This blog is the first ever dedicated to the pre-sales community. Bond with your fellow SEs, and share your passion as an SE.  Enjoy the blog, and Good SElling!

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Brace yourself.

Prospects are going to cut way back on spending money, but they won’t stop entirely — they never do.  Traditional sales approaches as we know them will falter.  Making a sale will be as difficult as it has ever been in the past 30 years.

In the stiff competition for funding, what can you do as a sales organization to persuade the customer to give top priority for the expenditure for your solution?

Leverage your SEs.

Use your SEs to work with the customer’s technical constituents to dig deep for business pain.  Find lots of pain.  The more pain the better.  As an SE, when the customer explains their business problem to you, don’t take their word on face value.  Dig for more pain.  Good questions are, “What is the impact of this problem on the business / your group / your job?”, “Who else is affected?”, “To what extent?”, “How much?”,  “Why is that?”, “What would be the quantified impact if this problem could be resolved?”

Get numbers from them.  Numbers help the customer visualize the problem and solution.  Numbers help you, as the SE, establish compelling value, which helps you hold price.  The vendor who helps their customer visualize problems and solutions better, will get precedence over those who don’t.  Those vendors who help technical decision makers build a clear quantified business case for funding will more likely get priority for that funding.

Sales and SE Executives:  In this time of stress, rather that trying to squeeze more out of sales reps, consider leveraging the SE’s technical credibility to grow deals, shrink sales cycles, and cleanse funnels.  Leverage their technical credibility to help the customer give top priority to the expenditure for your solution.

Don’t think SEs can impact revenue?  Consider this:  A $2.5 billion dollar hi-tech company has a 2:1 ratio between SEs and sales reps.  That’s right.  Two to one SEs to sales reps.  Years ago the VP told us that they discovered that SEs could generate substantially more revenue than sales reps, so they switched the traditional ratio, and the strategy paid off handsomely.

A Fortune 500 company has a large pre-sales force.  Their normal sales cycle uses SE to drive the entire deal to the extent that sales reps only process orders.  Why?  Because customers prefer working with the “Technical Side of the Sale”.

Leverage your SEs, and brace yourSElf.

The number one request we get for improving the pre-sales role is helping SEs manage their time better. We hear inumerable complaints involving the constant chaos and time crunch SEs find themselves in.

It’s no wonder. For many professional fields, you go to school for formal training. Not so for a Sales Engineer. SEs figure out how to be an SE through on the job trial and error. We then become Senior SEs who are creatures of bad habits without realizing it. With lack of formal training, the SE role is fraught with inefficiency and ineffectiveness.* And so, time becomes our #1 enemy.

Here are some helpful hints for SEs to better manage time:

• Envision the Goal, and Have a Plan: These are tightly intertwined. “In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.” “If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s a lot harder to get there.” In fact, in our program, we teach an engineering technique for defining a least-cost path to achieve a technical decision, and key to that technique is first envisioning the end goal, and then planning from there.  Always ask yourself, “How can I win faster?”
• Just Say No: As an SE, you get demands for time from sales reps, customers, your manager, tech support, engineering, product management, family — all over the place. You cannot possibly keep everybody happy all the time.  Prioritize activities based on revenue potential, customer satisfaction, funnel cleanliness, reclamation of time, etc. When a new demand for your time arises, prioritize it accordingly, and if you have to say “No”, explain your case that you have other higher priorities.  Always ask yourself, “Is this a good use of my time?”
• Know What You Must Know: Some inefficiency is the result of not having all the information necessary to make an informed decision. To save time, filter which deals to work on. What information do you need to prioritize the deals that deserve your time?  As a team, develop a qualification checklist that everybody will use for every deal. The consistency and completeness will go a long way in improving effectiveness and team alignment on prioritizing time and deals.  Always ask yourself, “Do I know what I must know?”

 
Control what you can control.
Get SE specific training through a program like salesengineering.com’s.
This will go a long way toward reducing the continual chaos and lack of time.

* We are aware of two relatively new college programs in the U.S. that now have a Sales Engineering minor — the University of Florida, and the University of Iowa.

It’s happened to us all. The solution we so proudly represent rolled over and died, and left the customer’s mission critical system in ruins. Rome is on fire, tech support dropped the ball, and you have been called in to face the music. How do we recover and save face?

There is a nice structured approach to regaining lost credibility called the 6 A’s.

A 1) Accept Responsibility. The first three steps are very important in conveying empathy to the customer. Empathy is a critical component in establishing credibility, in this case re-establishing credibility. A customer needs to know that you, personally, are leading the charge to resolve their crisis.

