Understand Your Clients’ Motivations – Part 2

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, I created the first part of this two-part series called Understand Your Clients' Motivations - Part 1, on this blog site, Sales Aerobics for Engineers Blog. Part 1 focused on how we all make assumptions about the business development and sales process that we shouldn't be making.

Today, the second part of this two-part series is published as a guest post on the award-winning CivilEngineeringCentral.com Blog. Part 2 focuses on how we never really understand our customers' decision-making process. And it certainly isn't ever made in a straight line.

I invite you to read the second part (and first if you missed it).

Let me know what you think.

Want to know more about how to develop business and have those sales conversations with potential clients - even if you are an engineer / technical professional? My book, Do YOU Mean Business? Technical/Non-Technical Collaboration, Business Development and YOU is coming out Q1. Learn more about it by clicking on the book title, above!

Don't forget to connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook!

Filed Under: Business Development, Collaboration, Customer Focus, Do YOU Mean Business Tagged With: , , ,

Understand Your Clients’ Motivations – Part 1

January 22, 2012 By 2 Comments

Just when we think we understand our clients, they go away. They put our proposal on the back burner. They specify the other vendor’s design. They don’t return our phone calls. They disappear into what my colleague, Jill Konrath, calls the “black hole” of sales.

Where did they go? What did we do to make them go away?

We make some assumptions during the sales process that we shouldn’t. In fact, my rule of thumb is: don’t make any assumptions at all. (That’s also one of the agreements  in  Don Miguel Ruiz’ The Four Agreements).

We assume our clients are in pain.

Therefore, we assume it is up to us, as technical and non-technical sales people, to drag them over their pain points so they come to the unavoidable conclusion to buy our solution. In this global economy, no matter how painful the situation, and how much your customers agree with you, your solution still has to fit into the overall infrastructure of their company, its major strategic pains, its priorities and its finances. Note to yourself: it is never about you, it’s about them. Did you take a 10,000 foot eagle's eye view of the context into which you assume your client is going to be gung-ho to place your solution?

We assume we should be in selling mode because the customer makes an appointment to see us or conference with us.

They simply may have time on their hands. They may have been told by a higher up to “look into this” and are in a due-diligence mode so they can cross one more thing off their internal to-do list. Your willingness to show up and try to relationship build, end up sound like a brochure on legs, or ask for a chance to prepare a proposal is just a bunch of busy work.  Note to yourself: it is never about you, it’s about them.Are you being regarded as a commodity and fodder? Something to think about before making your next appointment to fill your sales quota.

We assume our clients are ready to buy what we want to sell to them.

So we don’t listen to what they try to tell us during our meetings. We are so busy talking about how our product meets their needs and cures their "pain” that we don’t pick up on ways in which we can align our solutions with their real priorities. Or we don’t pick up on the fact that they really aren’t interested in placing a solution at this time. Note to yourself: it is never about you, it’s about them. And customers will avoid going outside for a solution. Customers will first try to fix their “pain points” using internal resources.

We assume our clients are ready to change.

Change means making a decision to move away from the status quo, or the way things are. Change means moving away from the stuff that got your clients where they are today. And it’s easier to make no decision and assume no risk for introducing disruption into the way things are, than to man the helm at the forefront of “change” in their organization. After all, they may think they are comfortable and secure in their current job. Why rock their boat, right? Note to yourself: it is never about you, it’s about them.

There’s an entirely parallel universe involved in understanding your customers’ motivations for placing your solution.

Take the time  to understand the context, algorithm and history of decision-making in your client’s organization before you move forward with a premature effort to sell a solution.

It’s the difference between developing business and selling.  And it doesn’t hinge on assumptions.

 

Filed Under: Business Development, Customer Focus, Sales Tagged With: , ,

Everyone is a Customer of Everyone Else

January 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Everyone has customers, both in the workplace and in the marketplace. The concept that everyone is a customer of everyone else, just like “do unto others,” should be a second skin we wear effortlessly, naturally. It’s not a shallow phrase we pay lip service to. Or a flavor-of-the-month concept that we apply-as-needed. 

Serving our customers, and treating everyone we come into contact with as a potential customer, should be second-nature to the way we are hard-wired. It should become part of our personal core values.

Why is this such a difficult concept for so many of us to wrap our minds around?

