Category Archives: Solutions

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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Mar 12 2012
Leadership, Positioning, Solutions, Tools

Three strategies

Evolutionary.  Your product has better features/functions/usability than the competition.  You know these points well and can bring them to the front in demonstrations.  Usability, capability, and ease of access all play a role here.

Revolutionary.  Your product has taken the market expectations and gone a whole generation beyond.  You’re thought leaders, innovators, and the risk-taking customers clamor to be with you.

Visionary… in the eyes of your customer.  You look at their needs and find a way to revolutionize their business.  You bring unique combinations of capabilities (some of them even mundane) together to help them better achieve and define themselves. This is what they start to see in the Revolutionary solutions, but here it’s brought into sharp focus.

Being Visionary is the joy of business.  It is truly the engineering side of Pre-Sales.

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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 20 2012
Leadership, Solutions

Group Project

Work (and in our case, dynamic sales team engagements) is like a group project in school: only one or two members of the team actually do the work.

The rest busy themselves with making coffee or doing the typing or putting together binders.

The ones who lead the project will eventually succeed.  If a team member can’t show up and contribute, that’s their problem.  Move on without them.  That’s leadership — moving forward and pulling others with you by setting the example.

Let the followers do what they’re good at.  Following.

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Feb 03 2012
Presentations, Solutions

Rock Stars

We are Pre-Sales.

We are discerning, considerate, persuasive, and contemplative.  We are thought-leaders, roadwarriors, salespeople, demo-builders, presenters, geeks, and entertainers rolled into one.

We know our customers’ pains and our solutions.  We know industry processes, best practices, and the power of a single, well-placed click.  We know how to position, win, lose, recover, and fight another day.  We know our competition, ourselves, and everyone in every organization.

We are not shy, afraid, uncertain, unwilling, or incapable.  We are not fools, yet we suffer them with grace.

We create consensus, alignment, vision, analogies, value, and action.

We deliver RFPs, demos, proofs of concept, and successful meetings.  We deliver the impossible and the art of the possible.  We deliver the goods. Hell, we even deliver the coffee.

We can take a punch and we can punch back.  We say no when we should and yes when we must.

We simply can.

We are Pre-Sales.  We are rock stars.

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Feb 02 2012
1 Comment
Positioning, Solutions

Why Should They Buy from You?

This is the focus and fundamental purpose of sales engagements.  Your company is solid, your customers are thrilled, you have unique capabilities, you’ve articulated your value and messaging.  This is your case to your prospect.

But let’s look at it from their perspective: why would they buy from you?

Because they see in you a path to something better.  They trust in you, your company, and your products to help them achieve their goals, to realize their vision.  They see that you understand their problems and have the insight to help them solve their problems.  You are an expert, available to consult with them.

As you review your discovery notes and look at your solutions, as you  prepare your demonstration systems and fine-tune your positioning and value, be sure to pause and ask yourself the all-important question:

Why would they buy from you?

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