Tag Archives: Meetings

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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Jul 23 2012
Learning, Presentations

Do we really need 10,000 hours?

Malcom Gladwell makes the case for a ten thousand hour path to expertise in his book Outliers.

Simple math tells me, with forty hour weeks, fifty weeks a year, you’ll reach that plateau in five years.

We’re in Pre-Sales.  We haven’t got five years.  We’ve got until the demo date, likely set by the sales rep.*

What can we do with one hundred hours?  Invest it wisely.  Now go!

*With an eye towards return-flight scheduling convenience.

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May 24 2012
Leadership, Presentations, Professionalism, Selling

That’s his Prerogative

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.

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May 01 2012
Creativity, Humor, Positioning

Give them Something to Grab Onto

Nothing works like an analogy to help an audience come to a shared understanding.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in initial qualifications, discovery meetings, or final solution presentations.  When you can effectively characterize their situation, their systems, or their goals, an engaged customer will grab onto the characterization and start using it, changing it, adding on to it.  They’ll use it to explain to their peers who didn’t make the meeting.  It will become the water-cooler joke.  They’ll name the project after it.  They’ll remember it when you visit them two years later.

In a recent discovery meeting, we came to the realization with the customer that they “just wanted to replace the old van,” and nothing more.  What do you think the demo theme is going to look like?

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Apr 17 2012
Presentations

Consider the Comfort of your Passengers

When I was first learning to drive, my mother advised me to consider the comfort of my passengers as I sped up, slowed down, and took the corners.

The same applies to presentations and software demonstrations:

  • “Can everyone hear me okay?”
  • If online, “I want to make sure I’m sharing my computer full screen.”
  • Set your screen resolutions low, which might seem odd in a world of huge monitors, hi-definition projectors, and wall-sized screens, but your product has to look big, bold, and simple.  Showing all fifty fields doesn’t gain you any credibility.
  • Pay special attention to your mouse, moving it slowly and with purpose.  Drag it in a straight line,  very slowly circling key areas you want to highlight.  Take your hands off of it if the pointer has nothing to do.  Don’t talk with your mouse the same way you talk with your hands.  No shakes, no jumps, no bruises.

No-one should spill their coffee when you’re behind the wheel.  They’re out for a scenic drive, so be their chauffeur through your solutions.

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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 21 2012
2 Comments
Leadership, Positioning, Presentations

They don’t remember the details

They remember their impression of the details.

They remember your analogies.

They remember that you understood their vision.*

They remember you.

You.

*If a leader in the room has a vision you can articulate, it almost doesn’t matter what your product can do.  When you can help someone achieve their vision, you’re the most valuable person in the room.

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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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Jan 12 2012
Humor, Presentations

Conversations

I punched the hotel into TomTom and pointed the nose of my aging Audi towards the end of the driveway and towards, in fact, just the beginning of our shared 365-mile journey.  Jane, the voice of TomTom, prepared and thought and planned and warned me as best she could, usually a half-mile in advance, of intersections and of their imminence given my current pace, and she advised me and suggested when to turn right and when to turn left and of when the highway would split ahead and even of which lanes it would be best for me to stay in.  Together, Miss Jane and I made our way south from my home in Maine, the remoteness of which many consider to represent, and speak volumes about, me (and I cannot disagree with them). Heading downwest, we crossed the Piscataqua River Bridge and in turn traversed the No-Man’s-Land of Interstate 95 in New Hampshire that is evermore, for me, in addition to a convenient pair of state-subsidized liquor stores, a protective barrier from civilization (as its inhabitants refer to it) and a place to visit and a place to return from as best I might and as soon as I may.  West, south, into the dark we went, over turnpike and Berkshire, through hamlet and along parkway, and even across major bays on tolled bridges to reach eventually our hotel.*

I had a customer to see the next day. Continue reading →

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