A 2) Admit the Problem. Admission goes a long way in conveying empathy. It breaks down any perception of defensive posturing. If we don’t admit the problem, we are at risk of getting caught in a lie. If we do admit the problem and then later find we weren’t at fault, then we are the better for having taken the high road to begin with.

A 3) Apologize For It. A “we’re sorry” also goes a long way in conveying empathy. Right on the heals of falling on our sword we then say, “and we want to make it right.”, which is Step 4.

A 4) Act Quickly. Immediately and mutually create a get well plan. You and the customer must walk through this crisis together – get their “skin in the game”. Define specific goals, dates, and milestones. You will need the customer’s time, resources, and general assistance to resolve the crisis. Set proper expectations, and don’t over promise. Hedge your bets and develop a Plan B and Plan C.

A 5) Amend. Fix it. Execute the plan hand in hand with the customer. Become personally involved in providing the resolution. Become the “project manager” for the resolution. Provide frequent status reports to the customer’s appointed owners.

A 6) Attend. Stay on top of it. Get feedback. Show you care. Follow through to ensure long term satisfaction and success. Mutually define a plan with the customer to prevent such a crisis from occurring again, and define procedures to follow should another crisis occur. Setting these expectations goes a long way toward approaching the next crisis in a more rational manner.

Very often, once the crisis has passed, that customer will become a great reference for you. How great is it when a customer says, “You know, we had our issues, but they were there for us and got us through a rough patch.”

Not long ago, I had a sales manager nearly scream at me, “Establishing value is my job, not the SE’s”. In this posting, I will explain why that sales manager is losing revenue and bonus.

In their “trusted advisor” role, SEs have technical credibility stamped on their forehead. As SEs work with their customer’s technical constituents, they are in a perfect position to uncover additional business problems and statements of quantified pain. Techie-to-techie conversations can yield a wealth of G2 regarding business reality. Suppose SEs asked questions like the following:
“What is driving that requirement?”
“What impact does that have on the business?”
“What affect would that have on you / your group / your company?”
“Why then?”
“What will happen if you don’t do anything?”
“What resource, time, and budgetary constraints are there as I configure this solution?”
“What do you mean by _____ ?”

SEs take their conversation to a whole new level. SEs uncover the business requirements driving the technical requirements. The more pain SEs uncover, the more solution they can apply, and the larger deals grows. The more quantified pain SEs uncover, the larger the business problem to be addressed, then the larger a deal can grow, and the easier it is to hold price.

Relegating SEs to give “feature, function, benefit” presentations and demos does not make the best use of the SE’s abilities. The problem is that benefit is often intangible and difficult for customers to envision, leaving customers often asking themselves, “So What?”.

Note several of the questions above are designed to be answered numerically. Associating numbers with benefit converts benefit statements into value statements. The SE’s presentation of the solution then becomes a more compelling “feature, function, quantified value” discussion.

If the SE is already wowing the audience about features and functions, who better then to “Wow” your customer with powerful quantified value statements. Feature, function, quantified value. Feature, function, quantified value. The solution presentation becomes compelling, easy to visualize, and comes from the most credible and believable person on the sales team.

Leverage the SE’s credibility to sell more effectively, hold price, grow deals, and put more money on your pocket.

There once was a farmer whose daddy, and his daddy, and four more generations of daddies had farmed the same land. Their business grew handsomely over the years.

Now this farmer’s crop was failing. Being proud of his craft, it annoyed him that he couldn’t figure out why, and it pained him to see the crop fail on his watch.

Being a man of the millennium, the farmer Googled and read FarmersWeek.com. And then one day in a strong summer sun it came to him. “I know”, said the farmer, “I need to get the SheepBell-FarmForce weed removing, plant pruning, fertilizing, insecticiding, ethanol burning, satellite dish GPS tractor with an optional iPod connector”.

The sales rep paid a visit to the farmer, who gladly did a dazzling demo, and the farmer was in awe of the machine. They even let the farmer use the machine for a few days. The monthly leasing terms were the icing on the cake.

The farmer bought the new machine, reconfigured the dashboard to his liking, and taught his children how to use it. Now the children weren’t too crazy about the new machine. After all, in the past daddy had bought other machines that came and went. The children felt like they were already working hard and producing as much as possible. So they put up with it and did as their daddy asked.

The farmer was pleased. The machine performed exactly to spec, the report display had lots of cool colors, and the iPod sounded great. His neighbors were envious. He was the talk of the town. At first anyways.

Alas, time passed and there was no improvement to the crop. “How could this be?” the farmer puzzed, “The machine works beautifully. Why isn’t the crop getting any better?”

Though it pained him, the proud farmer called in the local agriculture expert as a last resort - After all, the farmer’s family had been farming the same land the same way for 150 years, what could a so-called “expert” tell him that he didn’t already know?

