Making the Technical Sale

September 26, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

I’m going to be spending the next few weeks reviewing books that explore the role of the SE. Where possible I’m also going to be speaking with the authors to add some additional detail in the reviews.

I decided to begin at the beginning—that is to say I’m choosing to review the eldest of the set first based solely on the merits of that period of time. I will then progress through until we get to the most recent.

Without further ado, let’s begin with Making the Technical Sale by Rick Greenwald and James Milbery. I had the chance to connect with both authors and will be adding some of their comments throughout.

Making the Technical Sale
Paperback: 385 pages
Publisher: Muska & Lipman Publishing; 1 edition (March 1, 2001)
ISBN-10: 0966288998

Background

Back when this book was released in 2001, it was the first to focus specifically on the role of the sales engineer (or sales consultant as they refer to it).In the industry of enterprise software sales, the SE had already formally been around for several years prior (in other industries much longer). Very few SEs that were being hired were existing SEs. The vast majority were domain experts on the IT side brought over to sell the products they used to support. This is to say that you were extremely lucky to be able to shadow an SE that had been around more than 2-3 years.

It was very clear that SEs provided value to the sales process (especially to reps), but most outside of sales would be very hard pressed to explain what it was that SEs did. Despite the obscurity of purpose, SE organizations were expanding en masse leading to a great opportunity for many. This rapid growth created an environment that could benefit significantly from some degree of formalization.

More from James (Jim):
At the time of the writing there was some rumblings in the market (this was during the go-go internet years) that traditional enterprise-software sales reps and sales engineers would no longer be needed. Customers would just “buy software over the Internet”. I believe that we can all agree that this largely turned out to be untrue.

DM: Having come in after spending time at a dot.com myself, I think a lot of folks got ahead of themselves. Sales in general has turned out to very reliable and has a strong, natural roadblock against outsourcing.

Purpose of the Book

Both Rick and Jim had worked their way up through different SE ranks. Through discussions they realized a need existed for some industry structure around the role. The purpose behind the book was to provide a comprehensive training manual for SEs. It focuses on best practice around the main job responsibilities of the SE and benefits from the varied experiences of the authors.

Your World

The first question the book addresses is what an SE does. They make an important statement that I came to on my own terms which emphasizes that “sales” comes before “consultant”. Though a tough lesson for me at first, I am a firm believer in a sales-first mentality. The other important maxim from the chapter is the role of the SE on the sales team. It is an important concept that your sales exec (rep) needs to have final say in opportunity decisions. They are the ones ultimately accountable to the quota. Finally, they cover the basic notions of control of the sales cycle and use of limited resources.

The Sales Process

Here, a good primer on the sales process is provided and is great for those entering or new to the field. I have found, more recently, that most companies of significant size have their own sales methodology and terminology in use, even down to the technical aspects of the sales cycle. I have found most companies to be good enough in the general sales process training arena which includes SE specifics. It’s very important you leverage what is in use at your company.

Technology Life Cycle

Applying a bit of psychology and marketing to the SE role, they hit on a very important concept of linking your company’s dynamics to your own style. Recognizing that each SE has a particular set of strengths, it is important for SEs to match that talent to organizations that can benefit the most. This is better for the company and far better for maximizing the happiness and satisfaction of the SE.

Understanding the Buyer

The concepts of the buying scenarios and roles are explored here. It is important to understand the fundamentals in a generic sense though even if your company uses other terminology. The understanding that different prospects and individuals make purchasing decisions differently needs to underpin all your interactions with your customer.

Working with People

As an SE you spend most of your time working with people. Though there are many books on the general subjects of building trust and creating rapport, Rick and Jim do a nice job of picking out specific attributes that are essential to an SEs nature. The most important takeaways are the benefits of being yourself, never misleading your customer to close a sale, and being up front when you’ve made a mistake.

These aren’t new ideas, but many times I guarantee you will feel enormous pressure to compromise your ethics. Recognizing that values are more important than any short-term reward you may gain is something you always need to remain grounded in.

Feature Benefit Selling

The authors stress the importance of translating your product into tangible benefits for the customer which is so important to your role. And it is also an area I see SEs often come up short. SEs are necessarily passionate about the capabilities of the product and it’s easy to get hung up on what it does versus how the customer can derive benefit from it. The process of Feature, Benefit, Acceptance (FBA) is really a cornerstone of the value an SE can provide and they do an excellent job of walking the reader through the process step by step. I recommend reading this chapter a few times to completely absorb the message.

