2008 June | The Sales Engineer

Running an Effective SE Lab

June 27, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

For most of my SE career I have been fortunate to either have enough resources to build out home labs or be close to a local lab facility. With the availability of cheap hardware (craigslist!) and virtual computing there really is no excuse for not being able to have some testing resources available at your disposal. With that in mind I’m going to talk about setting up an effective lab so that you are maximizing the value of time spent using them.

The Shared Office Lab
The shared lab space poses the biggest difficulty for ongoing management. With shared resources comes the need to manage multiple user profiles as most of the time the users do not use the same configuration. To compound the issue shared resources typically lack ownership and are heavily underutilized as the management burden becomes so great people stop finding as much value from them. Here’s a few steps that can keep the environment useful and engaging.

Define the purpose.Like most endeavors, it helps to plan out the desired purpose and capabilities of the lab before getting started. Will customers be present? Will it be used to deliver demos? Is it for staging? Etc…
Assign ownership. Without clear lines of ownership you will usually find that no one steps up to run the lab as it’s difficult to pull yourself away from opportunities for lab work. If it’s an equally shared lab, consider quarterly sentences among the group.
Define process up front. The hardware and image build/teardown process should be clearly defined. Specifically address allowances for the temporary nature of the hardware that can enter and exit the lab.
Automate. Money spent up front on automation of builds and image management presents a huge ROI. Waiting around for manual copy/installation procedures is not a good use of your time.
Document religiously.Anything that goes undocumented or that is not defined will have its process defined ad hoc. Over time these inconsistencies prove frustrating when people enter the lab. I go so far to recommend you treat it like a mini-business.
Enforce policy. Have a published consequence for not following procedure and stick with it. This is an important point for SE managers.
Schedule spot checks.Put a calendar invite in for 30 minutes for the last Friday of each month to go in and do basic housekeeping. Procrastination is a killer.
Invest. Budget quite a bit more money then you think you need. Don’t rely on mismatched equipment unless absolutely necessary. Having non-standard equipment makes it really hard to automate. Spend the money up front to save on huge hassle in the future.
Location is key.If all you get is a closet, are people really going to want to spend any time there? No. Make it as attractive as possible given your resources. Having a good location also makes it possible to work with other SEs on shared tasks.
Virtualize. Leverage virtual machine technology and it can really save you by allowing you to get by with less hardware.

The Home Lab
Having a lab that belongs solely to you has some pros and cons. You usually won’t get the same resources, it costs money (space/utilities/etc), and you have to maintain it yourself which makes it easy to get lazy about its upkeep. On the positive side, you can tailor it to your needs, need less supporting infrastructure, and you can deduct a lot of it on your taxes. Pretty cool stuff. Though you may need to go through most of the above steps (to a lesser degree) to get the most out of the home lab, here are some specific recommendations.

Consider size.That’s what she said! (sorry, Office fan). You’ll usually want to sacrifice computing power and money to save on space. The noise and heat will be a lot lower and you can fit more into a smaller space.
Consolidate.Get a good physical or virtual KVM. It makes the rat nest more manageable too.
Design efficiently.Keep everything in arms length with good KVM design so that you minimize time swicthing between systems.
Organize.Take the time to set up the cables everything else correctly and stay on top of it. It’s easy to let this slide when it’s just you, but eventually your environment gets unwieldy and you stop using it.
Beware of power issues. Your home is a lot less equipped to deal with grid issues than your office (hopefully). Get a good UPS and test it a couple times per year.
Laptops.If you can get away with purchasing a few laptops in place of desktop/server hardware, you may be able to get a small fraction of the footprint without much sacrifice.

Like most things, a lot of these issues can be avoided with simple proactive planning and support from SE management.

There is one other possibility I have not addressed and that is the central lab resource that may be beneficial for larger companies. I’ll address this next.

Filed Under: Lab

The Lab Day

June 19, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

As an SE, I always highly valued my lab days. To me, a lab day was simply a day that was informally spent learning about technology. Though it could take many forms, this most often meant investigating aspects of our products I wasn’t familiar with, getting hands on installation time, and sharing experiences with other SEs. Having done this for many years, I have formulated some tips, tricks, and best practices for getting the most out of this time.