The expert listened intently to the farmer’s problem and was impressed with the farmer’s history and knowledge of farming. After assessing the situation, the expert explained that the farmer could leverage his proven farming approaches while updating some of his farming process techniques. Said the expert, “If you update your irrigation, fertilization, and crop rotation techniques, then you can still salvage your crop this year. You won’t be needing that new fangled machine for now.”

The moral of the story is: Focus on process first, tools second — Not the other way around.

The best CRM/SFA tools in the world are ineffective unless you have a good sales and pre-sales process foundation. Good sales and pre-sales process with mediocre tools are far more effective than great tools with a lousy process.

The hi-tech highway is littered with stories of companies who implemented CRM and SFA tools and failed. They fail largely in part because they do not change the core reason for their problems - Ineffective processes.

Large gains in sales performance are never achieved through tools du jour. Large gains are always achieved through successful sales process change management.

Just ask the farmer.

Now and then, it never hurts to ask ourselves if we are doing the basics, and doing them well. Here are a few reminders of basic SE behaviors.

Be Early. Plan to arrive 10-15 minutes early for customer calls. Give yourself time to walk to the meeting room, get a drink, arrange the room to your liking, etc. And finish early. Don’t eat up all your time with the formal meeting. Finish 10-15 minutes early so there is time for an “after meeting”. The best selling happens during the informal discussions afterwards.

Be Prepared. Know who you are presenting to. Adapt your presentation to the participants, their personality and level of tolerance for risk. Know their business. Adapt your presentation to their business challenges suitable for their job title. Presentations and demos are not “one size fits all”.

Be Pro-active. Don’t sit around waiting for things to happen. Take the initiative to make deals move forward. Contact the customer to get a status. Chase your sales rep. Do what it takes to make technical decisions happen.

Be Salesy. As much as some of us hate it, our job is to sell something. We like to say, “Sell while you teach”. Leverage your technical credibility to explain the quantified value of your solution. Explain how it maximizes the customer’s value and minimizes their risk better than the other alternatives they are considering.

Be Strategic. Get pre-sales strategic skills training. Sharpen your pre-sales skills at least once a year. Use strategic skills to manage your time, get technical decisions faster, grow deals, and improve customer satisfaction. Pre-sales strategic training programs are hard to find, but they are out there.

Be Happy. Are you happy being an SE? Is your time at the whim of your customers and/or sales reps? How is your quality of life? Are you a road warrior, or putting in 80 hour weeks? If your professional life is spiraling out of control, do something about it. It is important to set boundaries (based on strategic training). Don’t be afraid to set priorities for your time. Don’t be afraid to say “No” based on those priorities. People will take advantage of your time and push you until you do say “No”.

With the U.S. Independence Day holiday weekend, it is appropriate to reflect on freedoms from a pre-sales perspective and why these freedoms have a large impact on driving revenue.

1) Freedom of Schedule: The SE’s time is theirs. The SE’s time is not at the whim of their masters: Sales reps, SE managers, or customers. Only the SE has a sense for their priorities in the context of many masters. With proper coaching and training, SEs can determine their priorities based on revenue potential, importance, and urgency — what is best for the business. Failure to respect the SE’s time degrades their satisfaction, which degrades their productivity and quality of life. Attrition becomes a real possibility. The good SEs are the first to go because they are the most marketable. Losing an SE is a blow to the business — It takes over a year to bring new SEs on board and get them productive. Respect your SE’s time.

2) Freedom to Own the Technical Sales Cycle: SEs own acquisition of the Technical Sales Cycle — Not sales reps, and not their managers. Sales reps who micro manage the sales cycle actually elongate the sales cycle. Think about a NASCAR pit crew — The car is not most efficiently serviced by one person giving orders, but rather by a unified team who each know their role in alignment with a common goal. Empower SEs to own all aspects of the technical decision including qualifying technical constituents, resolving their decision criteria through technical tactics, establishing the quantified value of your solution, and acquiring the technical close. Let your SEs go.

3) Freedom to Discover the Truth: Never assume customers are telling sales reps the truth. Like it or not, customers do not trust sales reps — “They want to take my money.” On the other hand, customers trust SEs — “They want to help me”. Leverage this dynamic. The truth is more likely to be more accurate technician-to-SE than it is business-person-to-sales-rep. Empower SEs to leverage their technical credibility “trusted advisor” status to have forthright, frank, and up-front conversations with their technical constituents to get closer to the truth regarding business pain, needs, drivers, decision timeframes, owners, and yes, even budget availability! SEs will provide significant insight into the true dynamics of the opportunity. The discrepancies that they uncover will be highly valuable in determining next steps in the deal. Let your SEs go.

