Category Archives: Creativity

May 30 2012
Creativity, Presentations, Selling, Solutions, Tools

Circles and Lines

“What will you be demonstrating in the booth at the customer conference?”

Well, how can you know?  Who is going to walk up?  What will their needs be?

And so, before demonstrating generic solutions to generic problems, engage in discussions about their business, their challenges, their needs.

Between the two of you, on a blank sheet of paper, draw circles and lines expressing a conceptual solution with the myriad players and processes involved.  Then  demonstrate specific solutions to their problems, hitting the points meaningful to them.

In the past you could tear off the sheet and hand it to the patron as a keepsake but these days they’ll just snap a picture with their phone and walk on.  

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May 01 2012
Creativity, Humor, Positioning

Give them Something to Grab Onto

Nothing works like an analogy to help an audience come to a shared understanding.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in initial qualifications, discovery meetings, or final solution presentations.  When you can effectively characterize their situation, their systems, or their goals, an engaged customer will grab onto the characterization and start using it, changing it, adding on to it.  They’ll use it to explain to their peers who didn’t make the meeting.  It will become the water-cooler joke.  They’ll name the project after it.  They’ll remember it when you visit them two years later.

In a recent discovery meeting, we came to the realization with the customer that they “just wanted to replace the old van,” and nothing more.  What do you think the demo theme is going to look like?

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Apr 23 2012
Creativity, Positioning, Presentations, Solutions

Trim-Work

Have you seen the documentary Helvetica? It starts as a history of the font, then turns into a thought provoking discussion on graphic design.

Graphic design matters- it is the aesthetic.

  • It sets the tone
  • It turns utility into usability
  • It is fashion sense

Look around.  When you’re aware of good and bad graphic design you’ll notice:

  • The way people dress
  • Magazine layouts
  • Signs on local businesses

Can you see graphic design (or lack of it) now?

Turn your attention to our domain, enterprise software. Graphic design seems an afterthought, limited to trim-work. Look at the solutions you present. They are basically:

  • online forms
  • with rows and columns of fields, justified left and right
  • and a “Save”  button with cryptic messages about what you did wrong

An opportunity?

Enterprise applications are going mobile.  Decent graphic design is built into platforms (It’s pretty hard to screw up an iPad user interface).

In a world of free creative tools, anyone can take a picture, anyone can record an album, anyone can self-publish a book. In the hands of graphic design professionals, working alongside architectural and process designers, enterprise software can be inherently appealing and useful. Even beautiful.

Our audiences are sensitive to the aesthetic.  It means usability, which means adoption which means return on investment which means value.  Decision makers will choose the more pleasing option over the more functional if they can see themselves using the pleasing option.

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Apr 10 2012
Creativity, Positioning, Presentations, Tools

I Made Them Up

I had a list of questions I expected in the demo and knew I wouldn’t be able to answer; questions about configuration of this and that, system architecture, product road-map, etc.

I shared the list during the dry run, asking who would take ownership for each in the meeting proper. This vetting of the list helped make sure we had the right people in the meeting, and that answering the questions was quick, helpful, and professional.

Someone asked where the questions came from. “I made them up.” Hilarity ensued. “Seriously. I think these are the questions they’ll have.”

We’re so programmed to solve problems, to score well on the test, that these were presumed a list of requirements- yet another homework assignment- from the customer.  And by answering formal questions with the best answers, we’ll be picked.

No.

This list of questions was ours.  It was necessary.  It was the result of thinking about the customer’s situation and what they’ll want to know, how they’ll perceive the solutions, how they’ll attempt to grasp our something different from what they have today.

The questions aren’t requirements. The questions are the poking and prodding the customer will do to understand our message.

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Apr 09 2012
Creativity, Learning, Positioning, Presentations, Tools

Letting Go?

You work in teams.

Teams imply collaboration

Collaboration implies more than one person responsible for execution.

A challenge creeps into this cooperative approach, this division of labor, even when those in the team execute according to expectations. Their execution and vision isn’t the same as yours. It’s of a different quality. The writing – the messaging you’re trying to craft- looks like it came from a committee. The audience will see this. 

But…

How far can you push before the whole project crumbles? Do you let go and face the audience knowing it isn’t the best? Do you go all Steve-Jobs-it-must-be-insanely-great on the team?

Tough call.

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Mar 19 2012
Creativity, Presentations, Solutions, Tools

“Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.”

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright used to cajole his architect students with this quip.

He meant that he was constantly working ideas out in his head and the process of drafting, of drawing, wasn’t creative, it was just the point at which he put his ideas down on paper.

You’re always thinking.  Media such as pen and paper, Post-it® Notes, blogs, and recordings help thinking along.  If you wake up in the middle of the night bursting with ideas, get out of bed and write them down.  Welcome associations from every aspect of life.  Mash-up your experiences against software systems expectations and create a new line of thought.
Your presentation and demonstration preparation are idea capture and articulation.

Shake those solutions out of your sleeves.

