The Sales Engineer

Every day there is a natural inclination for each of us to spend an inordinate time on email. We understand from experience that each client can read a lot into the emails they receive from you. Our tendency, then, is to make sure our communication is clear, accurate, and, well, pretty…

The trap is that it becomes easy to get locked in a sea of revisions instead of spending time on more productive activities. So in order to get better results in less time you have to focus on one underlying principal:

Eliminate redundancy.

A really easy (but rarely used) tool is email templates. When I first got turned on to this trick, I had it in my mind that email templates were for cold calls, marketing blasts and the like. But when I sat down and thought about all the emails I send, I realized there was far more redundancy than meets the eye.

Consider:

• Meeting invites, follow up notes, action item assignments
• Technical qualification emails sent to audience members before a presentation
• Product or industry news/updates you may send to a group of your customers
• Debrief emails to your extended sales team (even more beneficial if there are standard fields or data needed for your sales process/CRM)
• Reminders of logistics for presentations, demos, etc.
• Prep requests for on-site evaluations

If you’ve ever shown up on-site and wished you had a piece of information beforehand, simply think about what standard process you could use to make sure you captured it every time before you would need it.

Automate Process

For example, imagine there are 10 prerequisite pieces of data that you need to install your product in a lab. It’s easy to assume that the customer will have the needed data, but we know that is not always the case. Why not craft the ideal email you’d like to send to a prospect beforehand and save it for reuse (more on this in a minute).

Let’s take this a step further now and imagine that if you only ever had to craft this email once, how much time could you spend making sure it was absolutely perfect. A lot more than when you need to do it every time, certainly. Thus, templates are a dirt simple way to save time and is a great opportunity to perfect the style of your communications.

Creating Templates

Templates are available in every desktop email client I am aware of (even GMail too). Since 80% of us seem to be on Outlook I’ll start there.

1. Craft the ideal message including any/all fields that might be reusable (CC, Subject, etc). Keep in mind that because you’re doing this once you can afford to get a little fancier with tables, shading, and fonts. There are also a plethora of free, pre-built templates on Office Online and various productivity websites
2. Once you’ve filled out as much as you can for a generic email, go Save As > Outlook Template. You’ll likely have to scroll down to see the Template option
3. It will be saved as an .oft file. I recommend you create a folder for them off your desktop or start menu so you can get to them in a hurry. Name it something logical since you may end up with a dozen of these or more.

The Perfect PoC

Once you’ve got the idea down, step back through your last few proof of concepts. You can start with reviewing past emails, but you will likely find there are new possibilities to automate or improve some aspects of communication you didn’t consider before. Systematically apply the approach to all of your email interactions and refine your templates over time as you start to use them and figure out what’s missing.

The next time you run a PoC, it may not be perfect, but you’re email communication certainly will be…

[EDIT: By request, I uploaded a generic template I've gotten a lot of milage from. Get it here.]

Filed under: Productivity, Soft Skills, Time Management | Comments Off

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.

Filed under: Productivity | Comments Off

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