4) Freedom to Drive Revenue: One of the most ironic aspects of being an SE is that most are bonused based on revenue in the door, yet SEs have no control over what that revenue will be — that, of course, is the sales rep’s job. SEs, at the very least, can and should have control over the size of the configured solution. To grow deals, SEs need the ability to discover lots of quantified business pain that they can apply more solution to. Quantifying the pain enables the SE to establish a compelling quantified value argument, which helps the SE hold the sales rep’s price. Since it is the SE who possesses technical credibility, who better to establish value? Feature, function, quantified value. Feature, function, quantified value. The customer sees the SE as a “trusted advisor” and so will be far more likely to believe the SE’s story than the sale rep’s story. Let your SEs go.

Let your SEs go. Empower your SEs to be free to drive your business and grow your revenue. Keeping them on a leash is counter productive and leaves lots of money on the table. The best SE / sales rep relationship is when the sales rep, like Picard to Riker in Star Trek, says, “Make it so #1″.

To turn my attention to more tactical skills, here are 5 tips for giving killer demos.

1) Avoid Feature Blab. Feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature get a drink of water feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature feature. Pace your demo. The customer’s problem, the quantified impact of that problem on the customer’s operations or job, your feature that addresses the problem and its function, the quantified value or business impact your feature provides. Problem, impact, feature, function, value, problem, impact, feature, function, value, etc. Every 5 minutes or so, there is a new “Wow!” statement.

Remember, you are there to persuade them to choose your solution, not play with toys.

2) Use Flow Breakers. Don’t use the PC as a crutch. Get up and use the white board. Get up and move around, be animated. Change media now and then — Bring up a powerpoint, charts, graphs, customer video. Mix it up. Flow breakers help command attention.

3) Q&A. Leave 1/3 of your allotted time for questions. If they give you an hour, plan on 30-40 minutes for the demo, and 20-30 minutes for questions when you are done. The Q&A is when the real selling begins.

4) Get the Customer to Do Your Selling For You. When the time is right, ask your coach or sponsor, “Could you go to the white board and show us how this would apply to your environment?”. What they say will be 10 times more powerful than anything you could say. This works well in a web based demo too — Make them the presenter and have them use a drawing tool. AVOID CANNED DEMOS — When you can, use the customer’s data, and have a laser focus on features that will best benefit THAT customer.

5) Visually Imprint 3 Major Points. Using a white board or a pre-prepared single sheet of paper (that can be passed around the customer organization), write down the 3 major bullet points you want to leave them with. One of these points should be the customer’s quantified business problem and the quantified value your solution will provide them. Writing it down makes a visual imprint on the customer’s brain so it is easier to later recall and remember.

The following actually happened. I kid you not.

In response to the question, “How would you like to improve the behavior of your pre-sales team?”, an EVP of Sales of a multi-billion dollar company actually referred to his SE team as “his sales - - - - - - s”.

Did he really just say that? I couldn’t believe my ears. I don’t think I have ever been so offended in my 25+ year professional career.

As extreme as this opinion is, the fact is that some form of this cultural attitude and stigma lurks in the shadows everywhere we go. As a pre-sales community, we let this happen to ourselves. In many sales organizations we visit, sales reps treat SEs like subservient second class citizens. Do your demo, sit down, and shut up. Reps have no respect for the SE’s time or opinion. And worse, SEs just sit there and take it. SEs have no control and are controlled. In some cases, executives want to reduce SE headcount because they don’t add value. SEs are an expendable expense.

Fortunately, many other sales organizations have a healthier culture. SEs are given a say in what deals they will work on. SEs are deeply respected and their opinion regarding sales strategy is valued. SEs are given control of the technical decision. SEs are an equal partner to the rep, a strategic asset, and a sales weapon. Without SEs, reps would starve.

Recently a sales manager nearly screamed at me that SEs should NEVER talk about the value of the solution, that is the domain of the sales rep. Sigh.

That sales manager will never believe that his SEs could be making him filthy rich. When SEs are empowered to leverage their technical credibility, a value message from an SE is 10 times more powerful than anything a sales rep can say, and that SE will put more money faster in the rep’s pocket.

In a handful of organizations, executives are hiring more SEs than reps because they’ve learned that empowered SEs drive more business than reps. Case studies provide documented proof that one empowered SE can grow incremental revenue $500,000-$1M per year. Let them go. Let them help you make money. As Captain Picard said, “Make it so #1″.

The issue here is the dreaded C word — Control. The more sales reps and execs want to control their SEs, the less value SEs will provide. Through a change management program, SEs can drive more revenue faster and reduce their cost of sales by giving them more control.

For reps and Sales EVPs who demand control of SE resources, that’s a real - - - - - .