SLAM SELLING !!

After spending so many days every year training pre-sales engineers and salesreps how they can successfully "Solution Sell" I decided it was time to have a little fun with the subject. So I put together a number of Worst Practices - things no self-respecting rep or SE would ever do - and titled it SLAM SELLING. It's the sales methodology for product pushers.

Tired of having to go through a nine month sales cycle for that million dollar deal?

Fed up with cumbersome and bureaucratic sales methodologies?

Exasperated because solutions are for chemists?

Read more here.

Money. Money, Money

Makes the world go round. The topic of Pre-Sales Engineering Compensation Plans is always an interesting one.

If only most companies would put half the effort and thought into the Pre-Sales Engineering compensation plan that they put into the sales plan we'd all be better off and motivated.

Here are some best practices, insider tips and lessons learnt over the past twenty years through my experiences of designing, implementing and then defending Pre-Sales Engineering compensation plans. Even if you are an individual contributor at some massive software or hardware company it is still worthwhile to understand the behavior your plan is trying to incent, and if you are aligned with the expected behavior of the salesforce.

Complexification

Complexification: If it isn't a word then it should be. I'd define it as the natural tendency of technical pre-sales engineers to complicate what should be a simple topic. Aided and abetted by product marketing it is the questionable talent to transform a simple solution into a complex web of products, features and functions.

Symptoms are excessive use of bullet-points to highlight every possible capability, embedded and almost illegible screenshots, liberally sprinkled with polysyllabic explanations expounding upon flexibility, scalability and expandability. Complexification also causes three-minute answers to a simple question that just needed a Yes or a No.

If you or one of your colleagues has this disease the cure is simple.

1. Remember you are not paid by the spoken or written word - but by the deal.
2. Remember the job is to sell the customer, not educate him on how to use your solution.
3. Throw away any marketing slide with a colorful screenshot
4. Throw away any marketing slide with a bullet list of features
5. Use the whiteboard
6. Try answering questions with a Yes or a No first.

Repeat as necessary