Mastering the Demo / Effective Demos

The key to their demo message is moving up the pyramid from reciting script to being able to tie together associated customer information to craft a solution-oriented narrative using your product. Because demos are one of the most important duties of the SE, it is critical you master the information in these chapters.

Qualification

There is a lot that goes into qualification, especially since it is usually a complicated dance that happens alongside your rep. The key takeaway from the chapter is that you not eliminate yourself from the sale before your sales team has made the choice to do so. The qualification process is really about your information gathering and not the customers. Though the content is spot on, this is an area where I feel you really learn the nuances of the dance through practice and experience.

Making Effective Sales Presentations

The surprising real benefit from this chapter was on leveraging chalk talks (whiteboard sessions). My best meetings were always these sessions. The ability to be more informal, flexible, and involve the customer provide a setting fare more productive than formal presentation. The housekeeping components are good on both fronts, though presentation has come a long way in the past few years to the point where I would recommend other resources to update the concepts/examples.

Rick stressed the point that some SEs rely too heavily on PowerPoint. And that when you truly understand your product and customer needs you’ll usually be far more effective utilizing more informal presentation methods such as chalk talks. I concur.

Product Evaluations

The key finding is the importance of a formal process agreed upon at the onset of the evaluation. Getting all the requirements on paper from all stakeholders is key to later being able to get sign off on meeting requirements and move the sales cycle forward. Adding this to my SOP was one of the biggest time savers I’ve found.

Handling Objections

This chapter demonstrates another difficult but value-adding opportunity for the SE. Done correctly, minute for minute, this activity can add do more to move a sale forward than any other activity. A real insight by the authors was exploring the different types of objections and recognizing that each needs to handled uniquely. Rick added that he personally views objections as good things; he was more worried when a customer just listened and at the end thanked him for his time.

Responding to RFIs

The biggest take away from the chapter is that it is not always necessary to respond. Reps in my experience are overly eager to respond so it’s a delicate line to walk. To this day it is still one of the biggest time wasters for the sales team given the % return. I have seen industry estimates below a 20% deal close rate.

Working the Competition

Dealing with competitors is an increasing fact of life (rarely did I ever close a significant deal without encountering a competitive situation). The most important part of the chapter which they hit on is to stay focused on the customer. I would take that one step further and say to be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in focus on the customer. In the end, s/he who can best articulate how the product solves the customer’s pain will usually win. To add to this arsenal there are some great tips and common pitfalls to avoid such as never stooping to speak ill of a competitor and to avoid at all costs positioning against a potential weakness that you later come to find is addressed.

Challenging Prospects / Seven Deadly Sins

In speaking with Rick, he put it very succinctly when asked about most common mistakes when he said: “Sales reps want to get the deal. SEs want to be right.” I personally have been guilty of this and it is a great reminder to check our egos at the door when working with a customer.

My Recommendation

For ~$35 dollars on Amazon, this is still a must add to the library for a current or aspiring SE. As I’ve seen, each of the books I’ll cover talk about a lot of the same topics but each has a different writing style, unique insights, and examples which may be more applicable to the reader. Though it’s hard for me at this juncture to say exactly how much I’ve incorporated into my own views because of this book, rereading it for this review I found myself agreeing with all of the fundamental conclusions. It is a mark of good writing that it stays relevant over time. Pick it up, read it a few times, and make a commitment to incorporating what you learn. I can vouch for the success it will bring.

Additional commentary from the authors

On what’s changed in the industry since writing the book:
There are two fundamental differences that have become important in the past 7 years. First, most companies emphasize the “Webex” demo as opposed to on-site demos (and there are a lot more “group” demos via WebEx). It is certainly a cheaper alternative than traveling to a customer site – but you lose so many of the benefits that it is almost a different job altogether. Second, most prospects expect to be able to download a usable copy of the software very early in the sales cycle (with the exception of some large ERP products). It makes it much harder for SEs to control the sales cycle – in fact they are often left out of the sales cycle under this model. (Prospects download a copy of the product, try it, hate it, and “leave” the sales cycle without ever being engaged by an SE). SAAS is only going to exacerbate this problem.

They also mentioned that if the got a chance to do a follow up edition this would become a large focus of the book because of its high degree of importance to SEs today.

