2009 April | Sales Aerobics for Engineers ® Blog

What’s your standard sales operating speed?

April 29, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Is it getting frustrating trying to get your current customers to make a decision?

Depending on your business segment, getting your current customers to commit to a renewal contract or a new project is an on-again, off-again proposition. It’s like they are prudent to the point of madness, driving in the real slow lane of the highway. Which affects your workflow and cash projections. To say the least.

Yet new customers can’t wait to get started. Their decision-making process is accelerated. They are in the high speed lane, looking down the road toward the destination. They want to get started. Yesterday.

A lot of my clients are venting to me about these two scenarios. It’s like they are constantly shifting gears from customer touchpoint to customer touchpoint. Current customers are requiring them to constantly be re-winning the business. New customers want them to jump through hoops – fast.

Regardless of the speed with which your current or new customers want to make decisions, the bottom line is that they want to make them with you.

How much better can that get?

Filed Under: Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: decision-making, sales process, sales-engineering interface

Don’t kid yourself, nobody “gets” what you do.

April 24, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

There are no less than 85 engineering disciplines currently listed on Wikipedia.

Differentiating yourself is up to you. Because no one understands how you think, your training, the tools you use to problem solve, cause-and-effect relationships you see that they simply miss, or why and how you use statistics so comfortably.

Which isn’t a bad place to be, at all…….

Next time you are in a meeting, instead of diving into solving individual issues, let folks talk. Ask good questions. Spin the problem out to it’s true context. Thank people and let them know why expanding the issues helps your brand of engineering solve the real problem.

Root causes can be the result of really large contexts.

Folks may begin to see you as more than “an engineer.” More like someone who speaks their language. A resource. They just might begin to ”get it.”

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: communication, engineering, professional development, technical professionals

The value of service quality delivery

April 20, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

As we move well into 2009, relationships between suppliers and customers are going to be more valuable than ever. Customers will be looking for suppliers who are in it for the long haul. The long haul may involve longer time-to-decision to partner with a supplier. The long haul also may incorporate customer expectations of shorter time to payback or return-on-investment from this partnership.

As you develop new business, your ability to leverage your company’s knowledge of existing customer relationships translates into a high level of service quality delivery for the long haul. Every customer touchpoint is critical to service quality delivery, throughout your entire company and supply chain. The value you place on your relationships with your internal customers / employees will be apparent to your external customer base.

Where do you fit in the supplier/customer equation? What opportunities do you have to provide value to upstream and downstream relationships? Learning the needs of “incoming” and “outgoing” relative to your function can make all the difference in the world for retaining customers and developing new ones.

Why do anything less than exemplify high service quality delivery?

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: customer focus, professional development

Are you an order taker or an innovator?

April 18, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Sales isn’t another “s” word. When done correctly, and underpinned by engineering expertise, an engineer can be the critical customer touchpoint to winning business for his or her organization or individual business venture. An engineer who combines sales, marketing, quality and manufacturing operations perspectives - and can translate into return on investment - brings value to any table.

First things first, however…..

Ask yourself how you function within your company. Are you waiting for the order (e.g., tell me what to do and I’ll do it)? Or do you have a 360 degree perspective of the multiple factors impacting any business / manufacturing situation (usually equated with taking risk)?

Depending on where we sit around the table, we see the same things differently. Have you ever thought of mentally changing seats around the table during a meeting? What would happen if you took on the perspective of each individual and shifted your gears?

That’s the first…. and ultimate… step of Sales Aerobics for Engineers – being able to understand, respect and build on the perspectives of all those seated around the table.

What seat will you take?

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: engineering, engineers, job functionality, sales