Category Archives: Professionalism

Feb 28 2013
Professionalism

Out of your Mind

We’ve all experienced the mind that won’t let go of a problem.

It might be stress, a problem to solve, tomorrow’s presentation, or making the system show the way we want; we perseverate on these ideas well beyond their merit, and these concerns will surface at any moment.

But there’s a time and a place for everything.  Perhaps it’s time to make dinner.  To join in your life.  To go grocery shopping.

Develop the habit of putting these ideas out of your mind.

When they start opening the door, slam it  on their fingers, lock it and latch it and move on with your life.  The problems, challenges, and presentations will still be there when you get back to them.  They have to be- their fingers are stuck in the door.

That’s gotta hurt.

Feb 27 2013
Learning, Professionalism

Failure: Risk it or Fear it

Fear of failure may drive you to work harder.  And in so doing, you may succeed.  But with success will come greater responsibilities, greater potential failure, greater drive to avoid failing.  You may go far, but when fear is the foundation of your motivation, the inevitable failure in your future will tumble the whole tower of blocks.

If, on the other hand, you risk failure by measuring it and its companion, reward, there is joy and art in your motivation.  You will work harder to push the envelope.   When failure arrives you’ll recognize it, welcome it with a hardy “I knew I’d find you eventually,” then shrug and carry on.

What’s your motivation?*

If you find yourself in the fear-of-failure camp, here’s a helpful exercise.  In Pre-Sales, as in Sales as in baseball as in life, great batting averages are barely above .300.  Face it, you’ve failed.  You’ve failed often.  So go back to a few deals you’ve lost and spend fifteen minutes looking at your presentation, your differentiators, your themes, and the way in which you demonstrated your solution.  If it’s  had time to settle, to breathe, then the reasons for the failure will jump right out at you.

“How could I have been saying this when the customer obviously needed that?”

Learn from your failures.

*Failure can be risked and feared in darker, more dangerous ways. Risk without caution, without preparation, is foolhardy and invites catastrophic failure. Worse yet, fear of failure can drive you to avoidance, procrastination, safe decisions. Then there are no rewards; success becomes a failure.

Feb 11 2013
Presentations, Professionalism, Uncategorized

Inner Monologue

Experience has taught me to listen to my experience.

When faced with different situations, my inner monologue* kicks in and starts feeding me nuggets of advice:

  • You’ve done this before
  • Don’t stress- you can’t know what’s going to happen in this meeting
  • Trust in your teammates in the room
  • Qualify that question, don’t answer it right away
  • Pounce! Now!  Close it!
  • Step in and save this
  • You know more about this one than they do
  • They know more about this one than you do
  • I never thought of it that way
  • It’s okay to be wrong on this one
  • You’re giving them a lot of information, building on credibility
  • It’s not about you

Listen to the advice your inner monologue feeds you.  You’ve spent years developing it.

*It’s not a dialogue- I don’t converse with it, I listen to it.

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Feb 06 2013
Learning, Positioning, Professionalism, Solutions

Logic and Data; Yin and Yang

In a recent engagement, I’ve been paired with a pecuniary peer in pursuit of building a business case.

We worked together with the customer in a workshop and emerged with very different interpretations.  On its own, this is not surprising-  ask different individuals what happened in a meeting and you’ll get different answers- but we had core and complimentary purposes for the workshop.  I found obstacles and points of change.  The logical implications and resolutions flowed from that seed.  He found an accounting indicator that was far out of range (and not in a good way) for the customer’s industry. 

I focus from the qualitative perpective, taking processes, systems, information, strategies and data and craft the logical argument; he approaches from the quantitative perspective, taking processes, systems, information, strategies and data and crafts the fiancial justification.

Together we earned executive buy in.  We made a formidable team.

This post was originally titled “Logic vs. Data,” but that’s wrong.  It’s not Yin vs. Yang; it’s Yin and Yang.

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Jan 11 2013
Creativity, Learning, Professionalism, Solutions

What is Creativity?

Early in my career, I read George Will’s excellent “Men at Work,” which not only made a baseball fan out of me, but helped me understand professionalism.  Hard work, practice, and development of skills apply to talent-related activities, not just white collar careers.

Is a creative person talented or professional?  Neither.  Both.  The creative person has a different end in mind.  For example:

If they give you a box of Legos and you build the little space-ship or car pictured on the cover, you’re solving problems; if you take that same box of Legos and make a trebuchet out of it, you’re being creative.

You have the same ingredients, the same effort, but completely different goals.

Oct 25 2012
Leadership, Professionalism, Selling

Sparring

If your customer says something you disagree with, and you have valid arguments, then challenge them.

Not their authority, not their past decisions, not their role in the decision, no.  But their preconceptions, their misunderstandings, and their prejudices are fair game.

Give them a mental challenge.  Spar with them.

You’re an expert in your domain, and they’re an expert in theirs.  You’re at par.  But you probably know more about their domain than they do about yours.  Advantage you.

You’re asking them to make a huge investment and business decision.  Let them know what you’re made of.  Take a punch and punch back.  They’ll respect you for it.

