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 13 2012
1 Comment
Tools

W(h)ither email?

The world of communications has been undergoing drastic changes in the last decade.

Instant messages.  Tweets.  Direct Messages.  Notifications.  Postings on your wall*. Texts. Comments.

Diggs. Pins.  Pluses. Reddits. Likes. Recommends. such del,icio.us.ness.

But with us still is the lowly Inbox, bastion and lord-fatherer of direct messaging and spam, the catch-all and ever-over-flowing message box for all these new social services.  “Do this, have you seen, where are you, how are you, can you get back to me, internal only, high priority, end of day, please join the call we’ve started without you.”

All our devices bend over backward to serve this lowest common denominator. If you need me, the Inbox is the place to find me.  It really hasn’t changed much in the last decade. To, CC, BCC. Re, Fwd. Reply. Reply all.  Grandma gets it and the eight year old can leverage it.

Why hasn’t email changed?  Is it atomic? Can it go away?  It’s Pavlov’s Bell, calling us to nibble our way through the day.  It’s the central communications of the business user; the Knowledge Base, address-book, file system and calendar; the bane of IT and the one toolset users truly learn in depth.  Well, that and Excel.

Whither email? Here today, tomorrow and next week.  Wither? Never.

*Honestly, I tried Facebook for fifteen minutes and found it incomprehensible. But in those fifteen minutes I did receive friend invites from acquaintances of acquaintances and, well, my time is better used than that.

Mar 13 2012
Humor, Learning

Drummers Wanted

The “Rock Band” video game can actually teach you to drum. It gives you a real-world challenge and you have to apply real drumming techniques to succeed.  With repetition, your skills increase and you learn to play the drums.

Conversely,  “Rock Band” cannot teach you how to play guitar.  It gives you watered down challenges and you can get away with a simplified technique.  It’s superficial.

In the world of Pre-Sales, winning and losing- competing – helps you develop an in-depth understanding of business over time.  Simulations, dry runs, online classes and certifications… lead nowhere.  Or worse, to a career in marketing.

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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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Mar 12 2012
Leadership

“Good luck with that”

Have you ever shared a dream or a goal with someone to have them respond, “good luck with that?”

What fatalism. How cynical.

Prove them wrong.

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Mar 09 2012
Presentations

Today’s Specials…

Hi my name is Karen welcome to Anthony’s for today’s-specials we have a caramelized-pear salad with fresh strawberries with brown butter caramelized pears roasted sweet potatoes fresh sliced strawberries and goat cheese drizzled with a raspberry vinaigrette we also have broccoli-rabe and grilled Italian sausage sauteed with garlic and olive oil topped with grilled Italian sausage and fresh mozzarella with shaved romano cheese can I get you a drink?

Slow down.

When a waiter rips through the specials of the day that quickly you can’t follow them. They know the specials list well; they’ve memorized it, have tried them.  A professional wait-staff will even have their own set of notes about each dish.

But ripping through them as if preparing the cabin for takeoff doesn’t help the audience understand them. You’re probably still trying to figure out what a caramelized pear is never mind the sum of the salad’s parts.

When you’re presenting systems and features, slow your pace, add some emphasis, give each thing you mention a purpose, pause, let it soak in, and then move onto the next one.

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Mar 02 2012
Leadership, Presentations, Tools, Uncategorized

Please speak into the microphone

At a seminar this week, in a conference room crammed with thirty of my ‘Type A’ peers, a presenter stood up and said “I’m not going to use the microphone, can everyone hear me okay?”

He encountered an immediate and emphatic chorus of “no!”s, relented, and used the microphone.  The presentation continued without incident and everyone understood him.

There’s a kickoff meeting for the sports teams at my local high school every athletic season.  The gym is filled with parents and athletes and without fail, the Athletic Director stands up for his presentation and says, “I’m not going to use the microphone, can everyone hear me okay?”

The audience fails to respond* and he continues without the microphone.  The presentation continues without incident, nobody understands him, and everyone’s time is wasted.

Who’s to blame?

*Except me. When I say “No” those near me turned around to hammer down the nail that stuck up.

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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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