Sales Presentation Tips for SEs

Tips for Sales Presentations include organizing a common theme and storytelling...For example, if you are selling software, and you compete against the same competitors day in and day out...Please dont tell me that you are using only the standard corporate ppt deck... Prosepcts HATE feeling like they are the 87th person this week that you have presented the same deck to... So, it is time to mix it up,  how about personalizing the deck, apply a common them across their 4 Key Business Requirements or pains that they are trying to solve.
They will appreciate the effort that you put into it, and the effort to understand and solve their pains.

Simplify your powerpoint deck, sales presentations are either to dry because they are the same old thing, or they are way too long...Simplify the messaging, use concise visuals for your target audience, and practice your delivery and your conversion ratio will go up.   Great good images from a variety of sources, such as istockphoto.com, dearmstime.com, shutterstock.com, imageafter.com to name a few... Also, a great book that describes creating more effective sales presentations is Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Good luck!

Improve Your Sales Demos

Looking to Improve Your Sales Demos?? Effective sales demonstrations are one of the most important pieces to progressing your opportunity forward in the sales cycle.  Software vendors who already have an in-house demo environment for their Sales Engineers may feel that they have all of the bases covered.... Wait, you may also want to consider that you software solution may be a point solution in the grande scale of all of the business applications required by an organization.  In economic times that are much more difficult to sell in,  it is even that much more important to show off much more compelling demos.   SO..... a great hosted service for companies looking to demonstrate their software solution integrating to other systems is Skytap.

Skytap offers web based access to vmware images and data centers so that your Sales Engineers can book configure a custom environment for their demonstrations.  Take a look at your Sales Engineering organization and spend some time looking at Skytap to help improve your sales demos!

Mastering Technical Sales - Sales Engineer Guidebook

Learning about Mastering Technical Sales? If yes, then this book is a must read!!! Mastering Technical Sales by John Care and Aron Bohlig covers the full spectrum of what Sales Engineers need to know in order to be successful in their technical deals. It starts by covering fundamental concepts around:

-Qualifying Leads
-Determining Go/No Go strategies for RFPs
-Needs Analysis Tactics
-Delivering the Perfect Pitch
-How to Avoid 'Dash to Demo'
-Remote Demonstration Tips
-Objection Handling
-Branding
-Channel Selling with Partners
-Hiring SE Talent
-Time Management & Metrics

This book is a must-have in any Sales Engineer or SE Managers collection!!!

Sales Engineers and Researching

When researching your prospect and trying to figure out what they do, which industry they are in, who is their competition, researching their financials etc...etc...etc...I usually need to open up a bunch of browser windows/tabs and I am constantly switching between one another. So here is a good site that helps out the multi-tasker in all SEs. Check out: http://www.googlegooglegooglegoogle.com/
It will allow you to perform multiple searches and see the results all in one window.

Sample Test Data for Sales Engineers

Gathering sample test data for SEs has been difficult as there is not much sample test data available out on the internet for your specific prospect within a certain industry without significant costs or timely manual data manipulation involved. In performing some research, I have come across a great product (SAAS based also) that may help Sales Engineers build out a more realistic dataset for a demonstration by extracting selective prospect information that can be used in building out a realistic dataset for a delivering a prospect's solution demo. So, you are probably wondering, what type of tool is this, since it will significantly cut down my demo prep time and improve the quality of my demo solution, and thus increase my conversion ratio...which means more $$$ in your pocket...

SO, here it is...Check out a product called Mozenda (http://www.mozenda.com/), it allows you to call a website and then run an agent against a category page parsing out relavant details as well as drilling into individual item pages to parse out key attributes such as title, description, price etc...

It is a great tool for building out item/SKU lists that can be easily exported out into standard formats, such as .csv. Great tool! Give it a shot as they have a free 14 day trial.

* Remember, always check with the prospect first to confirm it is ok to use extract sample data from their website for your demonstration and respect appropriate copyright laws..Good Luck!

