2009 | Sales Aerobics for Engineers ® Blog

Got Your Priorities Straight For 2010? Five considerations for the New Year.

December 27, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

I’m not even talking about a New Year’s Resolution. I’m talking about defining, or perhaps revisiting, your personal and professional priorities.

Yes, most of us lived under the specter of 2009”s Priority #1: keeping your job – even if it isn’t the right job for you in the first place. Let’s get beyond that. Really. Because asking yourself these five questions should influence your career path and the people who, well, populate your life.

1.What are your core values? What are the values you carry with you day in and day out, regardless of whether you are in a personal or professional situation? You shouldn’t have values that you take on and off like a set of clothes, depending on the occasion. Your core values are what you bring to the table no matter what, regardless of the “occasion.” Your core values are not an act. Your core values are – ultimately – who you are.

2.Have you run out of “learning room?” When’s the last time you read a book that improved your on-the-job performance or perhaps deeply impacted your concept of self and your core values? When’s the last time you challenged yourself to move 1mm outside your comfort level? If you have circled the wagons and live comfortably inside a closed circle of knowledge, friends and ideology, perhaps you should consider rocking your own boat. If you’ve got a substantial set of core values, your boat will withstand the storm. If not, you will build a stronger boat. What kind sailor are you?

3.Where does personal integrity fit into your life? Do you find yourself easily compromised? Do you tell one thing to one group and another thing to another group? Are you just a “yes” man or woman? Do you ”play” people or are you constantly being “played?” (Hint: #1 + #2 = #3)

4.What skill sets can you add to your professional portfolio to improve your value to yourself and, hence, your company? When is the last time you attended a course to improve your knowledge base beyond your current skill set? Attending a certification course to preserve your status quo doesn’t count. In fact, preserving your status quo should not be an optional answer for this question.

5.What will it take for you to become a more confident individual, both personally and professionally? Will it take an earth shaking event to create your epiphany? Have there always been signs and symptoms which you have skillfully ignored? Do you feel your last sales year or your technical degrees buy you job security and define who you are?

It is that time of year for reflection.

In 2010, make reflection a year-around habit, not something you save up for December. It doesn’t matter what generation you are a member of. Media streams are no excuse for not making time for reflection. You are not a product of your media streams or the blogs you read or how many followers you have on Twitter. You are a product of your upbringing, education, experiences and what you make out of yourself in spite of and because of all of these components of Who You Are.

So what are your priorities for 2010?

Think about it. I know I am.

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: core personal values, core values, professional development

Are Your Customers Making You Jump Through Hoops?

December 14, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Ah, the end of the fiscal sales year!Anyone in business development – sales folks and engineers alike – knows that it’s open season for that favorite non-Olympic business sport: customer-induced hoop jumping!

Hoop jumping is defined as customers and prospects putting business development folks through their paces over and over again, holding an impending renewal or new business contract in front of their nose like a proverbial carrot. No matter how well you have done your homework. No matter how adamantly you have advocated on their behalf. No matter how hard you have tried to understand the offline factors that impact that customer’s decision making process. No matter how good your engineering solutions have been. No matter how many extras you have incorporated into service quality delivery – at no charge.

What’s this all about?

Seasoned business development professionals anticipate this activity and leave wiggle room for hoop jumping… so that they have the time to honor the real stuff. After all, these same customers do this to you, year after year. And I hope you or your company doesn’t have a book of business that’s full of this type of customer persona. Especially if you have done your homework and made your numbers and completed your projects for the customers and prospects who are authentic.

Are you ready to jump through hoops for your customers? (Note: this activity is not the same as going the distance for your customers or prospects.)

End of year hoop jumping has several different formats. And some of us find ourselves participating in several different events:

1.“Because I said so Hoop Jumping” – Your current customer waits until the 11^th hour to decide whether to renew your services, just because he or she can, because you know they will renew your contract. But still they do this year after year, in spite of your superlative service quality delivery. Which makes you wonder whether it’s the value of your solution, or your ability to jump through last-minute hoops, that is the basis for your relationship with this customer. And yeah, you let them do this to you, once again, because of the size of their account and their longevity with your company. And remember, they treat everyone this way – including their own employees.

2.“Something is better than nothing Hoop Jumping” – Your prospective customer just can’t make up their mind. And you really don’t want to tell them about pending deadlines, which makes you sound like a typical, commission-hungry sales person. Yet if they don’t start their service contract with you by the deadline, their business development strategy for 2010 will be compromised. Really. But they can’t seem to get to “yes.” This situation compromises your own ethics of managing the process and taking the high road. So you go for some small fraction of the total solution, hoping to get a year end sale.