Benefits
The benefits of implementing a regularly scheduled lab day were huge to me. The primary ones included:

Sharpening the saw – …as Dr. Steven Covey would say. Staying current with your products and supporting technology allow you to remain sharp in front of the customer. Credibility takes a hit when you have to say “I’ll have to get back to you on that” for the thirteenth time.
Customer follow up - My rule of thumb is to always answer a customer question within 48 hours. For the more detailed questions that you need to proof out yourself, it ensures the customer doesn’t wait more than a week.
Housecleaning – Use the lab to physically separate yourself from your daily sales routine and tasks to allow you to wrap up weekly loose ends with minimal interruption.

With the benefits clearly in mind, here are some tactical recommendations you can implement to get the most out of this time.

Frequency
Though once a week always worked best for me, make sure you’re getting one day out of the field for research at least once every two weeks. Any longer than that and things start to suffer: Customer questions go unanswered or you can’t provide the depth they need. You’ll find yourself getting dull and having too many follow up questions from meetings.

Scheduling
Mondays or Fridays work best; pick the day that isn’t typically used for team calls and other administrivia. Once you have the day selected, make sure it is marked as out of the office in Outlook. I find that is a stronger indicator than just blocking off the time. Make sure you stick to the date as much as possible as one of the next steps is to encourage others to do the same and this make synchronization easier. Fridays always worked best for me but your mileage may vary.

Communication
The first person you need to involve is your manager. Most enlightened SE managers clearly understand the need, but if they don’t you may need to perform a little justification. You need your manager on board first in case you run into difficulty with your rep(s). In my experience there is a wide variance in the response you can expect. If you clearly can state the benefits from a customer satisfaction and revenue case, most reps won’t take too much issue with it assuming you are performing your job duties well. When you invariably get a new rep I would state this right up front as your method of operation and not leave it to debate. For the few times you run into vehement disagreement, let your manager and the sales manager work it out.

From a scheduling standpoint, my recommendation is to always enforce use of your free/busy status to schedule meetings. This is even so much more important if you support more than one rep. If you get them in this habit for day-to-day meetings, they will learn to respect your time when you book your lab day, which will minimize headaches on both sides.

Involve Your Peers
One of the greatest benefits of having the lab day is being able to get a few of the SEs on the team in the office at the same time. There is a distinct educational element that happens when you get together that is hard to replicate. This is especially true when you support a wide product portfolio and you can’t be an expert on everything. This point is very important for SE managers as well. SEs that are in contact with others in their region tend to exhibit higher performance and higher levels of morale that stem from a sense of teaming.

Set an Agenda
I learned this one from a good friend and colleague of mine. Every time we ever got into the lab he had a distinct picture of what he wanted to accomplish that day. It kept us on track and we seemed to veer of course less frequently. Setting the agenda ahead of time even allowed us to ensure we involved others that may have had an interest in the topic (specialist SEs, services, etc.) or been critical to our success.

Control the Environment
In a related post I will dive into the intricacies of managing an effective lab environment. For now, the SE should be cognisant of a few items.

Keep the environment scalable and modular as hardware tends to come and go frequently.
Have a process where you can reset the environment quickly so you don’t waste time on repetitive tasks.
Leverage virtual machine technology wherever possible. If you have quality laptops you can then take what you create on the road with you to the customer if needed.
Limit access where possible to discourage interruption. Having a room full of SEs is more temptation than some reps can handle.

I would even extend that last bullet to the SE group. Some interruptions are unavoidable, but try to come to an understanding about limiting email and cell phone calls. Having to switch gears frequently, especially inside a group, really dents the usable time in the day.