Your customer includes everyone you come in contact with during the course of your workday, including yourself. When you think about it, your interactions with your customers, both internal (coworkers and colleagues) and external (revenue-producing entities that purchase or rent your company’s products, goods, or services), represent a continuous business development process.

Perhaps some of your internal customers are the folks at your company with whom you do not want to be associated! (But you need to work with them in order to accomplish project objectives.)  Then there the internal customers, your colleagues, with whom you do your best work. The same holds true for your customer base: you enjoy creating deliverables for some of these folks while the relationship and process of working with other customers is right up there with root canal.

How can you create opportunities so your workday and responsibilities involve engaging more with those individuals and on those projects for which you produce your best output? And how can you gradually shift the balance of your workload away from the status quo order-taker colleagues and clients, so that you increase your level of innovation, collaboration and value?

How you define “customers” becomes your delivery of your vision and your professional expertise, and your ability to create value for your organization. It’s how you move from being perceived as an order-taker to serving your customers as an innovator and leader.

Think input, output and throughput. And for you sales professionals, think of a 4 x 100 meter relay race: from whom are you receiving the baton, what is the function of your particular leg of the race, and to whom are you handing off that baton?

Everyone is a customer of everyone else. It is just that simple.

Yet it is difficult to take this position with impending performance reviews, still more downsizing, and the tendency of some of our illustrious colleagues to treat the workplace with their own sense of entitlement (which translates into ‘do something unto someone else before they can do something unto you’). Not very professionally or ethically uplifting, I’d say.

If we perceive and treat our professional relationships as a matter of stewardship and paying forward to our colleagues and clients, our productivity and profitability might take a turn for the better.

We all are in this together. Think about how you can alter your role in the status quo so that your colleagues – even the ones you don’t care to work with – cannot help but have a positive outcome based on innovative collaboration.

Once you change your approach, the domino effect starts. It’s unavoidable. And you start to lead by example. The opportunities you start to create (or you perceive as “coming your way”) align more directly with your core values and capabilities.

You get on your customers’ A-list and they, in turn, are on yours.

It starts with moving yourself 1 millimeter outside of your comfort level and their status quo. It starts with your collaborating with your technical and non-technical colleagues, rather than competing with them (save that strategy for your marketplace competitors).

After all, the fulcrum for leveraging innovative business development is collaboration between technical and non-technical professionals.

What role will you choose to take?

Interested in reading more about technical/non-technical collaboration? Join the discussion at www.doyoumeanbusiness.com and receive updates and downloads about my book, set for publication in March, 2012!

Filed Under: Business Development, Collaboration, Customer Experience, Customer Focus, Do YOU Mean Business Tagged With: , , ,

Looking forward to Monday Morning Meetings?

January 8, 2012 By 2 Comments

Do you dread Monday Morning Meetings? Do you “turn off and tune out” until it’s your turn to speak?

By the time you read this blog post, you will be: 1) anticipating tomorrow’s meeting, 2) heading towards that meeting, 3) completing the meeting (or reading this blog post on your iPhone during the actual meeting because you have “tuned out”) or, 4) heading off to yet another one of those meetings.

Most of us perceive Monday Morning meetings as the Start of This Week’s Infighting. Someone rings the bell and we all start in again. Reinforcing the status-quo behaviors that keep our company, and us, spinning our collective wheels instead of moving ourselves forward.

Instead of battling our competitors, we are consumed by internal skirmishes.

It doesn’t have to be that way, you know. You can’t move forward, however, until you understand what is holding you back.

Think about having a Monday morning cross-functional team meeting that everyone looks forward to.  What would happen in order to achieve that endpoint?

Work to dislodge yourself from the “Us versus Them” status-quo mindset.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had each other’s backs? In the status-quo Monday Morning scenario, everyone ends up at each other’s throats! Not a pretty picture. But one that is played out in countless companies, every Monday morning and on, into the workweek. It’s the way it’s always been done.

Aren’t you supposed to be a well-oiled team working towards unseating your competitors, instead of each other? Yes, I thought so, too. So what happened?

Understand why your functional role is not the same as your job description

Your job title may sound impressive but may carry little weight in terms of your functional role regarding decision-making and impacting your company’s revenue stream. Who are the real decision makers in your organization? What are their criteria for decision making? How can you become a positive influence on revenue generation?

And here is a clue card: if you are not impacting business development and revenue generation for your company, your job may not be as secure as you think it is – even if you are a technical professional.

