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?

The Back Of The Napkin

In my quest to dramatically increase the usage of Whiteboards and relegate Power Point into the hole in the ground it truly deserves - I've now discovered a book which explains how to accomplish that amazing feat. "The Back Of The Napkin" by Dan Roam explains how to use pictures to solve problems (which is mildly interesting) and sell your ideas (which is highly relevent to the Sales Engineering profession. The first four chapters explain how to use a whiteboard/napkin/sheet of paper even if you have the handwriting of a doctor, while the final two chapters explain how to get your ideas across in a simple yet effective manner.

Absolutely worth the $16 it costs to buy this on Amazon - and a big thanks to reader Bill Weinberg for suggesting this as SE Book Of The Month.

I've often wondering why certain things (facts, songs, people..) got "stuck" in my brain, and others didn't. Surely if there was a way to harness that information in a sales situation it would give you a major competitive advantage. Made To Stick by the Heath Brothers attempts, and for the most part, succeeds in explaining the stickiness of ideas.

I've long been a fan of doing something different to make my product and services stand out and be memorable. After reading this book I can now put a little science behind the differentiation. The book isn't directed at salespeople, in fact it's really directed at anyone who needs to communicate more effectively - which would be about 99.9% of the population. I'm adding this book to my Recommended Reading List For The Sales Engineer as its probably going to be the best $20 you spend on yourself this year.

New April Content

The new content for April has been posted. There is an interesting Q&A about handling Questions and Answers during a presentation and demo. This is based on a session I participated in last year during a guest appearance at an MBA Technology class. We also take a look at Why Sitting Down Is Bad - which encourages Sales Engineers to get up from behind their laptop and move around to establish control of the room.

Enjoy the reading - and I'll blog later about an interesting book I highlight in this month's newsletter.

Telling Stories

Last night my wife and I went to a Chris Botti concert. Besides being an outstanding jazz musician and trumpet player, I also discovered that Chris is an outstanding teller of stories. Although his music was enough to engage the audience for a full two hours, he kept people totally riveted in their seats by providing context and background to his pieces.

Think about it - most concerts you go to the performers will say something like "here's a new song from our latest album, titled <....>, we hope you like it". Chris provided an entertaining story about the song. His finale featured a Frank Sinatra tune, but he wrapped it in a story about how he dropped out of college his senior year for the opportunity to play with Sinatra for two weeks as his first professional musical gig. He segued into a story where he asked all the young musicians in the audience to stand up and then wrapped that back into how his parents felt when he quit school. Then and only then did he play.

Telling stories is important. As a PreSales Engineer it is one of the most important things you can do during the sales cycle to boost your credibility and reduce the perceived risk of the customer. It also helps to make your message "stick". Practice your stories, share them with your colleagues and personalize them - it's way better than reciting speeds and feeds!

New March Content

The March edition of the MTS Edge will be going out on Tuesday. To get an early view of the main content you can read about Apologies and What Goes On The Last Slide?

There seems to be some unofficial rule of speaking that you should never apologize (unless you are a public figure who has been "caught"). I'm not in agreement that its 100% correct, but I do know that we, as Sales Engineers, apologize far too often when we we shouldn't. This one-sheet deals with the pros and cons of Apologizing - and maybe I should say "Sorry" right now that it is written from a US/European point of view!

What Goes On The Last Slide looks at how we end our presentations or demos. We put a lot of thought into the start, but rarely wrap the end back around to the beginning to gain closure on a topic. Read on to see why ending with a "Thank You" or a "Q&A" slide is a really bad idea. See what works instead.

Supporting Partners

One of the more interesting challenges facing small to midsize companies is how to provide technical (pre-sales) support and help to the partner community. Unless you are extremely channel-centric, partner support is usually conducted on an ad-hoc basis.

This is because, due to organizational size, you cannot afford to dedicate an SE to the partners unless there is real revenue at stake. partners can go to public classes to learn your product or services - but who teaches them how to 'sell" it? A couple of studies conducted by smaller ($50-250M) software companies found that nearly 15% of their SE time was being directed towards partner activities. That means that once you pass the point of six SE's, you should consider dedicating one of them to the channel.

But can you really afford to do that? Well - if you have anyone on the sales side who cares (and is therefore paid on) partner sell or pull-throughs they are incented to absorb as much "free" SE support as they can. In fact - it pays to have one or more partner SE's to protect the time and integrity of the rest of the SE team.