3.“You never had me from ‘hello’ Hoop Jumping” – Your prospect seems like they are going to sign the contract.Yet multiple visits later, they are still asking you to rationalize why they should “go” with your solution vs. the competition’s, who is giving away free trials (and probably will include a Christmas ham if the prospect plays their cards right.) Depending on how new at this sales game you are (since this type of prospect equates value with getting something for nothing), you keep gathering more competitive data to show the prospect how you offer the superior solution. They figure they are the customer and they have the right to make you jump through hoops to win their business.They won’t ever sign with you. It takes less energy to walk away from this type of prospect than to jump through their hoops.

4.“What have you done for me lately Hoop Jumping” – Your corporate hierarchy is all over you to make your numbers. This situation has been especially interesting in 2009. You’ve been churning and burning, calling any and every prospect, cramming your schedule with visits to anyone who will speak to you. Which goes back to what does your book of business look like and how well do you manage the sales process during the course of your sales year? Selling something to anyone results in a lot of business that goes down to the wire all of the time. And probably won’t renew next year. This sales strategy is the most energy-intensive and has the hoops that are the most difficult to jump through. It is ready-fire-aim selling.

Keep in mind that hoop jumping stresses your offline relationships with your support folks. If you can anticipate which customers and prospects are going to take things down to the wire – and let your support and engineering staff know about this possibility ahead of time – at least you can control that part of the “process. “ Manage the stuff that you can manage, control the variables that can be controlled. And minimize this type of performance art in the future.

I don’t like hoop jumping. I don’t recommend it as either a sales or a customer service strategy.I can’t deny that no matter how well I feel I’ve managed my client relationships during the course of the year, there are still those few customers who feel the need to put me – and my support folks – through my paces at the end of sales year, year after year. And while I duly anticipate this activity, I still don’t care to stress out my support staff because of this type of behavior.

I prefer to provide superlative business development solutions that drive revenue to my customers via their internet initiatives, branding and innovation. There’s no room for hoop jumping when you are doing your best work for these best-in-class type of customers, year in and year out.

OK. Now back to end of year hoop jumping. Which is at its absolute minimum. Sigh…..

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development, engineers, jumping through hoops, sales, sales engineers

Are You Articulate Or Do You Talk In Circles?

December 7, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

OK. Before you read my blog, you gotta read yesterday’s (Sunday, December 6, 2009) Dilbert comic strip. Or rather, Dogbert The CEO. No further explanation needed.

If I asked you “what do you do” could you tell me in about 45 words or less (Dilbert took 49)? What would you tell me? Would I understand the services you could deliver to me and the benefits I might anticipate from working with you?

I’m not talking about what you sell or the technical aspects of what it does. Features and benefits are irrelevant – even for highly engineering services. I am talking about what YOU are all about and what your delivery of your skill set brings to the table. Because that’s what the communication interface is all about, be it sales or engineering. People aren’t buying standardized products or services. If they were, they should be dealing with robots or worse yet, customer service reps.Instead, they are making decisions about whether incorporating you and your company’s skill set will make a difference to the competitive viability of their company.

I have spent countless hours asking engineers what their value proposition is. And they have talked in circles because they haven’t ever been challenged to define it. Instead,perhaps engineers have felt I would be wowed by their technical skills, how many certificate names and numbers they could rattle off, and their experience, and post graduate degrees. They have attempted to distract me from my original question by spinning the discussion all over the place. Guess again.I didn’t forget my question. And I would ask, and re-ask the dreaded question again and again. Evading the answer is not an option.

The majority of CEOs and business owners/decision makers want to understand how well your service quality delivery integrates into their company. They care about how well you can anticipate, even project, their needs. The more you talk in circles, rattling off your resume instead of providing a value proposition, the more you become stereotyped, “dilbertized” and commoditized as, well, an “engineer.”

How can you inspire your clients? How can you describe your deliverables in a nontechnical manner that they understand? I am not talking rah-rah. I am talking your ability to simply and succinctly put into 45 words what working with you will deliver to them. Or do you talk in circles, going in one direction and then the other? Trying to cover all bases. Trying to say what you think folks want to hear?

Jill Konrath, award-winning author of Selling To Big Companies (I book I strongly recommend) defines a value proposition as:

“A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services.It is focused on outcomes and stresses the business value of your offering.” (p 52, Selling To Big Companies)

If you are impeccable with your word, you will arrive at your value proposition. And once you arrive at your value proposition, it will be your constant, the fulcrum of everything you do. Because it is WHO YOU ARE. And your clients will know this. Innately. That they are dealing with the real thing. Because of your passionate commitment to who you are and what you are prepared to do for your clients.

