Tag Archives: Professionalism

May 03 2017
Leadership, Learning, Selling

A Sales Rep, an Industry Expert, and a Presales Engineer walk into a bar

Without a customer.

Actually, it was a business room in corporate headquarters.  They talked shop.  They shared notes on the different accounts they were working and strategies they were undertaking.  Conversation went a million different directions, digging into this, digging into that, ranging far and wide with just a little bit of gossip.

They came out of the room with fresh insights on approaches high level and low, industry trends, competition, what the solutions could and couldn’t do, and overall enhanced their collective go to market.

It took two hours.

Talk shop once in a while.

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Mar 29 2016
Humor, Presentations, Selling, Solutions, Uncategorized

Eventually…

If you stay in the game long enough, you’ll find yourself visiting the same customer in the same meeting rooms multiple times in a sales cycle.

If you stick around longer, you’ll find yourself visiting the same customer in the same meeting rooms in a different sales cycle with a different sales team.

When you’re a grizzled veteran, you’ll find yourself visiting the same customer in the same meeting rooms, but with different customer contacts and a different sales team.

Eventually…

You’ll find yourself visiting the same customer in the same meeting rooms, but this time you’ll be with a different vendor, selling the replacement to the solution you sold them a decade ago when the world was young and a quart of milk was still a quarter.

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Sep 04 2015
Presentations, Selling, Uncategorized

Let the Customer Open

Surely in your qualification and discovery conversations* you’ve covered the basic purpose of your planned meeting: who will be in the audience, what their expectations are, and an agreed upon agenda.

But when it comes to the meeting itself, have your host open the meeting and lay these details out for agreement.  In this way, the meeting is by the customer, for the customer, and about the customer, rather than by, for, and about you and your products and services.  If there’s disagreement or there are political struggles going on, the audience members can resolve these things themselves without you having to defend.

The stage is now set on their terms. Your presence is to help them in their decision-making processes.

Now you can begin to share why you’re there to show, how you’re going to do that, and what you want them to take away.**

*No, “just give them the standard overview” is not a qualified discovery
** Which is, by the way, a fantastic three step introduction framework.  Quick, to the point.  On with the show!
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Sep 04 2015
Humor, Positioning, Presentations, Selling, Technology

Complete, Fully Integrated, End to End

I once had a humorous poster listing Murphy’s Laws on Technology, which included this shrewd observation:

Any given program, while running, is obsolete

…because everything can be improved.  You’re never done.  There’s always something that could be added or taken away; another angle, a new technology, a change in the market that will render your solution, well, obsolete, even if it’s fresh into customer beta.

Claiming a solution to be complete, fully integrated, and end to end is an unnecessary and lazy sales tactic.  Any skeptic in your audience will perk up and start challenging you.

  • It’s clearly not complete.  There’s always something more that customization or competitive solutions can do. But maybe it fits their needs now with room to grow?
  • Fully integrated implies that two systems are as one.  And they aren’t.  They’re two systems brought together through integration technologies and choices.   That the integration is packaged, configurable, and supported is the value.
  • End to end applies to use cases and transactional data in a business process.  What your customer cares about is their use-cases and their business process.  Talk specifically about how your solution handles those from end to end.
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Apr 15 2015
Solutions

Talk show host

Consider* the on-the-spot analysis offered by radio talk show hosts.  A favorite of mine is Dave Ramsey:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/h-XA4Fqtah8]

From the listener comes a story and situation, and a desire for guidance.  From the talk show host we get exploration, analysis, alignment, and a prescription.

What is the nature of the advice?  It’s directional and decisive; it’s based on the host’s years of experience…  It is correct.  It’s not in depth.  It doesn’t go into details.

We in pre-sales are often the radio host.  We take calls and provide analysis to help qualify, problem solve, and position in opportunities, we ask exploratory questions and align in discovery, and we provide directional and decisive prescriptions based on our years of experience.  We often do all of this in one short conversation; shorter than a call on a radio talk show.

We are correct.

 *Listen to how they handle personality types, key and extraneous information, and how they sum up then communicate their opinions.
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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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May 30 2012
Creativity, Presentations, Selling, Solutions, Tools

Circles and Lines

“What will you be demonstrating in the booth at the customer conference?”

Well, how can you know?  Who is going to walk up?  What will their needs be?

And so, before demonstrating generic solutions to generic problems, engage in discussions about their business, their challenges, their needs.

Between the two of you, on a blank sheet of paper, draw circles and lines expressing a conceptual solution with the myriad players and processes involved.  Then  demonstrate specific solutions to their problems, hitting the points meaningful to them.

In the past you could tear off the sheet and hand it to the patron as a keepsake but these days they’ll just snap a picture with their phone and walk on.  

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