On what advice they would have for SEs wanting to enter the field today:
Jim – Pick the right product area (for you) and learn your product (and the competition) very well. Too many SEs ignore the “product lifecycle” roadmap. Demo dollies should not take early-stage technology jobs and vice versa.

Rick – Put a lot of thought into the company you work for and the work that you do. As I’ve been in the business a long time, for me it has become a lot more about learning, growth, and fulfillment than about money and position. Find out what makes you happy and find ways to do more of it.

On the career path of an SE:
The SE job is a GREAT career-enhancing job. Most of my SE friends from the old days have gone on to big jobs elsewhere – CEO, CTO, VP of Marketing, etc.

I agree. I’m continually amazed at how many successful people I meet that had a career take off after being an SE.

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I’d like to thank both Rick and Jim for taking the time to speak with me and for providing some additional insights for our readers.

If you’ve found this review helpful or have suggestions for additional aspects to cover in the future, please drop me a line.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Book Reviews

Creating Fans

September 19, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

This is part 2 of a 2 part post on transforming from a strategy of avoiding burned bridges to creating fans.
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Now that we’ve covered the tactical side of avoiding burned relationships in part 1, let’s take a look at how we as SEs can take it to the next level.

One of the more recent advancements in our culture around performance is the realization that studying and learning from failure is not the way to achieve high performance. It is a focus on high performance itself that is key. For the economists out there, the concept is very similar to that of comparative advantagein trade. One of the best treatments of the subject was done by one of my favorite business authors Marcus Buckingham in his book Now, Discover Your Strengths. I plan to cover this topic in depth in a separate post. All we need to know right now is that simply avoiding the problems in part 1 does not separate you from the rest of the pack.

In order to do that, we need to move from the mindset of not just avoiding common pitfalls, but how do we strengthen relationships and actually create fans out of difficult situations. This is the crux of part 2.

To accomplish this goal, there is a fairly straightforward scaffolding we use to guide our action:

Focus on what you can control
Determine how you want to react to difficult scenarios and events outside your control
Use these decisions to grow your span of control

Focus on what you can control
Many SEs (and people in general) focus on a lot of things they have no (or very little) control over. This includes product direction, marketing strategies, rep pairings, etc. When I was a junior SE I made the constant mistake of putting too much of my time into influencing product direction. What I should have been doing was not focusing on how I could change my surroundings to match my sales situations, but maximizing my effectiveness with my customers given my set of circumstances. Once I realized (with help from a rep or two) that we didn’t have to chase every opportunity, we could instead put the full force of our effort behind opportunities where we had better alignment with the customer. I was less stressful and was able to deliver a level of service to my customers that was unmatched by the competition. This level of focus allowed us to generate more than twice as many customer references than anyone else in our region.

You may also be focusing too much on other people at your company. For example, every once in a while we all get that manager that seems to bring out the worst in you. The manager may even have a critical flaw that lowers his/her level of effectiveness. Rather than focusing on how to avoid them or venting your frustrations to others, you can choose to focus on using your unique strengths to compensate for your manager’s weakness. For example if your manager insists on being involved in every opportunity and constantly asks for reports, account plans, customer data, etc., don’t focus on hiding opportunities to keep them off your back. Instead, focus on providing world class account plans to your manager before being asked. Keep your CRM records updated better than anyone. Provide detailed call records at the end of every day. In other words, be the best communicator on your team. I’ll come back to this example momentarily.

Determine how you want to react to difficult scenarios
What if you have a customer where you know your product would make a fantastic fit and would greatly streamline their operation. All of your attempts to get a hold of a key contact are ignored or returned with “I’m too busy to take on another project right now.” You have a choice to make. You can continue to pound on the customer and request meetings or you can take a different approach. You can put in the time and sacrifice to really empathize with this person to understand his/her plight. You can make a proactive decision to provide more value to this person as an outsider than any of their current vendors. You can research and provide more time-saving recommendations than anyone else, even beyond your product line. I can’t count how many times just giving more effort than the next guy was willing to give got my foot in the door and became the start of good, long-standing relationships.

Moving back to our internal customers, if you get a poor review in a certain area from your manager you have another choice to make. You can flight it, get defensive, and maybe even argue yourself up a notch on your rating. This may make you feel good and you may be thinking you won, but in fact you have lost. Not only will your manager look to more closely to document poor performance (we seem to find what we’re looking for, right?), but you’ve damaged the relationship of your manager and s/he may be less willing to provide you honest feedback. And honest feedback is an essential tool for growth. Rather than fighting criticisms, accept them. Internalize them. Really consider why you are seen this way. Not only will your manager respect you for your professional response, but you can be assured your relationship with them improved and they may be willing to be more open and honest with you.

