The Less You Know, The Better The Elevator Pitch

Yesterday I participated as a panel judge in reviewing the 2 minute elevator pitches / door openers of a 35 member presales team. The panel was the VP of Sales, VP and Director of Marketing, and me. The scenario was that you suddenly get two minutes alone (anywhere – cafeteria, lobby, elevator) with a relatively senior executive of a company that you have been working with. How do you make that executive curious enough about what you are doing, or what you have learnt, in just two minutes? Curious enough that they will grant you more time or another meeting?

The exercise is useful because it teaches you to condense your thoughts into less than two minutes and get a high level summary that may provoke or challenge the executive. This actual situation doesn’t happen as often as marketers  or sales trainers would believe, but it certainly does happen. (I once got 60 seconds with Bill Gates in an elevator!)

What was interesting is that there were two classes of people who excelled in this situation. The first type was exactly what you expect – the seasoned SE who is used to rapidly translating technology into key business issues and then clearly communicate. The second type – was the people in the audience who knew the least about the technology! Really! The sales operations staff and two new hires gave an awesome pitch. Why? Because they didn’t commit any of these “elevator” crimes.

1.       Taking one minute to get to the point. (that’s 50% of your time)

2.       Using techno-speak and jargon and acronyms.

3.       Failing to talk about current/future issues.

4.       Neglecting some vision phrase like ‘suppose’, ‘imagine’, or “what if?’

5.       Having so many points there was no focus

6.       Not asking any questions

7.       Failing to have a call to action at the end.

So let’s be positive instead. Next time you are asked to give an elevator pitch – give it the shaft. No executive wants to hear who you are and what you do – they want to know how you can help them and maybe learn something new. So, instead

1.       Bottom Line Up Front after the basic pleasantries.

2.       Speak clearly and concisely.

3.       Lay out the pain statement. But don’t overdo it.

4.       Help the exec imagine the future with the pain fixed.

5.       Single point, single focus

6.       Ask at least one question.

7.       Ask for a next step.

Is that a lot for two minutes? No. When you plan ahead you may even have 30 seconds left over. Give it a try.

A Critique Of A Fidelity Investments Webcast

This morning I sat through a 60 minute webcast, sponsored by Fidelity Investments, titled “Fidelity Bond Investing Beyond Yield: A Deeper Dive Webinar!”

The webcast was driven by two Fidelity Vice presidents – Richard Carter and Jay Schwartzberg - and was essentially a demo of how to use their Bond Investing Tool, with some interesting market commentary thrown in.

Here’s the bottom line – Richard and Jay are obviously two very well-spoken and knowledgeable individuals, who were badly let down by their demo and visuals. I’m picking on them as the “web-demo crimes” they committed are very common and can be easily avoided. In no particular order –

1.       I’ve no idea what Jay & Richard look like as there was no introductory slide that had a photo of them. So I’m left listening to two (admittedly pleasant) voices drifting out of my speakers.

2.       They decided to cover four main points in 45 minutes. Too much!

3.       Almost every slide was packed and tough to read. When you use a screen shot it should be clearly visible and use up as much of the slide as possible. Their shots were fuzzy and marooned in the middle of the screen.

4.       The “demo” was a tour of the features of the online tool. It consisted of “and if .. and if.. then …” It was very navigational with lots of talk about click and drop-downs. They would have been better off telling a story around the tool. “Imagine you are Billy The Bond Investor, and you have a problem because you want to create a municipal bond portfolio/ re-invest cash from a maturing bond.” etc.

5.       On that same topic, there wasn’t a roadmap introduced to explain what was going to happen – it was just screen after screen after screen – a recipe to encourage the audience to become lost.

6.       Each slide had the Fidelity logo , a brand symbol and text splashed over the bottom of it. As well as being annoying (I know it’s Fidelity Investments!!) it interfered with diagrams and text on several slides. Designing around that green swoosh has to be tricky.

7.       On the positive side, a couple of times when they really drilled down on a screen, they “exploded” just a part of a screen to provide context – of course it was fuzzy.

8.       Their final slide was (sorry) a little amateur and way too busy. You can see it on the right here >>

There is text outside the cube, an acronym (HNW), covered text, bullet points and too many points.

9.       I had no idea what their residual message was. Which is three days from now if there is only one thing I remember what would it be? I bet if you asked 100 people watching you would get more than 50 answers.

A classic example of two fine presenters (I bet they would be very engaging face-to-face) getting buried with a poorly designing demo/presentation. Don’t commit these crimes!!

(Disclaimer >> Fidelity is not a client of mine - I am a client of theirs)

For a more positive list of great things to do in a webcast read this.

You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.

Yep. It's that time of the year. For many of my customers it is the end of Q3, and Q4 is rushing upon you. That quarter when it's "all hands on deck" / "close everything in sight" - you know the drill.

It's an especially tough quarter in most parts of the world as you move into the winter holidays. Here in the US when you take account of Thanksgiving and Christmas the 63 actual selling days rapidly decrease to less than 55. China has the whole of next week off. It happens everywhere. That doesn't mean that as an SE you throw your hands in the air and panic like most of the sales force.