Yet how many of us are able to take this self-introspective look at ourselves and define ourselves? Most of us talk in circles. And I’ve got news to you. Talking in circles is incredibly frustrating to clients and makes them ill at ease. Because if you don’t know who you are or what you can deliver, how can they entrust their company business to you?

Any of you who are freelance consulting engineers need to pay attention to this blog message. If you have been displaced, you more than likely have hung out your shingle as a freelance engineer. If you become part of the engineering outsourcing groups, they will place you in temporary employment.

Are you prepared to determine whether this is the type of company you may want to work for on a permanent basis? If so, you need to be interviewing them. If you are waiting for them to “discover” you, and offer you a permanent position, you are leaving your fate in the hands of someone..

If you wish to make your own opportunities, you need to stop talking in circles. Take the time to develop a value proposition that is articulate, succinct and a strong statement about who you are, the value you bring to the table and how this value translates into a competitive advantage for customers, peers and future employers.

Start thinking about it.

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: Dilbert, engineers, Jill Konrath, professional development, Selling To Big Companies, value proposition

Are You Impeccable With Your Word?

November 29, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

These are the days of Personal Branding, reinforced by your internet presence via LinkedIn professional profiles and participation in online discussion groups, Facebook, Twitter and various other venues. There are country western songs parodying the online persona you can create and how that compares with reality (yes, I like country western music… opera too for that matter).There are blogs, led by Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, that extol the virtues of creating your Personal Brand. Sales Aerobics for Engineers training and consulting incorporates social media into business development strategies for technically intensive companies.

So much for all this internet hoopla. It seems daunting keeping your online personal brand strategy up to date. The bottom line is: are you impeccable with your word? If folks had to describe what you are about, personally and professionally, how many of them will say your word is your bond? Think about it.

Dan Schawbel and many bloggers – this one included – emphasize that the internet is not the place for hiding behind a murky veneer that doesn’t match up once people meet you in person, listen to interviews or participate in webinars. Yet, how many of us are comfortable with who we truly are, 24/7/365? How many of us constantly strive to do the best possible job we can at any point in time? How many of us are impeccable with our word?

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his landmark book, The Four Agreements, lights the beacon for the importance of being one and the same with your word.And this one singular agreement – as are the other three – becomes critical to your providing value to yourself, your customers and your organization.

If you are true to your word, you don’t have to remember what you said to anyone because you tell the same thing to everyone. There is consistency and uniformity in your responses as a person and as a professional. You don’t tell people what they want to hear; you don’t say one thing to one group and another thing to another group. Come on, you know people like this within the workplace. Perhaps this is your own modus operandi. I strongly suggest that you cease disrespecting yourself and your peers. Strive to be impeccable with your word. It is not easy, not easy at all.

In this most challenging of economies, with companies zigging and zagging as they jockey for competitive position, being one and the same with your word, values and ethics is no mean feat. In unifying your approach, you focus your energy towards the underlying principle of impeccability with one’s word. And you know what happens when you engage in becoming impeccable with your word? You have more energy to give, professionally and personally, because you aren’t as fractured or compartmentalized. This is a journey you take by yourself, for yourself. And ultimately, everyone is on the receiving end of your efforts.

In this most challenging of economies, with self-help books, how-to sales books, online sales blogs and folks looking for recipes for personal and professional success, you are only as good as your last sale. If your year-end sales record is your greatest self-defining moment , your context for self-evaluation must reside on a constantly shifting playing field.Take a step back, and another step back. What is the 50,000 eagle’s eye view you have of yourself? At the end of the day, do you peers and friends define you as “Oh, that’s Bob. He sold $250K of new business this year. Wonder how he’ll do next year.” And…?

In this most challenging of economies, your engineering and technical acumen will only carry you so far. There’s more to who you are than your last completed project or the last technical certification you received.OK, so you are a Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Look, I used to process map my kids’ weekly sports practice, game and tournament schedules during high school (I’ve since recovered). Being precise and organized and minutiae oriented is admirable. Being the go-to person who organizes chaos is a pretty good skill set. But…..?

We all bring far more to the table than our jobs allow us to. What if we decided to “bring it” anyway, all the time? What if you take the time to discover or re-discover “what” you are all about and become impeccable with your word?

Being impeccable with your word allows you to bring passion, enthusiasm, objectivity, consistency and energy into everything you do for yourself, your family, your clients and your organization.

