When you pull off the highway for a quick rest stop…
Do you feel like you have to catch back up to traffic when you get back on? (guilt)
or
Do you notice that you’re now with cars that you’d passed a while back? (enjoying the journey)
Enjoy the journey. Take some time off once in a while. You run hard in Pre-Sales; give the rest of the world a chance to catch back up.
Every cycle you engage in- win, lose, or draw- you gain experience.
That experience brings out the finer points, the little touches and nuances that make a difference. A point of positioning here, and understanding of the user’s life there, and tips about using projectors and podiums and whiteboards everywhere.
There’s always another level of competition. There’s always a better way to convey the message. There’s always a way to change, to improve.
Keep climbing the spiral staircase up and through the stratosphere. Otherwise you’re just doing a job.
Years ago, in a discovery session with a manufacturing company, my peers (manufacturing, planning, and production) poked and prodded as we walked about the facility, asking insightful questions about the customer’s operations, the challenges they faced, how they ran this and that process, when they resorted to manual lists and spreadsheets, when they made decisions with autonomy, when they went up the hierarchy; they even discussed the most economical approach cutting small pieces of steel out of a large piece of scrap.
In short, my peers proved themselves to be not just product and solution experts, but to truly be subject matter experts.
The moment that most impressed me was at the end of the day when, gathered around a table (okay, a folding-table like you get at Sam’s Club) in a conference room just off the manufacturing floor, one of my peers exhaled a sigh and summarized her day with, “Well, I guess you’re a manufacturing company.” Chuckles and agreement all around. Obvious but true.
This is winning the deal in discovery.
When all the preparation is done, when all the stories are prepared, when all the data is set for stunning execution, it’s still the prerogative of the key customer in the audience to say something like…
“I don’t need to see the whole day-in-the-life demo and how a user goes about creating this or that- I just have a few key questions.”
That’s his prerogative, and it’s an invitation to step up and play some tough one-on-one.
It’s just you and him. You’re ready. It’s what you’ve really been preparing for. Knock him out with all you’ve got.
We go through a succession of motivators as we gain experience:
Where are you on your journey?
No, I won’t. No excuses.
We are highly paid professionals. We are the ones the decision makers trust. We are the front-line representatives of multi-million-billion dollar organizations, asking our customers to invest with us.
Our communications must be clear and void of careless mistakes.
Instead of making preemptive excuses or advertising in your email signature, include your contact information, so your customers can effortlessly reach back to you.
That’s what the signature is for.