Objections And Questions And Answers .. And Sales Engineers

I've always had a problem with the skill of "Objection Handling". Let me clarify that - not with personally handling whatever a client may ask me, but in the actual labelling of the task. Here's why.

I think "Objection Handling" is a salesperson activity. As in "I just gave a great pitch, and if I can hammer through these last few objections I'll get the deal!" It sets up the entire activity as something that is a little confrontational, maybe defensive and certainly becoming "us" (vendor) against "them" (client with money).

Sales Engineers Don't Handle Objections, They Answer Questions

What I've come to realize over the years, based on listening in to thousands of sales calls plus my own experiences in selling MTS services, is nearly 90% of the issues a customer may raise are ...  simply raised because they want an answer to a question. In fact you can turn any objection into an implicit question. Even the classic your solution costs too much (nicely handled in this Visualize Blog Post) can be reframed as "help me to understand the value of your solution and why I should care?"

I feel this approach has a few benefits.

1. It ensures that in the customer conversation you listen to understand, instead of listening to respond. A crucial part of active listening.
2. It reminds you that you have to understand why a customer is asking the question. And if you don't know - bounce it back and find out!
3. It positions you as the customers advocate and a step closer to that "Trusted Advisor" status.
4. You'd be amazed at what you can learn about a person and the company based on the questions they ask. (Hmm - think about that during your next Discovery call.)

There are some warnings too.

1. See point #2 above. If you don't know why a question is being asked - that is a danger signal in itself.
2. Make sure that you share just enough to answer the question. For many technical SE's it is viewed as an opportunity to show how smart you are. Not the purpose of the meeting! It really isn't.
3. Don't stray into other areas. Stay away from sales-type responses (for example, the standard SE response for pricing is "I Know Nothing")

So give it a try. Think "Answering Questions" (with Short Amazing Answers) instead of "Handling Objections" and see the difference it can make.
 

Micro-Resolutions And The February Newsletter

 

So much for the good intentions about blogging more in 2014. So .. I decided to follow the advice of the latest business book I read and reviewed .. Small Move, Big Change By Christine Arnold. She says that New Year Resolutions (or any kind of resolutions) are mostly destined to fail and proposes an alternate approach in which the resolutions are made on a smaller and more measurable scale. So instead of saying "I will do a better job of blogging in 2014" I instead created a micro-resolution which states "I will blog the day before the monthly newsletter comes out and two weeks after that."

Its measurable, very achievable, and may well turn into a habit. I like it!

The February Newsletter - which will now go out to almost 20,000 SE's across the globe, features two interesting articles. The first "Why Do Bad Sales Calls Happen" looks at poor sales calls from the SE point of view. You'll discover that although the effect is very measurable, your view of success is different from that of the salespersons. The good news is that if you decide to take action, instead of complaining, there is a lot you can do to lower the percentage of bad calls to participate it. It's not that hard!

Maybe to get those calls fixed you need to improve your email communications. That is what "BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front - for Email" examines. You'll get seven practical tips for improving email and shortening your reading and processing time. This months "Ask John" deals with the problem of reps scheduling sales calls during presales training - and how to lessen the impact.

All good stuff - thanks for reading. And we will see how my micro-resolution turns out!
 

The Female PreSales Engineer

I've long been a big fan of getting more women into the profession of Pre Sales Engineering. Although I feel the industry has made some progress over the past 10 years, it is absolutely not enough. The overall percentage has wavered between 10-15% and I'm not seeing much of an upwards trend.

It's important because companies are missing out on a vast potential talent pool, and (accuse me of being sexist) women just listen better and generally do a better job of asking questions and conducting discovery. I'm not even going to touch the empathy situation or the attention a female SE may receive when presenting to an all-male customer/IT group. Yet I do feel I am entitled to say that as my daughter is a presales engineer (with an Engineering Degree) and I know what she has gone through.

A few recent experiences this year have brought this to bear.