Yes, this is something that all of us need to work on daily. Being impeccable with one’s word has a significant impact on our relationships. We feel everyone has changed as a result of our being impeccable with our word. In fact, we are the only folks who have changed and, in turn, the people we interact with are impacted, and react, well, differently because we are truly bringing ourselves to the table, authentically, impeccably, every time they meet with us.

Did you ever think about what the real meaning of Walking The Talk is?

Be impeccable with your word.

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: Dan Schawbel, Don Miguel Ruiz, Facebook, LinkedIn, online discussion groups, personal branding, The Four Agreements, Twitter

My Thanks To The Online Engineering Community!

November 23, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

I am so thankful to the many online engineering communities who read my blog, access my website and – most of all – engage in LinkedIn Discussions with me. In this most challenging of economies, my engineers have remained open minded while I have rattled their cages and possibly even provoked a few of them! The engineering community understands the great respect I have for each of them and the training that this exacting discipline demands. The engineering community understands that their technical expertise may not ensure their job security as we recalibrate just what it means to be an engineer.

Earlier this year, I began this blog, Sales Aerobics for Engineers, based on the many years of dialogue I have had as a consultant to the industrial engineering community. I was disheartened to see so many engineers being displaced in this economy as their organizations grasped at strategies to balance cash flow, accounts payable and accounts receivable. I vowed that I would do whatever I could to engage the engineering community in a dialogue focusing on expanding their value to themselves, their customers and their organizations.

The engineering community responded. We have traveled this year together, discussing the interface of the technical and non-technical aspects of customer relationships. We have dissected (and will continue to do so) the obsession of the engineer with rushing towards tactical solutions that may be the Achilles heel of the engineering discipline as it currently exists.. We have discussed and parodied the engineering-sales interface so that we could examine the true value that might be achieved through collaboration between disciplines.

The engineers have called me out on topics, countered my statements with their perspectives and we have fearlessly communicated through the medium of the Internet. I have made great contacts and can count on some of my online engineers to always be there to set things right and provide balance to not only what I have to say, but also to how others may interpret the back-and-forth that comprises an online dialogue.

After all, that is why we are all here, communicating with each other. If there were set answers to everything, well, there would be no collaboration and no innovation. In spite of the status quo and in spite of the stigma of the techie persona, my engineers have been willing to listen to my hybridized perspective that incorporates the technical with the sales and marketing side of things.

By now we all acknowledge that things are not going back to the way they were. And we still are not sure the direction in which we all are headed. However, we have gained a tremendous amount of confidence discussing issues, seeking answers, and finding some sort of direction as we recalibrate our disciplines towards 2010.

As we head towards Thanksgiving Day, I give my thanks to the engineering community – domestic and international – who have encouraged and supported each other – and me as well – online through the many excellent engineering forums.

I am looking forward to continuing our collaboration and dialogue!

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: engineering, engineers, LinkedIn, sales, Sales Aerobics for Engineers blog, sales-engineering interface, technical/non-technical collaboration

Root causes have rather large contexts

November 16, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

If root causes have rather large contexts, why do Engineers drill down trying to get to the Bottom Of All Things so they can create The Ultimate Tactical Solution?

All the flotsam and jetsam you by-pass trying to dig down to determine the root cause is pretty important. Why toss it away? It provides the context of the matter at hand. In fact, it’s a science or two unto itself. It’s a combination of Business Archeology and Business Anthropology. And besides, determining – and “fixing” – a root cause without determination of the FULL context in which it resides is, well, useless.

Think about it. How many of you have proposed new processes, introduced quality initiatives, eliminated workarounds only to have your Pronouncement of Identification and Resolution of the Root Cause fall on deaf ears, at best?

How many of you have gotten in trouble with your boss because your solution butted up against his/her environment for evaluation, internal KPIs and award of bonus?

So you give up, get frustrated, gripe about things…. and basically wait until the next root cause situation where you do precisely the same routine all over again. Thinking: “this time will be better.” And it isn’t.

Didn’t Einstein say that doing the same things over and over again – and expecting different results – is his definition of insanity? Not Engineering, but Insanity. So why are you perpetually punching your own ticket?

When will you know it is time to do the same things differently?

Root causes have really large contexts. If you are rooting around solving problems in a vacuum, get your head out of the sand. The contexts of these root causes are the subject of corporate politics, internal dynamics, working relationships and the harmonic balance of Everything that goes on in your workplace. You rock that boat, and you will not create a ripple. You’ll start a tsunami. Even with the smallest of root cause analyses.

Perhaps you are your own Root Cause. Ever think of that one?

