrocious and that we all need to do whatever we can to encourage more women into the profession. But that's a topic for another blog entry. This one is about age.

Age is neither a positive or a negative when it relates to being a superstar SE. With age comes experience and (hopefully) wisdom and a lot of knowledge gained from watching your own and other people's mistakes - and successes. With age also comes a lot of bad habits, some reluctance to change and a touch of cynicism. With youth comes the willingness to challenge the way things are now, potential incorporation of new thoughts and technologies into "the way we get things done around here" and unbridled enthusiasm.

The optimum SE team (whether its 6 or 6,000 members) has a mixture of youth and experience - and I know I am equating age and experience and that's not always the case. It's also the case that the average age of the SE team frequently matches the average age of the entire company (to within a year) - so it's interesting to note this data from Payscale showing age related to technology company.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to draw your own conclusions about the data.

 

Where's the December Newsletter ?

 

So What Happened To The December Newsletter ?

Well - As many of you have noticed - we launched a new website at the end of November and had a little editing and debugging to do after that. Like all new ventures it consumed more time than expected.

Then - I was travelling - and got into the zone for another 3 chapters of the long-awaited "Trusted Advisor Sales Engineer" eBook. Although I'm pretty good at multi-tasking many things - I'm terrible at doing it for two different writing projects. So the eBook won! The good news is that makes a 1Q 2016 release of the Trusted Advisor book far more likely.

There will be a January 2016 newsletter which I expect to get out a few days early. It will have all new content - including an article on The Piranha and The Sales Engineer and my vote for SE Book Of The Year. We're also rolling out an expanded 2-Day version of the Solutions Sales/Value Selling For Sales Engineers module, more SE Leadership classes and webinars and some other tweaks to the MTS curriculum.

Stay tuned!

The First Law of Business Value Discovery

Twenty-five years ago, a bunch of Sales Engineers sat in a bar (this sounds like a joke..) and came up with a number of rules and principles to guide them through the Business Discovery Process. Over the years I’ve added to and refined that list and it now forms part of our Business Value Discovery (BVD) workshops. Of course – the most important of all these rules is the First Law – and that’s the one I want to take you through.

It’s not anything like “ask open-ended questions” or “challenge the customer” or “link your technology to the business” as they deal with the how of BVD, instead it focuses, just as you should, on the customer outcome, or the what and why. The long version is:

“Every technology purchase is driven by a single business number. Either that number is too small and someone want to make it larger, or it’s too large and someone wants to make it smaller.”

The key to being a world-class Sales Engineer is uncovering

(a)    What is that number?

(b)   Who cares about the number?

(c)    Does it need to be made larger or smaller?

(d)   What’s the economic value to the customer of that change?

(e)   Is it important to change that number NOW?

Think about some of these situations. A number may be too large and needs to be reduced.

1.       Cost Of Goods Sold

2.       Response Time

3.       Online Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

4.       Backup Time

5.       Personnel

Or a number may be too small and need to be increased.

1.       Market Share

2.       Success Rate

3.       Upsell Ratio

4.       Gross Profit

5.       Employees With A Specific Skill Set

Here’s the call to action. Think about the last dozen sales transactions you have been involved with – either as a sales rep, presales engineer or services person. What was your customer’s number? How early in the sales process did you uncover it? Is there any common theme across your customer base?

Understanding and then satisfying the First Law Of Business Value Discovery allows you to focus on outcomes and results instead of features and functions. First things first!!

 

(Note to true engineers: Yes - I know I conflated law, rule and principle)

June , WTF, And Other SE Things

The monthly website refresh has happened and the June newsletter has been distributed. The main topic this month is the "WTF" Presentation - or Wonderful Technical Features pitch that almost every SE has to give multiple times every quarter.

I decided to write this (and have a little fun with my inter-dimensional reverse dynamic network backup and data regeneration feature) because I have just seen a ton of these truly terrible product-oriented decks over the past 2-3 months. There seems to be a disconnect between Product Management/Marketing and the Sales/Pre-Sales team over what is needed. As an SE, sometimes you have to talk techie and satisfy the IT gurus in the room - that's part of the job - but doing it with a boring, unstructured and almost illegible deck isn't the way to go.

 

And many of the "three-hour-tour" demos I have seen are not much better! The article lays out three quick and very simple ways to change the WTF so that it is a little more fun and memorable for everyone. If your PM group generates WTF's pass them the article - and if they don't - be thankful!!

 

We also look at harnessing The Power Of Three's (note the "three" in the WTF article) as a way to help your customer actually remember what you are showing them. If they don't remember it, they won't understand it and if they don't understand it they most certainly won't buy it.

 

We also make a quick pitch for the MTS Video Series - it's just under 2 hours of video that covers six major SE concepts and is really "The Best Of John".

 

Enjoy!