Sales Engineer Selling Skills

Many Sales Engineers feel that their responsibility is to only cover off the functional/technical requirements for a prospect's solution. True, but the buck does not stop here, it is important for Sales Engineers to also work on their sales skillset as well. Some of the best Sales Engineers that I have worked with are not the most technical in nature, but they can really spin challenging prospects questions or traps into 'non-No' answers. Tactics like pausing, paraphrasing, probing, spinning all are good strategies that need to be practiced by Sales Engineers to address difficult questions. We have even assembled a list of difficult questions that SEs need to learn to master. Often Sales Engineers maybe presenting/demo'ing 80%-90% of the time during a presentation, that means that the actual sales rep is only 'selling' approximately 10% of time, so have your SEs working prepping their demos and their selling skills

SEs and References

Many Sales Engineers believe references are the responsibility of the sales rep, so having a variety of reference stories is considering overkill by many sales engineers... I disagree, it is extremely important to be able to tell a RELEVANT reference story to your prospect.

You should have your success stories segmented by: 1) Industry/Vertical 2) Functionality/Scope 3) Company Size 4) Geographic Location and 5) Competitive Wins. I have seen savvy prospect in the prospect specifically ask for a reference during a demo, it was something to the effect of "Who else is using your software in our industry segment, will an employee count equal to or larger than use within 100 miles of our headquarters?" And of course, the questions was directed to the Sales Engineer...Ugh!...What a great way to kill a good demo, ah yes, and turn on the music as the Sales Engineer begins to dance to the Reference Dance Shuffle. Spend a few minutes, learning your competitive wins/success stories and you will see your conversion ratios increase!!!!

SEs - Video Tape Your Dry Runs

All Sales Engineers every 3 to 6 months should always go under the microscope, for a self-humbling experience of being video taped during a dry run of their demonstration. I know...I know...Everyone is thinking, I have been doing this for the last 15 years, I know it all, why should I tape myself when I already know it all and have done it all. Seasoned Sales Engineers sometimes form bad habits, often unknown to them, which may hind a deal in the future. It was not until I saw myself demo'ing on video earlier on in my career, that I realized how often I would finish my prospects questions without letting them finish their train of thought...Video has no hidden agendas, so it always provides you with a different perspective and always you to fine tune small imperfections in your game.
Remember, Sales Engineers are a unique breed, many are often defensive about there skills being critiqued by others , so this is an easy way for an IMPARTIAL assessment on your demo delivery. Remember, it will only help you in the long run and the pocketbook!!!

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!!!

A Sales Engineer's Pre-Game Warm Up

It is amazing how often you can increase your demo close ratio, by increasing your prep. Often veteran Sales Engineers have the mindset that they are being able to jump into a deal on a moments notice, and then expect to knock it out of the park without much prep each and every time…Although this is often a gut reaction of senior SEs, it is important to always revert back to the number one principle of doing as much up-front prep as possible. Every Sales Engineer has there own pre-game checklist - or at least the good ones do ;) So, here is my abbreviated checklist:

-Collect all the Key Business Requirements/Key Business Drivers
-Understand business/technical pains and the results/consequences of these pains
-Visually map out your prospects current environment and to-be environments
-Confirm the audience for the demo, their roles, pains, level of influence etc…
-Personalize the dataset that you are going to use against your competition...Get test data, get verticalized sample data, edit your SQL statements, grab some test data off your prospects website directly...

I know…create test data?!?...I don’t have time for that! I hear you, but sometimes that will be the difference of the unique wow factor for your prospects. Remember, the SE at your competition might be creating test data for their solution, and that might be the difference whether or not you get the business…A great saying we had at a previous SE shop was, “See your business in our software…”, not sure who to quote for coming up with that one, but it was great nonetheless.

Ok…Back to the list...

-Confirm your plan of attack and demo flows with your Sales Rep/AM/AE
-Confirm your agenda and timeframes with your prospect/coach/partner/consultant
-Setup effective traps with your rep ahead of time (Avoid the 'off-the-cuff stuff'...)
-Dry-run your presentation/demo internally and/or with your coach at the prospect

Remember, just like a champion fighter, the battle/demo is almost always won or lost based on the training/demo prep one does ahead of time... So don't forget to 'hit the gym' before your next demo!