Techno-babble and business-speak create barriers to collaboration and revenue generation

You can’t 1) have anyone’s back and  2) impact revenue generation if 3) no one understands what you are saying. Including your peers. Everyone tends to sling around professional lingo to show others that they fit in and can run with the pack.

Yes, we all know you are very, very smart and have a tremendous educational pedigree. By being exclusive, however, you are boxing yourself out from being an impactful collaborator and communicator. Think about that one.

Take the perspective of a CEO, and lead rather than “do” as you learn about business planning.

You are the CEO of your career. If you want your colleagues to ask you what you think, rather than if you can perform project tasks, start leading yourself first and foremost. Instead of criticizing management direction,  learn to think like a CEO.

Understand the context of the decisions you always seem to be on the receiving end of. By learning about the business planning and modeling processes, you can start impacting those decisions.

Engage colleagues and customers in simultaneous translation: the ability to perceive, think and communicate to both technical as well as non-technical professionals.

Seeking engagement, rather than exclusivity within status-quo discipline driven corporate structures, means you’re collaborating. Becoming a productive and profitable member of your company’s business development process creates your value. And translates this value to your colleagues, company and customers as well.

It’s really a rather fluid set of business development dynamics in the long run.

Your thoughts?

Learn more about technical/non-technical collaboration, business development and your role. Opt-in to receive downloads from my book, Do YOU Mean Business? as we move towards the book launch date!

Filed Under: Business Development, Collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business, Job Functionality Tagged With: , , ,

Customer Experience is a Game Changer

January 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We are all consumers engaged in buying decisions.

So why take off our “consumer hat” when we walk into our place of work?

We shift gears in the workplace, delivering sales and engineering spiels to customers that sound traditional, stale and status-quo.

That’s not what delighted and engaged us when we went to the Apple® store over the weekend. Our customers were at that Apple store, too.

What would happen if we created transformative deliverables that we generated, collaboratively, with our clients? Through customer engagement? Just like at the Apple store?

I spoke with Maria Vedral and Bob Dean, experience economists, about how customer experience transforms the value of your customer offering in a post-recession economy.

To listen to the audio download of the complete interview, click on the buttons, below. To download, right click on this link. 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Customer experience, or the transformative power of customer engagement based on the progression of economic value, was presented by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore in their seminal 1999 book, The Experience Economy, re-released in 2011 by the Harvard Business Review Press. It’s one of the top 100 business books.

“Those businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant. To avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience.” (p. 39, updated edition)

Dean explains that Progression of Economic Value (POEV) chronicles the transition of product and service delivery from commoditization (agriculture and manufacturing of goods) into customization (delivery of services, moving towards experiences) into transformation.

Think about where your company appears in this continuum.

Part of the problem, according to Vedral and Dean, is that client experience will never exceed employee experience.

Have you ever had a poor experience and asked yourself whether the employee was happy working for that company? Your clients may be asking themselves the same question. Especially when dealing with lean post economic meltdown companies with too few people doing too many jobs with insufficient resources.

Dean spoke of how Apple provides great employee experience which, in turn, translates into great customer experience. Employees see, on a daily basis, that their implementing customer engagement is a critical part of the Apple corporate culture. And customers benefit from this employee epiphany.

While modeling your manufacturing company after Apple seems like a stretch, guess again. Are your internal customers happy, let alone engaged in collaborating with each other, in your traditional, siloed corporate infrastructure? I didn’t think so, either.

But what if your employees pay their cross-functional collaboration forward – towards your customers? And what if the solutions they provide to your customers are achieved in creative collaboration with your clients?   

You just may end up with a solution that is far greater than the sum of the parts. And loyal customers as well.

Customer loyalty isn’t about customer satisfaction. It’s about understanding customer sacrifice.

The status quo equates customer retention with customer satisfaction. Dean feels differently. Customer satisfaction has become an industry to itself. JD Power wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for their coveted rankings. But what do these rankings really mean?

Dean asks you to consider whether your customer base feels they make sacrifices in order to do business with your company. While they tell you they are “satisfied”,  customers may only be satisfied with mediocrity.

Think about the airline industry. We pay our money, we take our chances and we sacrifice. All we get is a 5-point customer satisfaction survey after our flight about how well you felt the airline met their own expectations… not yours. They may pay you off in miles if you complain. But they don’t eliminate your sacrifice, do they?

