Despite a crazy April with no blog posts (there goes a 2015 resolution!) the May content was actually posted a few days ago.
We lead of with The Elevator Pitch and The Sales Engineer. I've never been a big fan of those artificial "you have 45 seconds to.." exercises, yet they help bring a little thought and discipline to the process. What process would that be? The process of concisely explain what you do, and why that might be important to your elevator companion - and then more importantly - handing the control of the conversation back to him/her. Give it a read as I suggest 3 or 4 different versions of the elevator pitch, although I still think we should give it "the shaft".
Next we look at a great process called SCAMPER. It's not mine, I just use it to look at an existing process that a customer may have, when I want to help determine what (if anything) needs changing and how we might do that.
"Ask John" covers some interesting ways to say "no" to sales, often without having to say "no". The word can be a very emotive and even confrontational one, which makes many SE's back away from using it. Then they get into a different kind of stress and trouble because they have over-committed their time. I'm a big believer of saying 'no" (easier as I run my own business) and it helps keep me, and Mastering Technical sales, on-point and less distracted.
Looping back to an earlier post from the year, "Is 2015 The Year of SE Leadership?" we ran 3 separate SE Leadership workshops in April. I learnt a lot from each of them (as I should), but what is interesting is that no matter where you are in the world, and no matter what you are selling ..
1. SE Leadership is woefully underserved in skills training.
2. The problems are more-or-less the same.
3. Everyone needs metrics to proactively run presales as a business instead of just reacting to the loudest salespeople.
Best view of the month from a workshop goes to this one in Singapore taken from the Millenia Tower. That's the Singapore Flyer in foreground and you can make out part of the Marine Gardens behind it.
Good Selling!
We lead of with The Elevator Pitch and The Sales Engineer. I've never been a big fan of those artificial "you have 45 seconds to.." exercises, yet they help bring a little thought and discipline to the process. What process would that be? The process of concisely explain what you do, and why that might be important to your elevator companion - and then more importantly - handing the control of the conversation back to him/her. Give it a read as I suggest 3 or 4 different versions of the elevator pitch, although I still think we should give it "the shaft".
Next we look at a great process called SCAMPER. It's not mine, I just use it to look at an existing process that a customer may have, when I want to help determine what (if anything) needs changing and how we might do that.
"Ask John" covers some interesting ways to say "no" to sales, often without having to say "no". The word can be a very emotive and even confrontational one, which makes many SE's back away from using it. Then they get into a different kind of stress and trouble because they have over-committed their time. I'm a big believer of saying 'no" (easier as I run my own business) and it helps keep me, and Mastering Technical sales, on-point and less distracted.
Looping back to an earlier post from the year, "Is 2015 The Year of SE Leadership?" we ran 3 separate SE Leadership workshops in April. I learnt a lot from each of them (as I should), but what is interesting is that no matter where you are in the world, and no matter what you are selling ..
2. The problems are more-or-less the same.
3. Everyone needs metrics to proactively run presales as a business instead of just reacting to the loudest salespeople.
Best view of the month from a workshop goes to this one in Singapore taken from the Millenia Tower. That's the Singapore Flyer in foreground and you can make out part of the Marine Gardens behind it.
Good Selling!
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