And you do have control over your own analytical thought processes. Why not work on them? Because doing the same things slightly differently will yield different results. You may not end up always feeling like a salmon swimming upstream, trying to negotiate buy-in at various levels you identify along the way. You may not get boxed out. Work on the flotsam and jetsam. It’s valuable.

If you know what you are getting into as you are digging it up, what precedes determination of the Root Cause may be the most interesting stuff of all.

Understanding the interrelationships of factors creating the problem are more revelatory than fixing the problem itself. Why? Because these interrelationships affect everyone in your organization. The Root Cause may not.

Root cause analysis isn’t there so that you can showcase your technical expertise and Quality / Lean acumen. Folks already know you are very, very smart. They know you went to very good schools where you did very difficult work and got a degree or two that not many other folks could have achieved.So what?

Your non-technical co-workers need to grow a set of left-brain antennae if they want to connect your context to their context. Because your optimum solution isn’t necessarily the best solution, once you start stepping back from the root cause to place it into a larger context.

This disconnect is THE root cause in the sales-engineering interface®.

It takes a lot of folks – and their contexts – to create a situation meriting root cause analysis.And they may have gone through a lot of work – for seemingly justifiable (albeit mind-boggling) reasons – to create that situation, normally called the Status Quo. And they just may not want it fixed. Why? Perhaps your solution is too disruptive to the context in which they choose to operate or have to operate.

So the next time you start to feel the need for Root Cause Analysis on your event horizon, think twice about going for the jugular and the optimal tactical solution.

Take a step back or two. Take a deep breath. Observe. Then collaborate.

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: engineers, KPIs, root causes, sales, sales engineers, sales-engineering interface, technical/non-technical collaboration

It’s Time To Give Thanks

November 9, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is my favorite US holiday. It’s a nearly 400 year old harvest festival at one of the most beautiful, dramatic and transitional times of the year. Mother Nature knew what She was doing with Autumn.

As of the latter half of the 20^th century, however, the Thanksgiving Holiday is hard to recognize in the United States. It’s becoming the holiday squished in between Halloween and the green light signaling the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Blink twice and it’s gone. You have to get through Thanksgiving to hit the Christmas sales at the mall on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which I still suppose represents the annual People’s Economic Stimulus Package for this nation.

Thanksgiving is the only Holiday where people are not focused – obsessed – on giving lots and lots of STUFF to each other. It’s about sharing a meal together and catching up with each other. Taking some time to breathe and enjoy each other’s company. Not rushing through dinner to get to Presents. Maybe that’s why Thanksgiving gets overlooked so much.

After all, you only give GRATITUDE and THANKS on Thanksgiving. To others and for others.

I mean, what’s that all about?

Recently, I was discussing this topic with Beth, one of my sales colleagues. She couldn’t have agreed more with my “take” on the situation. We were both so not looking forward to running around like madwomen in December, delivering client gifts and closing out our sales year while cleaning our homes for December holiday celebrations and keeping track of the sales at the malls. Sounded like a definition of perpetuation of insanity to us.

We like our clients. We enjoy working with them. This year has been a real time in the trenches for them. We are thankful to have been given the opportunity to be in the trenches with them. We didn’t want them to get lost in the midst of our – and their – end of year, well, “stuff.”

So we both decided to make the Thanksgiving holiday the emphasis, from here on out, for our customers. Why? Because it once again makes sense, particularly in this most challenging economy.

Thanksgiving is a way of giving thanks and gratitude to family, friends, colleagues and clients. It comes at a time of year – especially this year – when it makes sense to take pause and reflect. The original Thanksgiving was a celebration of survival of harsh times. Well, I can’t think of a holiday that makes more sense for all of us to celebrate right now.

When is the last time that you have given thanks? Folks in sales are already in the midst of frenzied Q4 churning and burning towards the “close” of their sales year trying to make those numbers. By December 1^st they are also delivering client gifts and sending out holiday cards. Engineers are trying to finish out projects so clients can be invoiced to bring cash into already strained revenue streams.

Let’s face it. Folks are thankful to have jobs right now. So Thanksgiving might just have a whole lot more meaning than it has in the past. And perhaps the significance of Thanksgiving will be rediscovered so the holiday doesn’t once again fade away into the tsunami of purchasing frenzy about the December holidays.

I’m asking you to take a step back. Rather than checking one more thing off a long list of stuff you have to do before “the close” or year end, why don’t you review what you have achieved this year, not so much in dollars, but in creating value for yourself and your organization?

We have weathered a long and harsh economic lesson, and it is not yet over. We are not quite sure where we are headed, but we have steered a firm course this year towards an uncertain horizon. And we are still afloat, surviving, thriving, doing some things very differently than we would have a year ago.