In the next couple of weeks - take a little bit of time to invest in yourself and your future. Back in April 2011 I wrote "The Quarter Is Over - Now What?". I received a lot of positive feedback about the article and I think its worth reading (again!). The only person who is really in charge of your career and your development is ...  YOU. When you wait for some "free time" it rarely happens. There is always some last minute POC that needs to be completed, a proposal that needs to be changed, a "just one more time presentation or demonstration" that needs to be made, or a customer support problem you have to fix.

That's a lot of "needs". Take a little control, a little direction, and selfishly invest in one of your most important assets - you!

YES!! Global Availability Of The eBook

I've heard from a number of you over the past few months that you have had extreme difficulty obtaining the Kindle version of Mastering Technical Sales outside of the US. Those problems should now be over - here is the update from my publisher as of Sept 12th.
 
1.   Kindle informed us this morning that they’ve brought your book live on their international sites. We’ve verified it is available on the UK and all European sites plus Japan. Not yet in China.
 
2.  Although Amazon is selling Kindle devices on their Japanese website, customers who want to buy a Kindle book need to register on the US site to purchase a Kindle book. Obviously not very convenient, but I’m sure this will change in the future. (this isn't just me - it's everyone!!)
 
Let me know if you have any more problems.

 

Outcomes and Results v Features

Over the past two weeks I've had the opportunity to review three "Strategic Direction" and/or "Where The Market Is Going" PowerPoint decks. Each of them was designed by Product Marketing for the Sales and Presales Engineering teams to give to their customers. Each and every one of them looked like a deck I'd expect to be used in a Gartner analysts briefing - but certainly not in front of mid to senior level people at their customers.

Why is this so horrific? Aside from slide design, 8-10 point fonts and more bullet points than an average armory - each of the decks was PITCHING FEATURES and DIRECTLY SELLING, versus looking at OUTCOMES and RESULTS.

Why is that so important? Let me tell you a story!

Benjamin Franklin, in addition to all his other inventions and achievements, is often credited with being the father of classified advertising in newspapers. One day, Ben is sitting in the offices of the Philadelphia Gazette when a local shoemaker visited him. The craftsman explained that his business was growing just as the city of Philadelphia was growing, and that he wanted to open up a second store on the other side of town. Was there any way he could pay Franklin to inform his customers, through the newspaper, about the new store?

He didn't come to buy advertising ( a feature that Ben then made up). He came to INFORM his customers that they no longer had to cross town to use his services. Instead they could use his new, second, store and save themselves time.

(Footnote: Ben, being a smart guy, figured out this was a great business, and then hired his son-in-law to go around Philadelphia businesses, knocking on their doors, to see if anyone else had something they wanted to tell the rest of the town about. And that is how the classifieds got started over 225 years ago!) No surprise that Ben graces the front of the US $100 banknote.
 

The Trusted Advisor Sales Engineer

So what exactly is a “Trusted Advisor” Sales Engineer? The position is one of those “I know it when I see it” type things. Anyone – sales or presales – who sells to at least a strategic/enterprise customer (with any hope of getting some repeat business) should aspire to become this. Yet the fact is – YOU cannot call yourself a T/A. YOUR COMPANY cannot call you a T/A. It’s YOUR CUSTOMER who has to see you as THEIR T/A in order for the label to work.

It is not that easy. There are so many things that get in the way, mainly the culture of the quarterly or monthly revenue pressure. Quota hangs over the head of a presales engineer, or at least over the head of the salespeople that you work with. Every presales engineer has probably heard the words “you have to build a relationship with your customer and become their trusted advisor”. No-one ever explains how to do that!

So – for the first time ever – there is now a workshop directed towards presales engineers that explains both the behaviors and the practical applications they need to demonstrate so that their customers will trust them. When an SE is trusted, then they can give advice that will be listened to. That usually results in higher revenue, larger deals, less competition, and better customer satisfaction.

Today I am announcing the availability of a new Mastering Technical Sales workshop – “The Trusted Sales Engineer”. The workshop will be delivered to a few early customers in October and will be generally available – in a 1 and 2-day format - in November.

Contact me for more information and an outline syllabus.

Patience Is An SE Virtue!

Patience is not one of the first skills you think about when it comes to the requirements of being a great SE. I’m not talking about patience in terms of:

a)     Dealing with “full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes” sales people.

b)    Handling that beta product that just won’t behave

c)     Wandering why support takes so long to handle a problem and call the customer back; or even

d)    All the other non-core activities that you have to perform as “the organization of last resort”!

I am speaking about patience in terms of dealing with your customers. Patience in forcing yourself to learn more about your customers and talking/presenting less. A couple of examples to make my point.

Customer says : “We’re looking for a solution that will enable us to ”. Can you help us?

Easy, but wrong answer: “Yes. In fact, let me show you how we can help you right now” – and you start either a demo, presentation or a long monologue.

Harder, but correct answer: “Yes we can. Tell me a little more about why you are looking for .

Customer remarks: “Last month we had to store an additional 2TB of data.”

East, but wrong response: “What kind of storage are you using?” or “How do you back that up?” or “how do you report on that?” (All good questions a little later in discovery).

Harder, but correct answer. “Wow – how do you (or your company) feel about that?”

See the difference? You are asking at least one more question before you dive into “presentation/all-about-me” mode. It makes a big difference and you’d be surprised what you can learn.