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Sep 11 2012
Creativity, Humor, Professionalism

Cost Savings

We all travel.  Now and again we’re challenged to save costs.  I did some brainstorming and here are some ideas I’ve come up with:

  • Bring a bus.  It’s much more fuel efficient per-person to use a bus.
  • Double-shot for only a dollar more costs less than two single-shots.
  • Use your children as cheap resources for keying demo data.  Not everyone can do this, of course, but it’s another good reason to adopt.  And the schools will take care of them pretty much the rest of the time.
  • Don’t key in demo data.  It’s Widgets for John Smith at Acme Corp and you’ve got a demo for every customer regardless of industry.
  • Use your competition’s free version of their CRM product to keep your sales teams up to date.
  • Visit two clients on the same day in the same city on one business trip.  Nah, that’s too much coordination.
  • A simple rhyme: Red eye flights save a hotel night.
  • Staying with relatives (even distant ones) makes trips that much more exciting.
  • Roommates. It could lead to something special.
  • Skip breakfast.  Oh, wait, we do that anyway.  No cost savings there.  Wait!  Skip lunch too!
  • If you insist on breakfast, just walk on into a Hampton Inn or Fairfield Suites like you own the place- grab some food and coffee and Sit down.  You don’t actually have to stay there.  I mean, stay at the Marriott and eat at the Fairfield. The omelets at Embassy Suites are cooked to order!
  • I’ve noticed the price of coffee is inversely related to its quality:
    • Starbucks: $4.00- bitter
    • Dunkin Donuts- $2.25 and a way of life
    • MacDonald’s Newman’s Own: Tasty and hot (but not too hot) off the $1.00 value meal and quick at the drive-thru
    • Best deal:  64 ounce Big-Gulp of Mountain Dew at 7-11:  89₵
  • Buzz cuts save on shampoo.
  • Shampoo is also available for free in most hotels.  Steal it from housekeeping’s carts and stuff your bags.  Oh, wait, that’s a home expense saving tip.  Well, since we’re off topic anyway… dogs can be washed with free hotel shampoo.
  • Pay in Euros.  That’s one of those currency conversion economics things.
  • Post-its are cheaper than note-pads and quicker than power-points.  Ask to use the customer’s Post-its and raid their office supply cabinet when their back is turned.  See, now we’re saving travel and office expenses.
  • Take audience outside to point out your cloud solutions.  Most effective on a rainy day.  Saves development costs.  You can also take advantage of that shampoo.
  • Charge the audience admission.  I mean, we’re entertaining, right?  Why should travel be a cost center?  Make it a profit center!  Pass the hat around in the middle of the demo.
  • Wait a few months to submit expense reports.
  • Book travel to other departments’ cost-centers.
    • This will also improve gross margin on sales and thereby increase commissions.
  • Reduce cost of expense processing by outsourcing it to another country while simultaneously making the process more tedious for highly compensated employees by having them scan their receipts into PDF documents and then upload them into expense automation software rather than jamming the receipts into a prepaid envelope for interns to sort through.  Apparently the cost of a stamp is greater than the cost of half an hour spent taping, scanning, saving, file-moving, and uploading.  What?  I’m supposed to do that on my own time?
  • Just have payroll reject every 15th expense line item.  Often, those who submit them won’t notice.  If they do notice, it’s too much effort to resubmit the report and they let it go.
  • Leave the sales reps at home.  They’re just taking up space and buying dinner anyway.

 

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Aug 20 2012
Creativity, Presentations, Professionalism, Tools

Tip: Culling Presentations down to size

It’s easier to edit than to create.

It’s also pretty clear that our peers in Marketing, Product Management, and Engineering have time on their hands to create, judging from the long, detailed, generic presentations they provide us.  Let’s take advantage  of all this raw material.  If we know what we specifically want to say to our audience, we can start pruning.

Here’s a tip:

Open up your 127 slide master deck and grab a pen and paper.  As you scroll through the presentation, jot down the slide numbers you find relevant. 3, 5, 7-10, 22, 30-34, etc. Create a new, customer-specific deck, and start copying over those slides.

The next hour or so can be spent adjusting (improving?) the grammar and phrasing of the copied slides to your needs.  I’ve found that removing  half the words improves clarity.  Less is more.

Yes, there’s a completely separate debate about PowerPoints:  Why not Prezi? Why slides with bullets? You don’t read presentations, they’re a backdrop; just use pictures.  All that is fine, but sometimes a PowerPoint is a PowerPoint.

Let’s bang them out efficiently, shall we?

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Jul 18 2012
Presentations, Professionalism

Too many TLAs are a PITA

And poorly placed pronouns are puzzling.

We owe it to our audiences to be clear, not confusing.

Clear:

When we start using Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) and pronouns because we assume the audience knows what the TLAs mean or because we’re too rushed to type or speak the words out, we risk confusing them.

Confusing:

When we start using TLAs and pronouns because we assume the they know what they mean or because we’re too rushed to type or speak them, we risk confusing them.

We learn sequentially, getting stuck on what we don’t understand until we resolve that problem. If your audience is still working out what you’ve said and you’ve gone down the road, they’ll abandon the journey.

Jul 18 2012
Leadership, Professionalism, Selling

Why so competitive?

Because we like to win

or…

Because we like to compete

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