1. Wow!

For the first time ever - I had a class where there were more women than men. First time. Amazing! Thanks Christine and Stephanie!!

2. Industry Variations

 

Let's say , for math simplification, that my typical workshop has 20 SE's in it.

 

The numbers I've tracked over the years show that the number of women varies from 0 to 8. Breaking that down further. IT infrastructure/"plumbing" companies have by far the lowest percentage. The more technical/geeky the product is, the lower the percentage and diversity drops and rapidly approaches zero. I've had three classes this year with zero women - and the class represented the entire national or worldwide SE team.

 

Hardware companies are little better.

 

General software companies seem to hover around that 10-15% level.

 

Application type companies (ERP, CRM and HR) trend higher and the ratio can reach 25% or more.

 

3. Hiring and Recruiting.

 

Many SE leaders tell me that they cannot even find experienced candidates to hire. So how about a grow-your-own associate program? Or look at your technical support / customer relations team?

 

4. Global Implications

 

Much as I bemoan the stats here in the US - it is even worse in most parts of the world. Asia-Pacific-Japan-China has a long way to go. Parts of Europe are better than others. Yet there is hope -  Early this year I ran 2 workshops in India and there were a significant number of young female SE's in the class. With just a little encouragement to speak up and try new things - they stole the show and put their male colleagues to shame.

 

When I look back at my career, some of the best SE's who ever worked for me (and I like to think that I did make a point of hiring women to diversify and improve my teams) were women. No question about it - and you know who you are. Two of my best ever SE managers were women.

 

Lets make a difference and take a positive step to improve the profession. Evangelize what we do - and lets recruit the next generation of SE's in a 50/50 mix - it will make us all better.

 

What do you think?

Check The Calendar!

For those of you whose fiscal year ends Dec 31^st, or even if it is just the end of the quarter it is time to check the calendar. Last week I sat in on a North America business review for a technology company that was focused on closing as much as they possibly could in their Q4. “Drain The Pipe” was the phrase of the day.

Except ..

50% of their deals were going to close between December 20^th and December 31^st. (15% were closing on December 25^th!)

90% of those late December deals were scheduled for a Proof Of Concept or heavily customized demo between now and December 20^th – (which is 35 actual days and in reality 32 or 33 business days because of the US Thanksgiving Holiday).

The math didn’t work.

First – given the timing of the holidays, a massive proportion of the buyers, recommenders, approvers and signers will be celebrating the holidays and taking off the entire week of the 23^rd and most likely the 30^th and 31^st as well. No-one is going to be there to complete the sale.

Second – looking at the number of days required to either run a POC to completion or create a custom demo (it’s a highly configurable system) , there were too many days and not enough SE’s – by an overage factor of 100%.

Something had to give. In the end we scrubbed the pipeline, developed some prioritization guidelines and “borrowed” a couple of engineers/consultants who could quickly configure a number of similar demos. They’re still 20% over.

The message – you may the greatest goals in the world for this quarter – but are they logistically and socially achievable? It’s not just the responsibility of sales to look at these things. How does your calendar look for the next 7 business weeks?

(And then next quarter we have the Chinese New Year ….)

PreSales Engineers, White Boards, and Mojo...

As an IT executive I suffered through far too many really awful PowerPoint Presentations. That was back in the days when everyone threw in a piece of clipart (remember the duck with sledgehammer?) and bullet points had to twirl, whirl and fly in from all sides of the screen.

Sadly, many sales presentations haven't improved since then. Mostly it isn't even the "fault" of sales and presales engineers, they just use what is given to them. Since customers universally say they want conversations instead of presentations - it's time for a change. And that is where the Lost Art Of White Boarding comes into play. Drawing pictures was once natural for us, yet we've grown out of that skill. Yet if you can make a customer say "I see what you mean" - you're on your way to the sale.