Use these decisions to grow your span of control
Continuing with our examples, you can use your ability to choose your response to grow your span of control. You can leverage this technique over and over again to build strong references within your account base that you can use to shorten the sales cycle with new customers. Sometimes 2-3 strong local references can negate the need for a customer to perform an evaluation. Talk about leveraging up your game! Not only your customers, but I assure your rep and sales manager will become quite a fan.

You can use this approach with the over-controlling manager. Once you’ve demonstrated that you are the best communicator on the team, you can start speaking with your manager about optimizing the way s/he gets involved in the account planning process with other team members. In this sense you compensating for this weakness and making the team more effective overall. As the feedback your manager receives improves, they should be quite grateful for your efforts, not to mention your teammates.

Finally, you can use this approach directly with other SEs. Rather than see them as your competition, see them as assets. Put in the time to get to know them. When you see an email blast come out with a question, take the time to research it and provide an answer if you don’t know it initially. Offer to share references if your company doesn’t have a system in place. In short, put forth the effort to be an indispensable part of the team. Not only does that help the stock price, it builds your base of contacts so that when you need a favor, people will stop what they’re doing to try to help you.

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So in summary, while the approach seems simple, it is definitely something that you need to practice and continually refine. Results don’t happen overnight but I guarantee you will be amazed at how quickly you notice them. It’s great to avoid the common pitfalls but that just gets you to average. Using this approach is what can help separate you from the pack and take you to a much higher plain of performance.

Filed Under: Career Growth, Soft Skills Tagged With: Career Growth, Soft Skills

Burning Bridges

September 16, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

This is part 1 of a 2 part post on transforming from a strategy of avoiding burned bridges to creating fans.
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Ah the long time adage of never burning bridges. Very simple, yet sometimes very hard to practice. Even more difficult is realizing when this applies.

Most senior SEs recognize that their niche equates to a very small world. True, SEs can move to other business segments and can do so successfully. My anecdotal estimate though, based on research on Linkedin, is that at least 70% of SEs change jobs within a similar technical domain expertise. This means we oftentimes find ourselves working with the same sets of people throughout our careers. Given its importance, we can benefit from an investigation of this topic.

Let’s begin with the tactical implementation. At this point, we are concerned primarily with avoiding common missteps that directly translate into burned bridges. Here are some ways I have personally witnessed folks more or less kill their careers overnight:

Telling them how you really feel – Sending an email to the entire company pointing out the specific faults of every executive in the company the day you quit. (A subsequent policy was added that prevented anyone from sending email company wide).
Sacrificing integrity- Going to work for a competitor and then immediately divulging (non-public) critical competitive information about the inner workings of a product.
HR issues- Committing lewd acts, publicly at a sales event, that ruin your reputation as a moraled and principled person.

This is just a few examples. I’d be lying if I said my colleauges and I never got any cheap laughs at their expense over drinks. On a serious level you can empathize with these scenarios and understand how and why they may have happened. #1 probably felt as though s/he was ignored or opinions didn’t matter. Over time, unvented, this led to a large blow up. #2 was concerned about “proving” him/herself at the new company and caved into social pressure to share the information despite knowing it destroyed trust with others (even those being presented with the data). #3, either feeling pressure to demonstrate alpha male behavior or suffering from a poor relationship at home (plus alcohol), contributed to poor judgment.

With all the potential pitfalls in mind, here are a few strategies I’ve adopted over the years to keep myself from falling into common traps:

Someone is always watching- No matter how small or innocuous the group you are with, always keep in mind that your activities will eventually be outed to another. Which leads to:
There is no such thing as a secret- People love to share juicy details. Even if you trust someone, do not trust someone to keep a secret of events that transpire during corporate off sites and customer events.
Separate your values from social values – This is tough to do unless you’ve thought long and hard about who you want to be and what values you wish to stress. Once accomplished, it is very powerful to rely on your own value system to make decisions versus doing what you think will please others in the short run.
Never communicate when angry – An old email adage but equally important under stressful times with team members and customers. It’s much better to excuse yourself from a conversation than to say something you’ll regret later on.
Understand your limits – If you know yourself and understand your limits, you can devise rules that you can follow to keep you out of trouble spots. This includes diet, exercise, rest, stress management, etc.