Recommended Activities
There is a wide range of activities that you can pursue during this time. A few of them really stand out as having a lot of value for me:

Install and tune the product – It’s one thing to memorize technical specs and value props, but having a tactile understanding of the product allows you to make mental connections between features/benefits and customer needs that may not present themselves otherwise. This is especially important for visual learners.
Run through highlighting the features of the product – This is practice for demos and product trials. If you have formal guides that have been created for product walkthroughs, this is your time to absorb and practice and learn (read: make mistakes).
Create your own guides – If this hasn’t already been done for you, plan and document your demos and trials so that you are creating repeatable technical sales process. Sharing this information with your peers will absolutely skyrocket your credibility and will make getting assistance from other SEs and PMs a breeze.
Test customer scenarios – In a small company the SE usually ends up doing some QA work for scenarios that were not tested in the lab. Oftentimes you’ll get questions like “does product x conflict with product y” or “what is the performance hit on this arcane OS or platform”. Since not everything can be tested, and because some of these are gating questions to the sale, this is a great opportunity to provide a better answer than “it should work” or “let’s test during the trial.” Plus, the more time you can demonstrate to a customer that you spent working on the project with their interest in mind, the more compelled they will feel to buy the product.
Explore new segments – For bonus points, try to evaluate the product to see if there are other customers (or divisions within existing customers) that might benefit from your product in some way. How does the product fit in with where you believe the industry to be going? How does it address customer pain points you are hearing? Write up your findings and present them to product management/marketing as whitepapers or additional sales collateral. Not only is that a fast track to promotion, but it’s essential you build your personal network before you ever need it. See Never Eat Alone and Meatball Sundae for more detail as it pertains to relationships and ability to market/sell.

Implementing these recommendations not only should get you an approved lab day, but can hopefully allow you to get the most out of them. 20% time out of the field is a big number. Make it count.

Filed Under: Lab

Reporting Structure

June 17, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

Here’s how it typically goes:

A startup hires a VP of Sales. S/he actively sells to customers until enough growth or funding comes in that a team of reps can be hired. The reps will be expected to be very well versed in the product details. In super technical areas, an initial SE or two may be hired to support the sales staff and perhaps participate in services implementations.

The next level of growth changes dramatically based on several variables.

The two somewhat conflicting goals when considering the reporting structure are:

Checks and balances
Sales alignment

Checks and Balances
In a perfect world, reps and SEs would be ideally compensated on fostering deep, long-term relationships with customers. Because this is usually not the case (they end up being purely quota based), sales engineering has morphed into having a check and balance responsibility on the account. Ask any customer which vendor role has higher credibility, reps or SEs, and SEs will always win out.

If I was a sales manager that would stop me in my tracks. I can’t think of a more dangerous symptom as this effectively means a lack of trust pervades the relationship with the customer. Why most sales organizations accept that as business is usual absolutely confounds me, but that’s a separate topic. Because of more frequent turnover, overt focus on quota, changing account assignments, or similar systemic problems, SEs are often the bedrock of the customer relationship. They are trusted. SEs are put in a position of checking and balancing the rep within the account (i.e. the true guardian of the relationship).

For the record I don’t think that’s right, but I do understand that that’s how it is most of the time. With that in mind, as the sales organization grows, a separate SE management chain is usually in order to prevent the SE getting steamrolled on the account team.

The 2nd aspect of this system is that most reps and sales managers have never been in the SE role. I personally believe that most sales managers could manage SEs quite effectively. There have, however, been enough that couldn’t that it has more or less removed that as an option for all but the small and/or extremely enlightened sales organizations.

I do understand the inherent difficulty. Good SEs can bring extreme clarity to complicated scenarios. If you’ve never been in that position, it’s very easy to not notice the extent of preparation that goes into it. Things like extensive product and industry training, trade shows, lab time, customer presentation or demonstration prep, technical research, etc. can all seem like time spent not selling. Simple is HARD, and it takes time. Time out of the field is still one of the hottest debated issues between sales and SE management today. Having the SE manager as the gatekeeper to taking this time away from the SE, thus, is a necessity to ensure maximum effectiveness.

Alignment
Removing the need of checks and balances, it makes the most sense to get everyone on the same team and as close to the customer as possible. This means that reps and SEs would report to the regional/district sales manager and be tied to specific accounts. If we need the checks and balances what is the next best thing? Optimally you want an SE leader for every line of business that your sales organization is broken down into and reporting to a sales director or higher depending on the size of the company. Putting SE managers reporting into regional/district managers does not create enough separation to implement the gatekeeper role.