This year, instead of December Holiday cards and client gifts, why don’t you send your customers Thanksgiving cards like my colleague and I decided to do? We will deliver small gifts and send out cards of thanks the week prior to Thanksgiving. We will have the time to enjoy what we are doing. Our actions will have symbolic significance for us. This expression of our thanks and gratitude to our customers will not be mixed up in the frenzy of the close of the annual sales year or fiscal accounting exercises. Just as we are taking time to prepare a feast for our friends and family, we are taking some time to enjoy our client relationships. We work hard for them. We earn them. We enjoy them.

It’s not all about the sale. It’s about how everyone arrives at a decision. My thanks to my clients.

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: engineering, personal branding, sales, Thanksgiving

Are Your Clients Hunkering Down And Maintaining The Status Quo?

November 2, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

You make an excellent presentation and then nothing happens and you wait….and wait… and wait. Your company has a price increase and there is the dreaded “deadline” and your customers take you to the 11^th hour and beyond and you wait…and wait…and nothing happens.Your customer assures you they will award your company the contract – it’s only a matter of talking to a few more internal folks on their end – and you wait… and wait…and they go with another company’s solution.

I KNOW you have been in this situation, and more than once. And probably rather recently, too. I know I have.

Sharon Drew Morgen, in her recently released book entitled “Dirty Little Secrets: Why Buyers Can’t Buy And Sellers Can’t Sell And What You Can Do About It” offers some riveting insights into the whole decision making algorithm that prevents us from earning the sales and engineering success that we are capable of achieving.

Sharon Drew Morgen views the sales cycle as the length of time it takes your prospect to figure everything out that they need to figure out so they can make a decision. So how long is your typical call-to-close cycle? Getting longer….. and l…o…n…g…e…r?

My blog is directed at Engineers, too, even though I am using the “S” word: Sales. Don’t think you are exempt from this discussion because you are the “doers” rather than the “sellers.” Guess what, you are part of the solution being offered. Every time you get on the phone with the customer, there is a latent sales opportunity waiting for you to discover. Do you have the tools to uncover unmet needs by determining the underlying processes and systems currently in place?

Sharon Drew Morgen’s book really puts the solution placement – you know, the “stuff” we are all selling – in its proper perspective: somewhere in the middle of the decision making algorithm, if not at the end. It’s not about the sale. It’s about the process. And now that I am talking process, those engineering antennae better be going up!

“One of the hardest things for our buyers to determine is that their status quo isn’t good enough.”- Sharon Drew Morgen, Dirty Little Secrets (italics and bold are mine)

Here’s a secret: sales folks are told to “discover” the client’s problems or unmet needs, typically called “pain.” Then they are supposed to drag prospects over the emotional “pain” coals over and over again until the client cries “Uncle” and sees the light and understands “Your Solution.”

So how do you get to that point? Do you think the prospect is going to jump up from the table, cry “Eureka” and reach for a pen to sign a contract just because your company has the Best Engineers or the Best Product or the Best Solution? I don’t think so. What typically happens is that our Clients and Prospects go in hibernation mode and hunker down while they “think things over.” And over and over. Because “Making a Decision” is equated with “Compromising the Status-Quo.”

The process of identifying the systems currently in place that reinforce and impact the organization’s ability to make a decision – TO CHANGE – are examined in depth in Sharon Drew Morgen’s book. Now, Engineers, if you could converse with your prospects and determine the key stakeholders and the barriers to adoption of new/different/best practices, doesn’t this strategy lend itself to process-mapping? If you developed the skill set to ask specific types of questions in a specific manner, thereby impacting the viability of your solution, wouldn’t you want to dig into things a bit deeper before you run off and design the perfect mousetrap – that nobody ends up buying? (Yes, I know, that was a really long sentence.)

“Until the prospect can recognize the full range of systems elements that live congruently within their culture and find them lacking, an Identified Problem is not seen as something that is ready to be resolved – regardless of the cost to the culture, or the problem it seems to be causing in the system.”– Sharon Drew Morgen, Dirty Little Secrets (italics and bold are mine)

What’s really interesting about Sharon Drew Morgen’s book is that the typical salesperson simply doesn’t “get it.” The skill set she proposes, and the mindset too, is too logical and organized. It flies in the face of the traditional sales paradigm. Sharon Drew Morgen starts the sales process by requiring we do our homework long before we try to place the product or solution. Which is where most engineers like to start.