Last year I wrote up a study on The ROI Of WhiteBoarding. Give it a read. Because recently, a startup, Zamurai, has developed a fantastic mobile whiteboard application. I stopped by their offices and had a conversation with Michael Parker, one of their founders. This is the short 2 1/2 minute version of that conversation.

 

 

Sales, Sales Engineers and Discovery

One of the biggest disconnects I see between sales and pre-sales teams lies in the area of Discovery. In many sales organization there is a chasm between the sales implementation of Discovery and what pre-sales think they actually need. One of my clients said “my rep thinks that Discovery is telling me who is on the phone before a webex demo starts”. Thankfully it’s not always that bad.

Here is the basic problem, and I am generalizing a little here:- Sales views Discovery as something that gets in the way of the deal and slows it down. “Why do you need to ask all those questions – all they want is a demo.” Sales is also concerned that they may discover something that will prevent the deal from happening or may totally unqualify the deal out of the pipeline. (I have never figured out why they regard that as a bad thing – doesn’t it make sense to stop wasting time on something you are never going to win?)

Pre-sales engineers believe that there is no such thing as too much Discovery. The more you learn about a customer the better you can target the demo/presentation/proof-of-concept. That’s true – up to a certain point. Repeating the questions that someone else may have asked, or simply asking them a different way, can really annoy the customer and make it look like there is no co-ordination. SEs also start to stray into deal qualification (do they have a budget?) which is the #1 way to annoy a rep as they hear that from their manager all the time.

The trouble is – there is no perfect line to be drawn between sales and presales responsibilities in this area. Given the usual sales:presales ratio it is virtually impossible for the SE to be included in every single first call or discovery call that sales conducts. There are not enough hours in the day. Plus the relationship between every account rep and every SE is different. Some reps are more technical than others and some SE’s are more business/sales oriented that others – you need to adjust.

My usual advice is this:

1.       Discovery is a mandatory and necessary phase of the sales cycle. It is not to be rushed through. It’s also a constant process as you should always be learning more about the customer in every interaction.

2.       Sales and Presales need to agree on what needs to be ‘Discovered’ before a demo / presentation / pitch takes place.

3.       It doesn’t matter who does it, or if it is a combination of rep/SE – as long as it is done well.

4.       If you don’t understand why the customer might want to buy from you, and what the business drivers are behind the technology decision – then you shouldn’t move into the next phase of the sales cycle. Known collectively as The Dash To Demo, The Push to Present or the Sprint to Solution.

5.       Put a simple process in place to capture the info agreed upon in (2)

The outcome will be much better sales calls (and probably fewer of them) , less unqualified deals, a better pipeline and fewer back-to-back-to-back-to-back demos by SEs. Everyone wins.

You Are Only A Trusted Advisor When ...

You Are Only A Trusted Advisor When ... The Customer Says You Are!

I had the opportunity to participate in the Amazon Web Services for Public Sector Conference in Washington DC earlier this week. An very impressive event with over 2,500 people registered and a host of 3rd party vendors and partners in attendance.

It's very obvious that Amazon are serious about this market, and that judging by the number of customers (as opposed to prospects) present, the market is serious about them. Between the massive scale, competitive pricing, and the adoption of major US Federal and International standards they are here to stay.

The presentations were varied and informative, BUT ... as I am in a Trusted

Advisor mindset right now (writing the book) there was one slide that bothered me. It's the one where Amazon call themselves a "Trusted Advisor".

It doesn't really matter what you call yourself in a Trust relationship, it's what the customer calls you and how they view you that's important. Now, the Amazon Trusted Advisor is actually an automated system that checks your configuration and usage and makes recommendations on ways you can save money or optimize the system. Aside from the psychological human-machine implications of trusting an automated machine, you still have to deal with the issue that

a. A human programmed it with the algorithms
b. No matter what it says, you'll double-check it anyway. (Minimal Trust)

So .. You Are Only A Trusted Advisor When ... The Customer Says You Are!
(Even if you are a machine)