Having a central SE organization under the head of sales can also work, though it can introduce some tough political issues. Sales directors will all feel they not getting enough resources, or will be tempted to lay blame for loss of sales on the SE organization (scapegoating).

Breaking SEs up into more than one group can have disadvantages of less pooling of resources or fewer conversations between areas, though this can mostly be solved with the assignment of central person/team that can act as a coordination point. This is especially important in larger companies that can benefit significantly from combined budgets for training, events, lab resources, etc.

If you’ve had superior results with a particular model, I’d love to hear about it.

Filed Under: Management, Roles & Responsibilities, Sales

Knowing to Whom to Listen

June 14, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

I’m fond of saying that one of the biggest determinants of success is knowing to whom to listen. Since the dawn of the printing press information has become more and more ubiquitous in each subsequent generation. Today with the proliferation of the Internet the “problem” has surged 100-fold in under a decade.

This truely is not a problem, but a great gift–though every gift introduces new challenges. The biggest challenge is making sense of the vast quantities of information. It’s no wonder that Google now has a market cap of just under 200 Billion dollars. Helping us find the needle in the haystack is very big business.

On any topic of great interest or consequence you will see countless opinions expressed in the news, blogs, friendly conversations, etc. Your ability to discern truth and wisdom from the great flow of information is, I believe, one of the best indicators of future success in business today. I also don’t believe it is that difficult a skill to master. And it is definitely a learned skill. This challenge of information overload (at least to this degree) is something that we have only had to begin dealing with in the last decade or so. Consequently there is not a lot of emphasis placed yet on the education and training of how to more intelligently process new information.

Critical thinking, and more specifically critical listening is really the parent skill were are talking about. Critical listening is really just about judging what you hear. One of the real gifts about today’s environment is that you have access to hundreds of critical assessments on any given topic. To me that means that we are able to outsource a lot of critical thought to niche experts and opinions we never would have had access to in the past. This brings us back to the original challenge.

As a self-proclaimed armchair economist I love using the economy as an example. It is shocking to me that not once has a majority of economists been able to predict an upcomming recession. Even more amazing was that in in 2001, 95% of the top economists polled by The Economist did not forecast that upcomming recession. 95%. 95%.

I don’t know about you, but I am very interested in meeting that 5%. What I’ve discovered during a lot of contemplation is that it is less difficult than it might appear. I’ve discovered a few shortcuts if you will that have allowed me to steer clear of some bad advice.

Follow the Money
Going back to the 95% example, I don’t really believe that they are all poor economists. Most of the top folks are employed (or heavily influenced) by big companies that rely on growth to survive. What happens over time is this influence either creates pressure to look at data through rose-colored glasses. One other possibility is that people who tend to do that anyway rise to these positions precisely because of that trait.

Whatever the reason, next time you hear an “expert” deliver opinion, remember that that expert is usually being paid by someone for that opinion. I typically flat out ignore opinion offered up by someone who has something to gain from the outcome. Avoid those with an agenda.

Unbiased History
We all have our biases. The trick is to seek out people who let data override them. In the previous example, it’s one thing to listen to someone say the economy is going to tank hard if they always seem to find a reason why we are doomed. But if that same person a few years earlier called for a huge bull market, now that is someone I’m going to lend some credibility towards. When you start evaluating opinion based on this criterion, you will be amazed at just how many people fail this basic test.

Original Research
I find that the most interesting bits of information come from those that embark on self-discovery versus analysis of other’s findings. Self-discovery can come from one’s own research or reflection. It usually comes from an ability to see relationships in sets of data that others do not see. These are the people that challenge our established beliefs and are in the best position to bring us real insight.
So the next time you are making a big decision, ask yourself on what information are you basing it. Look critically at your sources. When you hear expert opinion ask yourself (or find out): Is this person benefiting from this advice? Does this person let data overcome his/her bias? Is this person parroting the same data/opinions as everyone else?

When you find these rare inidividuals that pass these tests, cherish them deeply. They are the mentors you want.