Gee, when’s the last time you started a project from The Beginning? And I don’t define “The Beginning” as “When The Engineer Is First Notified.” Normally the engineer is brought in somewhere down the road after Sales has built all the “relationships” without the benefit of understanding the systemic processes in the corporate culture that impact The Decision To Buy. And I hate to break the news to the sales folks, but bringing in the engineers too late in the game is one of the biggest complaints engineers have about sales folks.

Sharon Drew Morgen points out that the greatest impediment to change is systemic corporate loyalty to preserving the Status Quo. I mean, who wants to change if you can work around the situation and maintain “the way it’s always been done?” And I hate to break the news to the engineers, but loyalty to preserving the status quo is one of the biggest complaints sales people have about engineers. Sound familiar?

Yeah, this book is a must-read for the sales-engineering continuum. It is process improvement and paradigm shift all rolled up into one. No more status-quo.

Time for a little cross-training and a new way to incorporate process mapping and process improvement into your next project? You just may end up speaking with clients and prospects differently, resulting in more productive outcomes and shortened business development cycles.

What are you waiting for?

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development, Dirty Little Secrets: Why Buyers Can't Buy and Sellers Can't Sell And What You Can Do About It, engineers, sales, sales cycle, Sharon Drew Morgen

Let’s play 20 questions: should the VP of Business Development run your next Engineering meeting?

October 26, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Would you voluntarily turn your Engineering meeting over to the VP of Business Development?

Think about it: Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, meet Sales and Profitability Goals.While the Engineering function is seeking 0% defects and elimination of wasteful processes once the work comes in house, the Business Development function has their eye on anywhere from 10-25% growth in gross revenue over last year, as they look towards 2010 and increasing overall net profit. 2009 is, well, 2009.

What type of questions – as a review of the State of Engineering for your company – might the VP of Business Development have for the Engineering Team if s/he were running the next Engineering meeting?

What if the VP of Business Development walked in to the meeting, thanked you for your invitation, and said: “Let’s get the cards on the table. I’ve got some questions and I need your input. In review…..”

1.What type of projects are you working on? What types do you wish you were working on?

2.What is the priority of these projects based on forecasting?

3.What type of industrial segments are involved in these projects? Are these the segments we do our best work for?

4.What type of project segments are involved: rapid turnaround, long term projects, medium duration? Are we balanced?

5.How long do you think it should take the Sales Team to win jobs?

6.What is the timeline for Engineering’s completion of these projects, once they are won?

7.What other projects can be anticipated arising from these initial projects?

8.How are these additional or add-on projects being identified by Engineering?

9.What is the rate of new project or add-on project acquisition by Engineering once the Sales Team wins a project?

10.What are the gaps in skill set among Engineering that prevent the Engineering Team from being more successful identifying Opportunities based on the hard-won work by the Sales Team?

11.How much of project completion time can be billed back to the customer?

12.How much of project completion time is eaten by the company?

13.What is the nature of non-billable (wasted?) time and how much is it costing the company per year?

14.How much Engineering time is spent on achieving KPI’s during the course of each project?

15.What is the average amount of time Engineering spends on achieving KPIs, including Lean and Six Sigma / Quality activities?

16.How do these activities directly impact overall project outcome in terms of time to completion?

17.How do these activities impact profitability?

18.How well does the Sales Team factor in Engineering and Quality costs into the project proposals?

19.What are the gaps in the Sales Team’s skill set in terms of understanding the value of Quality/Six Sigma/Lean processes in the overall project outcome, and therefore the project proposal?

20.How can these gaps between the Sales and Engineering processes be bridged for the benefit of Business Development?

Could you answer these questions? Do you go into each Engineering meeting prepared to answer questions like these? Do these types of questions enter into your project planning, as an Engineer?

Perhaps they should. Because Engineering shouldn’t be doing Engineering in a tactical, by-project vacuum. And Business Development usually takes a strategic perspective, rather than a tactical one – although sometimes it just looks like a lot of churning and burning and wild goose chases and dead ends.

What if your VP of Business Development is also an Engineer, or perhaps Director of Operations? How does this change your receptivity to their running your next Engineering meeting? Do you think being an Engineer or in Ops is going to change the nature of the profitability-oriented questions they are going to ask you? They’ve crossed over and now incorporate right and left brain, yin-yang considerations into their thinking. They take a high level, multi-factorial overview of things. They see the problem from around the table, not from one side or the other.

Does your company have KPI’s? Does your Engineering Department have KPI’s? How are these aligned with your Corporation’s KPI’s? Does your Business Development function have KPI’s? How are these aligned with Engineering KPI’s?

With everyone chasing their siloed interpretation of KPI’s – and probably bonus money- how is this situation affecting decision making, interdepartmental collaboration, innovation, employee and customer retention and overall profitability?

