Five Pieces of Bad Power Point Advice

Courtesy of Jon Thomas

1.That font is too big.

2.I realize this graph is confusing. How about we make it so small and have it appear and disappear so quickly that the audience only gets a glimpse of it.

3.I know the presentation looks better with images and less text, but I need my bullet points to remember what I’m talking about.

4.Don’t worry about the number of slides. If I can’t get to them all, I’ll just skip the last few.

5.Make sure my logo, website, and phone number is on every slide.

 

Do You Feel Like A Job Description With Legs?

One of the great things about being a Sales Engineer is that you have considerable flexibility in how you perform your job. Unfortunately it takes many SE's a long, long time to come to that conclusion. Ultimately it comes down to are you building up a career or waorking at a job.

In Great Work Great Career, Stephen Covey and Jennifer Colosimo work on the premise that you will spend much of your life and your energy on your career, so doesn't it make sense eo envision and design a great career for yourself? This book, and in particular the many stories it contains, will not give you an immediate flash of blinding insight. However, it will cause you to sit down and put a little more thought into the design of your career and how you can personalize it.

As an SE there are many paths available to you. You can progress up the management path, the technical path, move across into product management and marketing, and even cross over to the dark side and carry a quota as a salesperson. If you work for a large enough company you can seek out rotational assignments in other departments, other divisions and other companies - but you do need a plan. If you don't know where you are going, you'll never know when you arrive.

Also see The Complete Recommended Reading List for the SE

July Newsletter

Hullo all - the July Mastering Technical Sales Edge newsletter will be published on Wednesday July 7th because of the US July 4th holiday. This month features:

The lead article is the conclusion to "How Many Sales Engineers Does It Take To Sell A Solution?". In Part II I look at some possible solutions and best practices to reduce the total number of sales and presales people involved in getting a deal done. There are also a few controversial ideas in there about the long-term practicality of overlay positions.

The second article is "PowerPoint Makes Us Stupid" - which briefly lays out the case for why we need to radically change the layout and design of our PowerPoint slides. Next month I'll show you how to include more images and visuals in your decks so they are more memorable, but still business appropriate.

The "Ask John" question is from a reader whose company is pushing the SE team to leave PowerPoint behind and embrace the whiteboard. He wants to know how to get started. I'm now beginning to believe that the second half of 2010 will become the year of the White Board and over the summer I'll gather a collection of best practices and create a new page on the website just for WhiteBoarding.

Along that theme of White Boarding, the Final Word tells you about some neat software that lets you capture professional looking images of a whiteboard drawing.

June MTS Content Posted

The June Mastering Technical Sales Newsletter will be published on June 8th. This month's lead article is "How Many Sales Engineers Does It Take To Sell A Solution?" Part I. In this first part I look at the typical history of a vendor (software/hardware/services) as it grows from a start-up in a multi-channel, multi-solution company. It's a "How Did We Get To This Point?" lesson.

The July conclusion will examine the potential solutions to reducing the size and complexity of both the sales and pre-sales organization.

The personal skills article this month is about "Pricing and the Sales Engineer". Although SE's shouldn't talk very much about pricing (if at all), there is plenty they should understand.

How Many Sales Engineers Does It Take...

"How many sales engineers does it take to sell a solution?"

This seems to be a question that many sales and sales operations leaders are asking pre-sales leaders this year. For the middle to larger sized companies in software, hardware, services and engineering appliances the days of having a single SE working with a single salesrep on a deal have passed us by. The portfolios have now become so broad and complex that once you get past the basic discovery stage, no single SE can reasonably cover every single product/solution. This plays havoc with conventional coverage models, 1:1 or 3:2 ratios, geographically-based SE's and so on ...

It is fast becoming the norm that a complex deal may involve a half-dozen SE's - all with their own area of expertise (especially for a POC or complicated integration demo). This usually brings about thoughts of greater cross-training, better enablement and eventually re-organization of the pre-sales team; because something must be wrong if this many people are needed to sell the solution! So the question becomes - is this a fact of life as organizations grow and expand, or are there actions a pre-sales (and sales) leader can take to head off this issue? Of course - the dirty secret is that the same thing happens on the sales side when you introduce three levels of sales management, legal, support, services, a partner and several sales overlays to the process.

This is leading up to the June Talking Point which will be cover the "how many SE's does it take?" question. Probably a multi-part series. And a little controversial.

50% of presales engineers who go through my workshops admit that they have been told they speak and present too quickly. It’s very rare ( less than 5%) that people are consistently told to speed up. The two primary reasons for being a motor mouth are firstly too much content and secondly a mixture of nerves and excitement. Both of which you have under your control.


The May Talking Point from Mastering Technical Sales is all about speaking too quickly, and gives you some real life techniques you can use to calm down and slow down your presentations. Just remember that the most comfortable listening speed for an audience is around 150 to 160 Words Per Minute – which is about half the average reading speed of an adult. By speaking too quickly you both lose your audience as it is hard work to listen to a fast speaker and you lose the focus of your message as you are obviously trying to cover way too much material in a set time.

Read the full Talking Point here

The Best Time Of Day For A Sales Call?

Now there's a question that had been debated throughout the ages. This isn't about cold calling, but about what time of day, and even which day to choose, for a sales call with the customer. it may or may not include a demo or presentation.

That's the subject of this month's Ask John question. The executive summary of the response is make it first thing in the morning, or over lunch (on the basis that the best sales call of all is usually when your laptop stays in the car). As a postscript to the answer, I should also add that Tuesday-thursday seem better than Monday or Friday.

Thoughts?