According to Pine and Gilmore, when a business recognizes customer sacrifice and actually eliminates it, that customer will become loyal and resistant to price.

Elimination of customer sacrifice becomes your real differentiator.

In Vedral’s case as a provider of enterprise ERP solutions, she found a software application allowing her to facilitate client discovery across multiple geographic locations, simultaneously. In some cases, this was the first time her customers had worked collaboratively!

Dean perceives that this aspect, using this software, defined Vedral’s customer offering. The customer comes away impressed. They tell Vedral that she helped all the stakeholders buy in to this process. She’s now more proactive checking in on customers and tells clients that is just the first of many experiences during their working relationship with her company.

Over time experiences differentiate Vedral’s professional services firm, resulting in great referrals. She is communicating authentically that she and her team really care. You don’t get a lot of caring communicated in a customer satisfaction survey.

Customer experience and customer sacrifice change the way your customers want to work with you. And the way you work with them.

Vedral’s goal is to blaze a new trail so customers say to themselves: we want to do it like her company, SilverEdge.

Dean has created a Score Card where a business leaders can assess their current customer and employee experience and take the steps to move towards transformational experience. To get your copy, contact him at roberthdean@comcast.net .

Bob Dean and Maria Vedral’s recommended reading list:

The Experience Economy, B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore

Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, John Jantsch

All For One: 10 Strategies for Building Trust Client Partnerships, Andrew Sobel

Maria Vedral is President and Founder of SilverEdge Systems Software, Inc, an award-winning Deltek Premier Partner. Under her leadership, SliverEdge has successfully implemented more than 400 client systems across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Bob Dean is a senior executive and catalyst in aligning learning and talent development with business strategy. He has held senior positions with Heidrick & Struggles, Grant Thornton, and Ernst & Young. Bob is now serving as a business innovation consultant to professional services organizations. In 2006, Bob became one of the first ten people in the world to be certified in the models and frameworks of “The Experience Economy”.

 

Filed Under: Business Development, Collaboration, Customer Experience Tagged With: , , , ,

The Road We Traveled in 2011

December 20, 2011 By 2 Comments

The two weeks of the Holiday Season leading up to the New Year are a time of reflection for many of us, although it sometimes doesn't seem like it. We are lining up our road maps for 2012: identifying  the referral network for our prospecting (because we've finally learned that cold calling and churning and burning through leads lists doesn't work). We are trying to get projects completed and invoiced by the end of the year to insure cash flow. We are deciding whether the roads we travel on are leading us somewhere productive and relevant, let alone profitable.

It can become chaotic and overwhelming. Unless you take a step back to gain a greater perspective of what's going on. And keep stepping back until you get a 10,000 foot eagle's eye view of the situation.

What roads will we travel on, together, in 2012? We've certainly traversed some interesting technical and non-technical geography in 2011.

As I tee up for 2012 blogging about some great topics, including customer experience, sales and the technical professional, liberating yourself from your professional status-quo, and some tools for smarter selling, I’ve revisited the roads we’ve traveled on, together, this year.

It’s because of our collaborative dialogues, your feedback, and the professional inspiration you’ve given me that I have a book coming out in February! I’ve made some major pivots in the direction of my business this year as well. I am a life-long learner. And I learn from the folks I work with as well as work for. I am always expanding my sandbox, and this year was no exception.

In mentoring and coaching entrepreneurs (both start-ups and and mid-level funding companies), I have the same dialogue I've always had when working with manufacturers and engineering-intensive service companies. The venture capital venue provides some very provocative discussions with companies who recognize it’s time to move beyond “the way we’ve always done things” towards “the way we need to do things.” And since they are already “there,” these businesses are open to dialogue and collaboration. Which are very gratifying discussions to have since so many companies are resistant to moving one millimeter outside of their status-quo comfort levels.

In reflecting the roads more, as well as less, traveled together this year, I'd like you to take a look at the page on my blog called Top Blog Posts . I keep it updated based on your comments, re-Tweets, Shares on LinkedIn and relevance to the professional communities and target markets in which I work.

When you get some down time this week or next, or even for a quick momentum-boost, take a look at these blogs which your colleagues found the most intriguing and provocative in 2011.

Your Best Sales Partner May Be An Engineer

Think You Have All The Answers? Did You Ask The Right Questions?