A lot to think about. For your next Engineering Team meeting. Bring these cards to the table.

And invite your VP of Business Development.

Like me, they may have a lot more than 20 questions to ask you.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development, engineers, Key Performance Indicators, sales, sales-engineering interface, technical/non-technical collaboration

How accountable are you if you live in a cubicle in a siloed organization?

October 18, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

How do you go about your business when the guys and gals at the top talk Team and then make you feel like you are out there Solo? With so many sales and engineering organizations thrashing away at the specter of Q4 2009, is there really a Playbook for you to follow?

Do you have days when you don’t even know whose team you are on? Not even your own team? Because the rules appear to be: (a) constantly shifting; (b) only applicable to some; (c) only obvious to those in the “inner circle;” or (d) completely nonexistent?

So you retreat to your cubicle waiting for the dust to clear and for Someone to give you clarity. Or worse, you retreat under the desk in your cubicle with your head in your hands waiting for A Sign.

There is no room for siloed thinking in the new economic business paradigm. It simply makes everyone circle the wagons when the going gets tough. At that rate, the tough don’t even have to think about getting going. And a lot of finger pointing usually is directed at either the sales force or the engineering department.Which is really a good strategy since those two disciplines have trouble enough communicating with each other.

Divide and conquer is a “familiar” organizational dynamic. This strategy keeps everyone silo-ed within their own discipline or job function. It keeps the sales and engineering folks thousands of conceptual miles apart.And it keeps people from comparing notes and realizing how crippling and systemic this strategy can be.

Anthony Parinello’s “Think & Sell Like a CEO” is based on interviews with real live CEOs – and particularly those involved in the sales process. Parinello analyzes the mindset of the CEO and what makes the CEO capable of running his or her organization.

Parinello articulates that one of the main attributes common to the CEO is “having the ability to articulate problem-solving ideas in such a way that anyone of any title can easily understand” what is being communicated. Which goes into an overriding mission of horizontal corporate communication and a desire to unite the troops, not divide them.

You are the CEO of your job function. So think like one.Even if your organization is siloed.

What are the rules of Your Playbook? Not theirs. Yours. Try these on for size.

1.Every sale and every project has a boomerang factor. The sale doesn’t end when the contract is signed. The engineering project isn’t finished when you complete the part that is your responsibility and hand it off to the next guys in line to implement their part. Dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s” does not indicate the end of your responsibility or accountability for that outcome. If you think you’ll never see the project again, well, go back under your desk in your cubicle.

2.Run your business like a 4 x 100 m relay. You’re going to receive incoming and you’ll have to deliver outgoing. Understand the dynamics of the entire race course. Because it’s not all a flat surface. And when I say “run your business,” I mean “run your job function.” You are the CEO of your job. You run an entire business out of that cubicle or your vehicle or your cell phone or your email or your interactive Internet platform. Isn’t it time to think about what you bring to the table?

3.If you are articulate, you will be anticipatory. If you are anticipatory, you will be accountable. And your accountability extends up and down that race course. Understanding the dynamics of your organization from the folks answering the phones to the guys delivering the mail provides critical insight as to why you are accountable and can’t hide behind your job function. You are the CEO. No more cubicle-thinking.

4.Form your Team within your job function. I am not suggesting anarchy or Machiavellian politics or end runs. Your job function depends on a number of individuals in your organization understanding the importance of their roles. Communicate each individual’s role and value to your team. They work with you (and for you) towards delivering an outcome that wins new customers and retains them, thus driving revenue for your organization. Yeah, YOU are the fulcrum of those horizontal organizational dynamics. Even if your organization is siloed.

5.The buck should always stop with you. If you go to work each day and do the minimum, minimally well, and focus on who you can blame if the job comes back to haunt you, I sure don’t want you flipping burgers for me at a fast food restaurant. How many times would the burger have landed on the floor before it landed on my plate? (Forget the 5-second rule). Ask yourself this question: would YOU want YOU working for YOU?

6.There is value in accountability, not safety.In a silo-ed organizational structure, everyone is hoping that the guys and gals at the top (a) recognize risk; (b) are willing to assume it on behalf of the longevity of the company; and (c) won’t sacrifice valuable employees in the process. News flash: playing it safe is just as risky as being accountable. It’s just that CEOs have a greater capacity for understanding risk and assessing its impact on their organization. As your own CEO, grow some antenna and learn to recognize and identify risk (not to be equated with job paranoia). Those antenna are valuable to you and your organization.

How will thinking like a CEO change the accountability you bring to the table, instead of the cubicle?