Tag Archives: Learning

Nov 19 2014
Creativity, Leadership, Positioning, Presentations, Selling

Your Competition is out there

On YouTube, actually.

While your engagements will keep you busy discovering, preparing, presenting, and following up, it’s a good practice to check out your competition once in a while.

Watch their demos.  Take notes.  Observe what they say versus what they show.  They reveal an awful lot about themselves in a few short minutes.*  See if you can duplicate their use cases with your solutions.

Your customers are watching these demos too**, so you’d better be familiar with the expectations they’ll have of you.  These demos are the table-stakes in the game.  The better ones will set the competitive bar.  Match the competition’s bid, raise ’em, and call.

You should be knowledgeable enough of your competition to do a better job positioning their solutions than they would.

Because you’re the best.

*Or longer.  Customer conference keynotes, training classes, customer stories, future visions, press releases, and more are available to you within a few clicks.
** When your prospective customer searches for videos about your solution, what will they find?
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Jun 04 2012
Positioning, Presentations, Selling

Micro to Macro

In any system, there’s an infinite range of detail to be explored and understood, from the micro details of individuals screens, fields, and usability quirks to the macro concepts of departmental functions, business processes and strategic initiatives.

Our challenge is to set the depth of focus that best communicates to our audience.   We need to meet them where they are and provide painless navigation down into the details.   We need to pull them out of the weeds and sum those details back into high level value.

It might take a moment to find that focus for an audience, but it’s imperative they come away with what they need.  So adjust your zoom until they can see clearly.

It’s not about what you want to say, it’s about what they need to hear.

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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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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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