Certification for the Pre-Sales Engineer

There have been a few questions about certification programs for Sales Engineers bouncing around the LinkedIn discussion boards recently. I started wondering about whether it would be practical to have a national, or even global, certification program for SE’s.

Over the years I have designed, in full or in part, at least a half-dozen company-specific programs, but never gave much thought to the applicability of the programs outside my company, or whether there would even be any value to the certification. We could set up SCAPE – the Society of Certified American Presales Engineers, and then add international chapters! I challenge you to come up with some other acronym…

Musings aside, there are many common skills required of the pre-sales engineer – whether they be in software, hardware, services, finance or heavy industry. The most basic skill is Discovery – understanding exactly what your prospect needs, why they need it, and then figuring out why you are uniquely qualified to solve that business need. Next you need to place that skill in the setting of some sales methodology such as Solution Selling. There are Presentation and Demonstration skills – in various flavors such as Whiteboard, PowerPoint, Story Telling, Short Demo, Long Demo, Web-Based Demo, Competitive Lock-Out. You have precursors like responding to RFIs and RFPs. Potentially handling Trials, Proofs of Concept and Evaluations. Business skills around Finance, ROI, Asset Management and Vertical-specific Subject Matter Expertise. Throw in some optional classes around “handling the salesrep”, “Global accounts”, “buyer psychology”.

You’ll notice we haven’t even touched the technology of your product/service/solution yet.

This is why being a Pre-Sales Engineer can be the greatest job in the world.

POC Provisioning & Demo Delivery

A few months ago I was working on a project looking at how to completely reconfigure the entire demo creation, setup and distribution capabilities of a large software company. While doing some research I came across a SaaS solution from start-up company IT Structures.

They effectively allow you to instantly provision Proof-Of-Concepts and deliver demos with just a few set-up clicks. When I think of all the frustrating hours SE's spend doing exactly those tasks I realized these guys were onto something. If your company is struggling with the infrastructure around the distribution of demos both internally and to customers/partners, or with provisioning a POC environment, setting up standardized training environments I'd encourage you to investigate their solution - it may be a real time and money saver for you.

The Dash To Demo

After a lot of feedback from my readers about creating a special page for advice about demos I decided the customer is always right. So ..

The art of the demo and the presentation is key to the success of a Sales Engineer. Yet is is not completely an art - there is a considerable amount of science involved in making The Perfect Pitch. Here is a collection of tips, techniques, checklists and other resources designed to help you become a Demo God. You can obtain even more detail from the book or from our classes and workshops.

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

What vs Why?

Why use What?

We are all taught that the best questions in the discovery process are open-ended questions which can kick-start a conversation. They are way better than closed-ended questions which elicit a "yes" or a "no". Closed questions have their place at the start and end of conversations, but open-ended questions are the way to go.

Almost every sales methodology teaches the utility of "Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?" So is one of them better than another? Today we'll look at Why vs What. Now maybe it is my classic British education, but I find What to be a far more open and smoother conversational pivot than Why? Using Why always seemed to be more confrontational and questioning than using a What? Take a second to think about it and examine these two variations.

1. Why do you think that?

2. What do you think about that?

I prefer option #1, as do most people in my unofficial poll. In fact, to borrow a line from Scott Eblin, the only bad what question is "What in the hell were you thinking?"

So the lesson here, especially if you are one of those people who mentally prepare their questions beforehand, is to prefer the What over the Why when you are trying to build a relationship in the initial phases of the sales cycle.