Filed Under: Roles & Responsibilities

The Need for Training

June 10, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

One of the advantages of working for a company highly specialized around one or two products is that it is easier to stay on top of product knowledge. When your portfolio of products grows and begins to touch a lot of other technology is when the issue of training takes center stage.

So how much time should you be spending on training as an SE?

If you ask a rep or sales manager the answer will be astonishingly low. If you ask product managers the answer may be quite high. In reality there are many factors that influence this and will vary from company to company. My criteria include:

How many products are there in the portfolio?
How vertical in nature is the SE position? Does it include implementation and support or is it strictly presales?
How intricate is the technology (desktop apps or ERP for example)?
How many other technologies do the products interact with?
Who is the primary buyer, influencer, etc. in the account? The higher up it goes the less technical the SE needs to be.
How often does the portfolio turn (i.e. new versions released)?

As each of these goes up, the training requirements increase. This is because the SE is increasingly responsible for knowing information that is in flux. That aspect can be part of the allure of being an SE, but without adequate allowance for training it is a huge morale killer. Regardless of the position, people that do not have the necessary tools/information to perform their job feel disempowered and overwhelmed. This makes training a very important consideration for the company and SE manager.

My general rule of thumb is 4-6 hours every week (or 10-15% of a theoretical 40 hour work week). Depending on the answers to the questions above, the slider may move up or down by 5% or so. In a separate post I’ll go into the benefit of scheduling a full lab day every week. Part of that purpose is to allow for necessary training.

So what can each of us do to maximize the value of training?

The Sales Engineer

Know your learning style
Take advantage of down time by always having education resources available on your laptop, Kindle, iPod, etc.
Put yourself in situations to learn from other SEs. No one knows better the key information you need than a fellow SE. The lab day is great for this.
Never rely on others to provide all the training you need to maximize your effectiveness. Don’t be afraid to dive in to product manuals, go through real installs, and test scenarios out for yourself. Good or bad, your ability to learn on your own has to be a skill you hone if you want to be considered one of the best.
Always push yourself to acquire knowledge beyond any narrow confines of your current position. Learn about supporting technologies, business strategy, soft skills, etc.

The Company

Develop and religiously fight for consistent training programs.
Publish everything in multiple formats to support various learning methods.
Subscribe to books online services that allow your folks to go right to the best sources of 3rd party information.
Celebrate learning and ensure all employees have access to the best training possible. A Learning Organization may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.

SE Managers

Zealously support your team’s right to take an adequate amount of time out of the field to focus on training.
Give your team a training allowance and let them go crazy on Amazon or attend seminars.
Encourage your people to seek self improvement beyond the confines of their current job. This can include books but also formal education and certification as well.

I consider myself to be a voracious reader/learner and I can’t say enough good things about the personal value I feel I have received by continually pushing this envelope.

Good luck in your own studies!

Filed Under: Certification, Management, Training

SE Presentation Skills

June 7, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

Fortunately for us today there are a myriad of resources for us as Sales Engineers to improve our presentations and presentation/public speaking ability. Rather than go into a lot of specific tips, I think it is far more valuable to cover a roadmap of resources that I and other SEs I know have used to improve over time.

Learning to Speak Publically
I am fairly soft spoken by nature. I generally prefer to listen and reflect internally versus verbalizing my thoughts. It took me many years of practice before I considered myself well versed. Early in my career I’m pretty sure I wasn’t considered a bad speaker, but I did have to rely heavily on preparation and mastery of content. After studying presentation methodology more throughout the years I learned that it is far more important to master the style and non-verbal aspects of speaking—something I sorely needed to address (and still continually work on today).

I know several people that swear by Toastmasters. In fact, if you’ve had experience with them, drop me an email and I’ll post the responses. My personal route has been through professional presentation skills training. Mandel Communications has a course specifically tailored for sales and sales engineers. I have also attended various courses hosted by communications consultants. The experience of being video taped and judged by your peers is a very difficult one, but in the long run these are by far the most valuable. Trust me, it’s way better to fail (ok, learn =) in front of your peers than your customers. When you have detailed notes from your peers and manager and can study yourself repeatedly, that’s when the real insight happens.

