SEs Gathering Non Functional Requirements

So you have your prospect's business process flows captured, test data uploaded, key business drivers documented...So you should be ready to go into demo prep phase, RIGHT?...Well, almost...don't forget asking your prospect about the non-functional side of the business. Most software Sales Engineers know that we should be asking all of the 'ability' questions, but often we forget, and sometimes these areas tie back tighter to the executive's key business requirements.

You know the ones I am talking about, like: availability, scalability, reliability, security, etc...

Knowing your companies strengthens in these areas can allow you to plant effective traps for your competition, even if they have a stronger point-solution than yours!!! The SE who you are competiting with at the well-known competitor will probably forget to do so. Give it a shot!!!

SEs Leaving Competitive Traps

It is truly amazing that most Sales Engineers know their competition's product stack inside and outside, backwards and forwards...Why is it then that many senior SEs do not plant effective competitive traps in their deals. They all 'know' they should, but they often forget to do so.....Sure, it takes time to strategically plan out how to set a trap up, work on your delivery of the trap, and then have an appropriate 'call to action' for your prospect to follow-up on that trap. Yet, many SEs get lazy and forget to do so.

BUT, isn't that what you competition is doing to you already?!? Think to yourself, how many times have I had to answer that loaded question of, "How do you compare your solution to vendor x?" Most SEs (the good ones...) can answer this in a heartbeat in their sleep, but too many times discussing competitive landscapes is very reactive, instead of being PROACTIVE.

Here's what I mean, unfortunately many SEs only answer a planted question, and it is ONLY then that they begin their offense on the competition, which truly comes across as mud-slinging the other vendors as it is typically not well planned out and comes across only as a retaliation to the original question...

Being a seasoned Sales Engineer, keep a cool head, and plan your PROACTIVE competitive attacks/traps carefully as you normally do your REACTIVE competitive replies and you too will increase your close ratio!!!

Book Review for Sales Engineers

A great book for Sales Engineers who are demo'ing software solutions is Demonstrating to Win! by Robert Riefstafl

This book will allow any SE to quickly learn differentiating skills to perform a winning demonstration. It highlights the pre-work required prior to the actual demonstration, namely what the book refers to as The Discovery Process... It also discusses 'bridging' a prospect requirements to your software solution, team demonstrating, engaging your prospect, and demo crimes that should be avoided.

Give the book a read and let me know what think!!!

Organizing Data for Sales Engineers 101

As all good Sales Engineers know, we all receive and collect tonnes of useful data....I am talking about prospect requirement docs, screenshots, reports, product management roadmaps, product feature lists, competitive landscapes docs, etc...etc...etc.... The list may actually go on forever ;) The key is to figure out what is the best way to organize all of this data to allow it to be extremely useful when it is needed most. So one of the best tools that is mandatory for all SEs is Google Desktop (http://desktop.google.com). This tool allows you to perform full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, web pages that you've viewed.

It is a great tool that indexes you content accurately. Give it try!!!