If I had to boil it down I would focus on two long standing good pieces of advice I’ve heard over the years: “Behave as if all your loved ones we’re watching you” and “Always speak as though the person you’re speaking about were listening“.

This sets the ground rules for avoiding the major trouble spots. In the follow on post we’re going to cover moving from a more tactical strategy to a longer term and effective one involving creating true fans in the workplace.

Filed Under: Career Growth Tagged With: Career Growth

Is Your Manager Invisible?

September 3, 2008 By Darrin Mourer

Back when I was around 14 or so I signed up to be a volunteer referee for the local soccer league. Having played since I was very young I had been around a lot of referees and I knew a lot about the game so I figured it would be a pretty simple gig. So I signed up and attended the couple week training session for new refs.

When I first got there I knew immediately that I had a lot to learn, not so much about the technicalities of the game but about being a referee. Our instructor had introduced himself briefly and began the discussion with this: “The greatest compliment I ever received about one of our refs was that the coach didn’t even know he was there.”

Being a pretty young guy it took a while for that to sink in. But I still think about that to this day. And I feel it very applicable to management.

I’ve been thinking again about these words over the past few weeks as I heard two independent accounts from associates of mine that felt their manager was more or less invisible. This struck a chord with me as these accounts were decidedly negative.

At first I thought they were referring to job absenteeism, which is to say the managers lack of involvement was causing issues. This was not really the case. The problem was simply that they didn’t understand what their managers were doing to help them on a daily basis.

Implications for SE Managers
Here’s what worries me. I am a big fan of making oneself invisible in several senses. I strive to never allow myself to be the bottleneck in my team’s progress toward goals/opportunities. I also push responsibility down as far as is practical. This is similar to empowerment, but I hate the connotations marketers and seminar gurus have added to it. I also try to take myself out of process chains wherever possible. Sometimes this means removing checkpoints, other times it can be automated. My prevailing management theory is that my team should function just as well in my absence as it does when I’m around. To me this defines invisibility–again, not to be confused with absenteeism. When a manager is plainly absent, it is the polar opposite of being invisible.

Just to show this isn’t a distinction without a difference, let’s use a simple example of approving expense reports. If you submit them and they routinely get approved by your manager the same day and you never have an issue getting them paid, you have a degree of invisibility because once this is a pattern, you cease giving it attention. If, on the other hand, you have to bug your manager to approve them or are always questioned incessantly on your expense items (showing your manager is unaware of the work you are doing), this is plainly not invisibility.

To reconcile these seemingly opposing viewpoints, here are some techniques to overcome this problem:

SEs expect a servant-leader- Gone are the days where people come to work expecting to serve their boss. SEs expect to be treated as a meaningful component of the sales team and enterprise and they expect their manager to support them in their efforts and to remove roadblocks when they inevitably arise. Always ask your people directly how you can help them and give it your highest priority to meet those commitments.
Yes, communication – Don’t be over the top, but do involve your team in crucial decisions and do provide steady (even if informal) updates as to what work you are involved in. This is especially critical for middle and senior management as you are at least 1 level removed from your people. If you even detect a hint of boastfulness, dial it back.
Get directly involved – This can be tricky, but SE management has the ability (and often mandate) to be involved with customers. The balance comes from not appearing to meddle with the work of your team, but to make yourself valuable enough to sales team that you are occasionally brought into deals. Not only does this give you a chance to interact with your people, but you also get the incalculable benefits that come from meeting directly with customers.

Thoughts for SEs
I definitely understand the thought process, but I would get away from the expectation of direct service from your management chain. The only time I personally expect service is when I am patroning a business. When services don’t meet expectations I simply take my business elsewhere. Those at the top of their fields can also get away with the same thing of their employer. This is why (in addition to it just being the right thing to do) I advocate management adopt a servant-leader mentality–I just wouldn’t expect (or worry about) it as an SE. Proactive SEs focus on what they can control, not on what they can’t.

It’s very easy to jump to a conclusion that if I don’t hear about what my manager is doing, they must not be doing much. I just try to keep in mind that if things are running smoothly without much interaction from them, it most likely isn’t because of accidental forces.

Going back to my referee example, it’s very difficult to call a perceived fair game to everyone. You remain invisible by consistently meeting expectations. You rarely remain invisible for long making big mistakes or by not showing up to the game at all…

Filed Under: Management Tagged With: Management