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Mar 15 2012
Creativity, Positioning, Presentations, Solutions

Imagine yourself in a Cordoba

Our peer-approved standard is the day-in-the-life demonstration.  Agreed?

Our energy and creativity are poured into the perfect and entertaining demo mold of how our customer could use our system throughout their day.  The premise is they’ll see themselves clicking, typing, dragging-and-dropping merrily away in our system.  Because they’ll see how their life will be better, their business processes improved, simpler, faster, and automated through the use of our solutions, there’s no doubt they’ll go with us.

If we’re all saying “Imagine yourself in a Cordoba, surrounded in rich Corinthian leather,” then as competitors we’re all just trying to win the test-drive.  Heck, if they’re walking on the lot, chances are they’re going to drive home in something new today.

You’ve got to do something different.

Who is the silent party in every day-in-the-life demonstration?  Who is on the other side of the order, return, marketing campaign?  Why, it’s your customer’s customer.

By thinking about that person’s day-in-the-life, how they interact with your customer, and what could make a better solution (the buzzword today is customer experience) for them, you’ll come up with insights for your solution and demonstration that are unique and visionary.   This approach will transform you from an entertaining  demonstrator of requirements into a trusted advisor.

Added bonus: This kind of solution creation gets visionaries excited.  Visionaries are usually in lead decision-making roles.  When they get excited, your sales team will take notice and begin steering the conversation towards commitment and closure.

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Feb 28 2012
Creativity, Leadership, Learning, Tools

A Voracious Appetite for Learning

One of the fundamental requirements* of the Pre-Sales role is learning.

There are always new products, new industries, new technologies and new approaches.  There’s so much learning to be done that sometimes it’s hard to find time for doing.  But then again, you can get so caught up in the doing, we don’t make time for learning.

Try to learn, think, and create in the morning when your mind is fresh.  Do it before you check your distractions: email, calls, and Twitter. Use your brain in the morning and save the afternoon for the tasks at hand.

Learning isn’t something that happens to you.  You happen to it.  Happen to it in the style that works best for you.  Do you read?  Do you need to see something?  Hear someone explain? Do diagrams make the most sense to you?  Are you driven by examples? Do you have to be physically active, taking notes and interacting with the materials?

Books, blogs, videos, podcasts, forums, presentations, documentation, sample data, sandboxes, and mentors can be found, and found at the speed of an internet search.

*Requirement is such a harsh term. Learning is one of the fundamental joys of the Pre-Sales role.

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Feb 24 2012
Creativity, Leadership, Solutions, Tools

Fifteen good minutes

Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

Thomas Edison

Which comes first?  In the line of Pre-Sales, I’ve found inspiration takes the form of fifteen good minutes of quality thinking, usually occurring somewhere towards the middle or end of the perspiration.

Help the inspiration come along.

My catalysts for thought involve physical action- pacing, juggling, playing a musical instrument.  My best feedback comes from the trees along the trails near my home.  My Uncle Jim referred to his dogs Rufus and Schmaeser, companions on his long walks, as his ‘financial advisors.’

When the inspiration comes, catch it.

Writing is the taking down of ideas.  My penmanship deteriorates with the increased pace of fleeting ideas.  Essay writing and bullet points can be linear, constricting.  Open up your thinking processes with mind-mapping diagrams, Post-It notes, or note cards.  They make it easy to let your mind go, and you can (literally) organize your thoughts later.  Voice recording applications are available for our smart-phones. Plug in your headset and start talking your ideas into existence.

Digital equivalents exist for most of these tools, with the added benefit of ease of sharing, persistence and re-use.  Consider FreeMind for mind mapping and LinoIt for Post-it® note style thinking.

When those 15 minutes come, will you be ready?

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Feb 22 2012
Creativity, Positioning, Presentations

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down

Change is difficult.  It’s hard to learn something new.

Yet there you are, standing in front of an audience, demonstrating with great zeal and gusto all sorts of new things and better ways and innovative solutions.

Get ready.  Your audience is about to unleash a barrage of pointed, impatient questions.

It’s not that they don’t like what you’re showing.  They simply don’t understand what you’re showing.  They understand their world and what they do in specific, familiar ways.  What you’re sharing is different, a something-new your product and technology make possible.   And because it is new and unfamiliar, they don’t understand it and they are trying to make sense of it through their questions.

So help them.  Give them an analogy that explains your product, your positioning, your solution in a way everyone can understand.  Let the analogy apply a concept they do understand to their current challenges, helping form your unique solution.

I provided a day long session where I used the theme of a master-planned housing community with all sorts of related analogies: pick from one of four basic home designs, choose your own fittings and fixtures, landscaping is later, be the first ones on the block, etc.  It was a huge pantry stocked with analogies*.  In a follow up call months later, the customer didn’t remember our product’s features and functions, but she excitedly recalled “the house! The house!”

Mary Poppins was a great Pre-Sales Engineer:

In ev’ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game

And ev’ry task you undertake
Becomes a piece of cake
A lark! A spree! It’s very clear to see that

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

*See how I did that?

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