Mastering Speaking Aides
In today’s environment, for us that means PowerPoint and whiteboard. When I first started delivering PowerPoint presentations I did what a lot of people do because I didn’t know any better. I would take the stock 65 slide deck provided by marketing and then go torture my subjects for an hour by going through the endless arrangements of text coupled with cute bits of clip art. If you were one of these people, first, let me apologize.

As I gained experience and comfort with tailoring messages to my customers, my slides got inherently better. I would spend hours crafting what I thought were superior decks. I now know I was still making a great deal of mistakes. I continued down that path until I realized that I was the focus of the talk, not my slides. I consider that one of the major turning points in how I chose to communicate with my customers.

I arrived at a point where I no longer wanted to use PowerPoint. I felt like that was the quickest way to get people disinterested. I don’t blame people either just given how I used to use them. My preference was the whiteboard—to make it interactive.

Today, I no longer deliver many customer presentations—mine are made mainly to internal audiences. I have come full circle and use PowerPoint if I need to, though in far different ways. There are a few resources I can point you to that I try to model. SE or not, if you’re in the position of making presentations in your job, you owe it to yourself to check these out. In somewhat specific order:

Presentation Skills Training
Check out the Mandel training or use Google as your guide to find a local expert. This is expensive but in my mind well worth the price. You can move forward with this while working on your slideware education. ToastMasters may also work well for you and it’s free.

Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson
This book is an excellent resource for learning how to properly convey information so that an audience can remember the contents. It focuses heavily on incorporating stories into your presentations and also has a script and PowerPoint template that can start using immediately.

Presentation Zen
Once you’ve mastered presentation strategy I recommend you read the Presentation Zen book and blog. The author, Garr Reynolds, does an excellent job of breaking down slide construction and teaches you how to maximize effectiveness at the slide level. Combining his slide style within Cliff’s framework provides a very effective foundation from which to build your presentations.

TED
For mastery, it’s a matter of practice and exposing yourself to other presentation styles. TED and YouTube are excellent sources of presentations (though with YouTube you need to already know what you’re looking for). The great thing about reviewing these presentations is that you can learn about other topics while reviewing presentation styles. Though you can really begin this step at any time, you get the most out of it after you’ve been through the other resources. You’ll no doubt recognize good presentations when you see them, though it will be much harder at an early stage to discern why they are good. When you’re ready, I highly recommend Steve Jobs for his excellent use of slideware, Seth Godin for his anecdotal storytelling style, Randy Pausch for emotional connection with the audience and unexpected twists, and Larry Lessig for level of preparation and timing

For the tactically minded, impatient, or ADD afflicted among us, here is Darrin’s top twelve list for delivering technical presentations to customers:

12. Be interesting and do the unexpected
11. Keep slide text to 15-20 words or less.
10. Try and stick to 10-12 slides max.
9. Always use pictures instead of text where possible.
8. Don’t be too serious.
7. Use either professionally done or purposefully shoddy images. Stay away from average and anything 90’s.
6. 20 minutes or less. Anything longer and it’s training.
5. Use anything canned or corporate at your own peril.
4. Leave at least as much time open at the end of the meeting as you spent talking (for Q/A and wrap up).
3. Minimize Q/A during your presentation, otherwise it’s a discussion.
2. Leave the audience wanting more. Never data dump.
1. Present stories, not data.

SE managers can do a lot to help their folks in this department. Minimally you should be funding skill development in this area and also doing ridealongs several times a year in order to provide objective feedback. Investment here can have a huge return over time given how many (and how important) presentations are to the success of the account team.

Filed Under: Presentation

Forecasting for SEs

June 4, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

Depending on your sales organization, you may or may not be heavily involved with the official forecasting process. The most optimal forecast process involves the rep working collaboratively with the SE and any other sales team member (e.g. inside rep) to set the forecast. At the end of the day the reps need to have final say as they are the ones directly responsible for quota attainment. The forecast process should be well defined with as little subjectivity as possible. This leads to a far more amicable relationship with sales management. If this is how it works at your company, I would be impressed, as this seems to be a small minority of sales departments.