Being Relevant To Your Customers

Do YOU Mean Business?

Are You Chasing Around Customers and Prospects Who Are In Crisis Mode?

Lessons Learned from Spinner Dolphins

Did You Write Your Own Instruction Manual?

So Has It Turned Out The Way You Thought It Would?

Are You Drinking Your Own Kool-Aid?

The Power of Your Personal Brand in Space-Time

Understanding Why You Work for Other People

Your Financial Plan is Your Business Pulse

Take a read and let me know what you think, as you move forward into the new business year. These posts range from business planning to career development to website design to core personal values. There’s a lot of good food for thought.

Thank you for your readership this year.

Most importantly, thank you for your collective and collaborative inspiration.

Looking forward to continuing our dialogue!

BTH

 

Filed Under: Business Development, Collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business, sales engineering Tagged With: , , , ,

4 Ways NO Defines the Status Quo

December 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Status Quo, or The Way Things Are, is rampant. Status-quo mindset pervades people, perceptions and systems. The Status Quo craves stasis and stability.

One of the most pervasive ways in which the status quo is manifested in organizations is by the word NO! 

NO is a very powerful word. It is controlling. It is the mantra of a traditional, siloed infrastructure. It is used to keep things in place. And you can’t move forward beyond NO until you know why that powerful word is holding you and your organization back.

By taking a 5,000 foot eagle’s eye view of our situation, we can understand why systems promote stasis by encouraging a NO mindset instead of YES.

1.       It’s easier to say NO than YES

The status quo seeks stability and homogeneity. NO is an effortless response because YES – and the act of making that decision – are viewed as disruptive to the status quo. YES requires homework, analysis and consensus. Decision-makers in status-quo, siloed infrastructures can bet that you haven’t done your homework when you want them to make a decision. Are you making it easy for them to tell you NO?

2.       NO is the easy answer when you haven’t provided CONTEXT

NO means you haven’t provided that decision-maker adequate context for your request. Of course you have rationalized why your request should be approved. But have you taken a look at the situation from the context of the decision-maker? Are you aware of all of the factors impacting his or her ability to make that decision? What is the history of this decision-maker’s decision-making? Are they a naysayer, historically? Are you only thinking from the context of YOU when you are making your request? Perhaps you should be thinking within the context of that decision-maker.

3.       NO means you haven’t provided PERSPECTIVE

Who else is impacted by your request? Because that is what that decision-maker is thinking about. Your request for YES catalyzes a lot of other people asking for YES as well. Is your request perceived by that decision-maker as complimentary or disruptive within the workspace, professional discipline, and industry? Is your perspective of your request limited to YOU and your needs and goals rather than the goals of others? Are you creating a situation which causes conflict across departments or divisions and pits your decision-maker against another? Do they have a history of collaboration or competition? History makes people risk averse. Perhaps you should be thinking from the perspective of that decision-maker.

4.       NO is the prudent response when there is no RELEVANCE

Just as you are interested in What’s In It For Me, so is that decision-maker. They may have taken a chance making a decision in the past that resulted in a messy situation reflecting poorly on their leadership. How is your request for their decision relevant to their priorities, objectives and goals as a decision-maker? Make sure you know the history and context involved when asking for YES. You just may be walking into a minefield. What you perceive as a simple request from the context and perspective of YOU, may be relevant and significant to you, and only you.

The language of a relevant request for a decision provides a compelling reason to say YES. Are you making that request relevant to that decision-maker? Are you asking for that decision using the language of that decision-maker? Are you making that decision easy to understand from by that decision-maker?

Otherwise there is an equally compelling reason to remain within the boundaries of the status-quo NO.

What does NO look and sound like in your organization?

This morning, I spoke to the Southeastern Michigan Chapter of IEEE - Women in Engineering. This blog post is an excerpt of that talk I gave and the ensuing round-table discussion, based on a full discussion in my book, Do YOU Mean Business? To learn more about the book, click here.

Filed Under: Core Capabilities, Simultaneous Translation, Soft Skills Tagged With: , ,

Are your customers falling in love with you?

December 5, 2011 By 2 Comments

I know what you’re thinking. This is going to be another blog about client service, jumping through their hoops, the fact that they are always “right”, and how you should always put the customer first. You know all about that, don’t you?  I mean, you do know what your company’s client service policy is... 

