The Sales Engineer

We recently completed a survey that showed each SE spending an average of 10% of their time traveling on the job. This is 4-5 hours per week! And some individuals were much higher. The smaller your company, the more likely you are to blow out that number as your territories are bigger.

Given that much down time, how much time do we spend planning to maximize it? After all it’s pretty easy to default back to slipping in a DVD or listening to some tunes. 

Correctly done, plane time can be some of your most productive time even without internet access. Here’s some activities to consider.

1. Review training material – Download podcasts and training videos ahead of time so you can review later. Especially if you’ll be in the car, you may need to convert the format to something you can play over your speakers. Not all tools record in ipod format by default. There are plenty of freeware tools that can help.
2. Fire up the lab – If you’re in the position of selling software, now is your chance to fire up your virtual machine and get some lab time in.
3. Prepare for your meeting – Fine tune your presentation/demo/etc. You can rehearse to yourself, add some speaker notes, go over the key players in your account, plan for objections, etc.
4. Update your CRM – I always found I got through this much easier if there weren’t other things pressing on my schedule. If you’re lucky enough to have an offline client even better. Even jotting down a text list of the weeks activities to copy/paste when you land is a good start.
5. Write up a trip report or case study – If you’ve had a noteworthy customer visit that might be of interest to others, jot it down and share or publish in your company’s KM.
6. Clear the inbox – For me having an empty inbox is a great stress reducer. Try the Outlook 3-step: Reply, file, or delete.
7. Catch up on your feeds/books - I’ve got some excellent suggestions here. If you’re not already using a feedreader for the websites, now is a good time to start collecting some great reading material. Most have offline capabilities.
8. Reassess your goals – You can be as general or specific as you like. Take some time to plan out your quarter with top opps and the like. Try some whitespace analysis, run your accounts through your sales methodology, make some to-call lists, etc.
9. Update your standard deck(s) – This is important if you have a larger portfolio. Take some time to keep all your standard decks updated and fresh. You never want to be stuck off-guard with an interested prospect and a standard corporate deck when s/he asks to see more info on other product.
10. Document your process – Larger SE organizations will provide a lot of standard demo/eval documentation you can use with your customers. Smaller ones may not have gotten that far. Either start documenting your approach (sharing your best practice) or adding back to the collective.
11. Work on your “image” – I’ve talked before about the need to specialize and dominate your niche. Take some time to write that whitepaper, update your blog (or contribute toward others’),  or perform some research in your virtual lab.
12. Clean up that digital rat’s nest – Your laptop is often your most valuable tool. Take some time to keep it “well oiled”. Delete some old files, add some encryption, defrag, reorganize your important files to keep them at close reach, use a registry cleaner, run a deep security/adware sweep, or add that software you’ve been meaning to try.

Sometimes relaxation or other hobby is the best use of your time. When you’re in the mood to get some work done and you find yourself in a lobby or airport without internet access, know that it doesn’t have to be unproductive.

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Every so often an event happens that makes you realize you need to be better organized in a certain area. For me, wasting the better part of a morning dealing with license key headaches prompted some investigation. Since many SEs have to manage a suite of keys for themselves and the products they sell I thought I few pointers relevant.

1 – Gather existing keys
Since almost everyone deals with Windows and Office let me start there. Reader JS pointed me to a great little app called the Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder. It can be used to extract MS license keys from your OS for later reference.

Many products allow you simply to go to Help>License/About/Activation/etc to view your key. For those that don’t, about.com put together a nice reference list of several key finding applications. If you still can’t get a specific key Google may be able to turn up someone who has solved that problem for your product.

2 – Storing keys
Since we’re basically talking about storing paired names (apps and keys) you can work in pretty much any solution to store your keys. I used to have a Google doc I could access from anywhere. You can even buy a special purpose application or freely download a slightly more robust Product Key Manager, though I don’t recommend it.

For the more security-minded, I recommend leveraging your existing password manager. Set up the name of the application and use the password field for you key. This keeps them secure and ensures you don’t need yet another single-purpose app.

3 – Keeping it updated
I sync my password app among multiple computers so I always have it with me when I travel. Depending on how your company manages demo/trial keys, you might be able to set a standard task in your calendar to get a new key set monthly (or whenever it makes sense). That way you never have to worry about showing up to a customer without a key or needing one for a different expiry timeframe, etc.

Filed under: Productivity, Utilities | Comments Off

Part 3 of 3 on Creating Exceptional Relationships with Product Management (part 1) (part 2)

Poor Resource Utilization

You would be hard pressed to find someone that disagreed with the notion that PM should be spending a lot of time with customers. The disconnect I find is that Sales believes those visits should predominately be alongside reps and tied to opportunities. PM believes that most visits should not be tied to specific opportunities.

Because of this inconsistency, you have reps and SEs that get fired up that a PM is never available to visit their customers. Compounding the issue is that many times we do get PM in front of the customer it is either as a crutch (you reached a sales cycle impasse) or as an accelerant (wanting to artificially increase velocity). While there is an exception to every rule, what this creates is very poor resource utilization and it’s very common because PM is technically a “free” resource to Sales (though some companies do in fact use charge backs).

Here is what I recommend.

1. Only request sales assistance on opportunities where direct PM commitment is required to move or expand a high-value (on a company-wide basis) opportunity
2. Do a little leg work to get PM some face time with other, existing customers in the area without your presence and without a specific sales objective.

Not only will PM appreciate your respect for their time, over time they will also respond to you first if you can get them access to customers that can help them with their market research.

Finally, when you get that really esoteric product question, don’t assume it hasn’t been answered and not check the documentation before sending it on to PM. I shake my head when I see SEs email questions to PM that are answered numerous places online. Not only do you ruin your reputation, but that of your peers. What you are basically saying is that you do not value the PM’s time. I can’t think of anything more insulting personally.

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