To me there are three essential ingredients to a successful forecast:

1) Trust – If the sales team does not trust that they can be open and honest with sales management—or will be penalized in any way for doing so—the data input into the process will reflect it. In other words, we’ll lie.

2) Process – If forecasting in your company is an art and not science, the forecast, in aggregate, will have high variance. Just ask your CEO/CTO or stockholders what they think of variance in financial data.

3) Communication – If the person entering the data does not have a complete picture of the opportunity, the forecast will be made based on false assumptions.

At the sales management level, you will have varying influence on all three. Since this focus in on the SE, let’s spend some time on what we have some control over, which is communication. Since you’ve read this far, I’m hoping you already inherently see the benefit of working with your rep to ensure the forecast is as accurate as possible. I can think of a couple tangible benefits:

- Sales teams that have a high degree of forecasting accuracy are (rightfully) seen as having a better handle on the business. This gets folks higher pay and more promotions.

- Management tends to leave you alone and allow you more leeway in your daily routine and with potentially more perks.

- If you really like your rep, it helps ensure they stay around. If they are seen as senior people, they also may get more influence on account selection.

Sales managers are primarily judged on quota attainment, but that is an incomplete statement. Consider manager A that over the course of 3 years comes in at 70%, 140%, and 90% of forecast versus manager B that comes in at 90%, 92%, and 91%. A averages 100% while B averages 91%.

If I was the VP of Sales, I would prefer manager B other things being equal. Why? I’d sleep better at night. What would scare me with A is that I don’t know if we’re feast or famine. I would be spending a lot of time with A in coaching and micro management sessions. If I had the chance, I would promote B to watch over and help the As.

This example is why you can reap benefits helping your rep be as accurate as they can be. Now, I’m not a fan of blaming problems on the “communication” scapegoat. Far too many things can be loosely tied to poor communication to make it very useful for us. So here are some tactical examples of things we can do improve accuracy.

Sales Process

Use the chosen sales technology/process at your company mercilessly. It’s a huge pain in the ass, but long term, forcing your team to use the established guidelines prods you to use the same diction. It also subconsciously forces you to begin thinking the same way. If everyone is always keeping their eye out for the “technical decision maker,” “key product champion,” “sponsor,” etc. you will find that everyone begins to navigate the sales process in similar fashion. What you are essentially doing is adding more rigid process to the sales cycle which improves forecast accuracy.

Continuous Review

After every meet and greet, presentation, demonstration, etc. spend 5 minutes after the event breaking down the meeting with your rep. Talk about what went right, what went wrong, next steps, and generally work toward making sure what both of you heard from the customer is consistent. If there is ambiguity, address it in your follow up communications with the customer. What you’re doing in creating a habit of having micro dialogues that help keep you in sync. Trying to do this in email after the fact is a sure way of ensuring it never gets looked at. You can reinforce with writing (especially since you’ll want to do it anyway for your sales tool), but get in the habit of doing it in person right after the fact. Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) are fine, just make sure they happen in addition to frequent dialogue

Learn the Process

In most companies forecast reviews are not pleasurable experiences. It involves reps saying the least amount of words possible that allows them to leave the meeting without two black eyes from the sales manager (one is acceptable). Most of the time SEs are not required attendees. Most reps do not even want their SEs present to remove the possibility of providing the sales manager with conflicting data. Even still, you need to go to a few of them. The purpose is nothing more than to become as familiar with the forecasting process as your rep. Even if your reps dislike you for doing it initially, they should at least respect you. This is other side of the coin in terms of the sales process. Common terms, common process, and common experience should equal better and more effective communication.

For the SE Managers out there, it is your job to help your SEs see the benefit of becoming active in the forecast process. It’s not necessarily intuitive even for many senior SEs. Spend some time during your next meeting going over some best practices. Even better, invite a sales manager or director to deliver a talk about the importance of this process from their perspective. Most folks don’t know what happens to the forecast after it goes to the sales manager, so it could be quite an eye-opening experience to see the process end-to-end.

Filed Under: Management, Sales, Terminology