Your company's customer service credo has been articulated to you, hasn’t it? And you can see it put into play in the workplace every day, right? Your upper and mid- level management walk this talk constantly and consistently, providing a clear-cut example of applied leadership, right?

Of course you will take me over to the framed company mission statement on the lobby wall so I can (and so can you) read something articulate and tangible about their client service ethic that you, personally, can hang your hat on.  Correct?

Honestly, what does all that yada-yada-yada really mean in the grand cosmic scheme of things? Most of us operate freestyle when it comes to client service, service quality delivery, customer sacrifice and customer experience (if we even are familiar with those latter two concepts).

Whether you are an owner, sole proprietor or employee, it should be second nature to treat others as we want ourselves to be treated.  The Platinum Rule of Tony Alessandra tells us to treat our customers as they wish to be treated. And Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore tell us in The Experience Economy that we should give our clients a rich and compelling reason to do business with us. 

It’s hard to put theory into practice if we, as our company’s internal customers, aren’t treated very well in the first place. 

  • A sole proprietor? Client service delivery goes up and down upon the waves of our ability and energy to win business.  What a virtual economic and emotional roller coaster: win new business and then drop everything and deliver on the won business – ignoring the need to win more business. 
  • Filling a contractor function? Then you are shape-shifters morphing in and out of whatever is required. We never quite fit into these non-permanent positions.  We do busy work and don’t take the time to determine what is required to win a permanent position. 

Yet we have customer contact all the time: an amazing incubator in which to learn about customer service delivery, customer experience and customer sacrifice. So aside from a paycheck, what else are you taking the time to learn in order to build your skill sets for your next tour of employment duty?

A different way to think about things in a flat-world business model, huh?

Your attitude towards client service delivery is like your personal beacon on your personal horizon.  It basically boils down to defining your core personal values and integrating them into your professional actions, day in and day out.

Your personal core values are what you use to get your bearings, whether you are an owner, sole proprietor or employee.  And your personal core values are what your employers and clients can expect, no matter what.  And with that type of consistency, you will respect yourself and, yes, here it comes: love yourself.  And those are the optimal conditions for your clients to fall in love with you.  

  • And while your clients may love you, they may not like you. Because they can’t jerk your chains or push you around. They love what you stand for. They respect you. 
  • Your self-knowledge and consistency represents real value to your clients, and yourself.
  • Your clients become loyal to you.

At the end of the day, it’s all about whether your clients feel comfortable doing business with you. And whether or not they trust you. Because you know as well as I do that client relationships can become a real messy affair from time to time.

Base your client relationships on consistent core personal values.  Mine are ethics, honesty, integrity and respect.   And my clients know this from the git-go.  Because I tell them.  And they have confidence that I will challenge them to define their core personal values as we collaborate.

Think about how your client relationships – and retention rate - might benefit from their knowing your core personal values.  They may just fall in love with you.

I guest blog once a month for CivilEngineeringCentral.com Earlier this year, the original version of this post won in the Favorite Post category of  Top Civil Engineering Blogs.  And the Civil Engineering Central Blog won top overall honors as rated by CivilEngineeringSchools.org. I realized I hadn't shared it with all of you. Hope you enjoyed!

Filed Under: Core Personal Values, Customer Experience, Customer Focus, Job Functionality Tagged With: , , , ,

Your Best Sales Partner May Be an Engineer

November 29, 2011 By 6 Comments

Technical/non-technical collaboration for business development is considered the equivalent of being asked to cross over to the Dark Side from the Star Wars movies or walk across the abyss in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade . Many of you dismiss this concept as non-viable without letting the collaborative force be with you and crossing that conceptual chasm in a non-discipline-driven leap of faith.

In my recent blog post “Collaborate with Technical Colleagues and Close More Sales”, on Josh Hinds’ tremendous SalesTrainingAdvice.com site, I address the opportunities that many of you on the sales side may be ignoring in remaining true to a sales only perspective when trying to generate revenue for your company.  After the economic meltdown of 2008, the world has become a different environment for many aspects of life. Governments and economies are tottering and the status-quo of just about everything is being challenged. Which makes people more desperate to hang on to the status-quo than ever before. But there’s no security in that tack.

Sales people may avoid working with an engineering collaborator like the plague. There’s a lot to be learned from our colleagues from other disciplines who sit across the table from us during those dreaded Monday morning meetings. Taking the initiative to reach out to them expands your knowledge base, makes you more comfortable communicating outside of your discipline and allows you to be more productive in your business development efforts.

Whether a technical or non-technical professional, you cannot afford to ignore your role in your company’s revenue stream. And one of the first ways in which you can engage in this process is collaboration across disciplines.

Doesn’t it make business and career sense to move yourself one millimeter outside of your current comfort level and join forces with your technical/non-technical colleagues?

No one’s going to get you to take that first step but you. And there’s a tremendous return on your personal investment waiting for you on the other side.

 

Let's continue this discussion!  I have a book coming out in February 2012 on this topic. Click on Do YOU Mean Business? Technical/Non-technical Collaboration, Business Development and YOU . Let’s talk.

Filed Under: Books, Business Development, Collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business, Sales-Engineering Interface™, Simultaneous Translation Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Think you have all the answers? Did you ask the right questions?

November 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

All of us know a “Know It All.” One of “those people” who is the first person to answer the question, even when the question was directed towards someone else.  We know one of those people who cuts off the person answering the question because “that person” figures what she has to say is far more important (at least in her mind) than what the other individual could possible offer as a response. After all, a “Know It All,” well,  thinks that they know it all… as long as they control the conversation and keep the topic within their know-it-all frame of reference.

And as irritating as “these types” of people are, we all tend to be a “Know-It-All” to our colleagues, at some point.

…….Particularly during those cross-functional meetings when we lose patience with our non-technical colleagues, whom we figure could not possibly be as smart as we are.

…….Or we lose patience with our technical colleagues because they keep asking us to clarify discrete data points when we want to extrapolate these findings into a broader context across demographic segments.

After all, we are professionals. We know our “stuff.” We’ve studied for our degrees. We are rock stars in our companies. We Know It All. At least we feel we know it all. Because we live inside our departmental and discipline-driven Know-It-All Boxes.

So we become impatient with our colleagues’ questions. We don’t understand why they don’t see what we see and why they simply don’t “get it.” Or else we give up on them because we figure they just won’t ever “get it.”

If you Know-It-All, then you “know” there’s no security in being a Know-It-All.

Did you ever consider that being a Know-It-All is disruptive? It’s lecturing. It’s grandstanding, it’s limiting and it’s certainly not collaborative. Did you ever consider that your cross-functional colleagues are asking all the questions that you have not asked? Perhaps they are inquisitive because you’ve gotten them to think out of their boxes!  They are asking those “right” questions, not to put you on the defensive, but to stretch everyone’s brains.

This status-quo habit of ours, to react negatively and defensively when our cross-functional colleagues question us, prevents colleagues from determining what they don’t know. And you certainly won’t  expand yourself outside the confines of your discipline-driven box unless you ask the questions you missed out on asking. Those really good, probing, in-depth, honest, let’s get the cards on the table types of questions.

The “right” questions.

So unless the meeting agenda is entitled “all about me,” what happens if you don’t talk? At all. And listen. And refrain from pontificating in an all-encompassing summation that you feel solves everyone’s problems? What if you start the conversation off with some really good questions and the only other thing on the agenda is to ask more of those really good questions, so that you generate a free-wheeling discussion? The meeting becomes self-directing and self-generating. The really good facilitators always love when discussions get into this type of auto-pilot, self-directed, self-facilitated mode. Then they know they have done their job.

The objective of this type of discussion forum is to not reach an endpoint, but rather to observe, collect and embellish upon all of the dialogue that is happening around the table. Then, the possible outcomes are endless. Then the discussion becomes creative and collaborative.

You will never Know-It-All. And why would you want to? Asking the right questions is so much more enlightening.

Interested in continuing our dialogue?  Click on this link to learn more about my new book: Do YOU Mean Business? Technical / Non-Technical Collaboration, Business Development and YOU, available February 2012. Let's start talking!

Nancy Nardin blogged about my book this morning: "An Engineer and a Sales Rep Walk Into a Bar..." on her great blog, Smart Selling Tools. You will enjoy this post as well!

 

Filed Under: Books, Collaboration, Core Capabilities, Do YOU Mean Business, Engineering, Job Functionality, Sales, sales engineering, Sales-Engineering Interface™, Simultaneous Translation Tagged With: , , , , , ,
« Older Posts