2009 May | Sales Aerobics for Engineers ® Blog

Creating A Sales Funnel Or an RFQ Mill? (Part Three)

May 30, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

How many of you exercise? How frequently? Now and then? Or do you have a regular schedule that you keep, say, at least four times a week for at least 30 minutes?

Think of how it was when you started your exercise regimen, or perhaps took up a new sport or tried out that new golf swing you read about. You weren’t very good, were you? And thinking about doing this perfectly doesn’t increase your level of fitness or effectiveness. You have to practice to get better. Eventually, muscle memory kicks in: through a consistent and methodical training program your muscles remember the right way to execute. You successfully change your habits and the positive results are tangible.

Business development is the same way. You must approach business development as a discipline you are in the process of mastering. You need to focus on the basics, consistently, every day. You want to invest in some decent equipment, like free downloadable podcasts on the web or subscribing to thought leaders’ blogs, so that you are constantly incorporating different perspectives and subsequently improving your technique and level of fitness. Think of the sales process and business development cycle as Sales Aerobics for Engineers.

We’ve looked at the importance of prospecting referrals and having peer-level discussions with Key Decision Makers in winning business for your company. How do you get to the place where you have Sales Aerobics for Engineers Muscle Memory: you are naturally incorporating a business development perspective while simultaneously implementing engineering projects?

This doesn’t have to feel like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. In fact, it may be easier than changing your golf swing.

Think about how you begin each day. Most of us have a schedule. If we work for a company, we go to work, where we have activities scheduled. Many times we engage in firefighting and accomplish little of our scheduled activities. Same thing if we work for ourselves, except the activities we have scheduled are directly dependent on our ability to create our livelihood and income stream.

Sales Aerobics Discipline #1: make time every day to identify companies with whom you’d like to work. Ask yourself why these companies interest you. If you are interested in these companies, you are not churning and burning through call lists as a means to an end. Which means you are prospecting instead of cold-calling.

Think about it. These organizations may be companies you’d like to prospect, in terms of business development. However, in this economy, these entities also may be companies for whom you’d like to work. So how do you get on their radar screen? The more you learn about these companies, the more familiar and comfortable you will be when conversing with their Decision Makers.

1. Read about them online

2. Find out about their structure and hierarchy via Hoovers or other online corporate information services.

3. Go to their website and get a sense of their corporate culture, mission, deliverables, track record.

Sales Aerobics Discipline #2: make time every day to create and add to your list of high-level expertise that you bring to the table. What do you do best, across all projects, over all career choices? Think about it. You will determine your common denominator. Be strategic rather than tactical. Are you the type of engineer who always brings in projects on time and under budget? Are you an innovator and how have your innovations impacted your customers’ bottom line? What you do best is your Personal Brand. And make sure this resonates in your LinkedIn profile.

Sales Aerobics Discipline #3: focus on working with those clients and on those projects that bring out your best skill sets and value sets, including areas which are new to you and a source of personal growth. This is where the rubber meets the road. You may work in a corporation where you can’t pick and choose your project assignments. However, you can bring your best stuff to each one of these projects. And you can grow and learn from each project. If your entire day is spent on non-fulfilling activities, review Sales Aerobics Discipline #1.

Sales Aerobics Discipline #4: write your personal list of criteria for the type of company, client and projects that are an “ideal” fit for what you bring to the table. Then review Sales Aerobics #1, #2 and #3 to determine how you can move your personal scorecard and dashboard so that WHO you prospect, WHO you win as customers, WHO you work with as existing customers and WHAT skill sets you develop are constantly moving towards the ideal.

When you work with the best – and they, in turn, are working with the best – you do your best work. And you provide value to yourself, your customers and your organization.

Time to start your Sales Aerobics for Engineers regimen?

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development, proposal writing, RFQ, sales funnel, sales skills, sales-engineering, technical professionals

Creating a Sales Funnel or an RFQ Mill? (Part Two)

May 25, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Part One of this three-part blog post looked at the importance of PROSPECTING. Although you may dread this aspect, let’s face it: it’s the start of the sales cycle. Prospecting includes enlightening current customers on the value of expanding the scope of services they receive from you.

Part Two focuses on the WHO of Prospecting. Prospecting practices make the difference between creating opportunities for relationship building versus generating redundant efforts in responding to RFQs. Even if you currently do business with a company, you and your own company might be a well-kept secret. If you are only engaged in peer relationships, your internal contact may not be advocating the value that you provide to his or her company. No one may realize that you are behind your engineering solutions.

The only way to get your light out from underneath the proverbial bushel basket is to prospect the Decision Maker instead of relying on others to spread the word.

Keep in mind that Key Decision Makers are solutions-focused: they seek comprehensive rather than tactical answers that result in improved company image, competitive advantage, increased revenue and cost-containment.

Some guidelines to keep in mind when successfully prospecting Key Decision Makers include:

Prospecting does not involve cold-calling. If you are calling anyone you can get hold of at a company, you will end up in voicemail. Even if you have a well-crafted voicemail message, it will not be returned unless that individual knows you.
Call on companies where you have a referral. If you have an internal contact, or even that peer engineer to whom you’d rather be talking, ask who the Key Decision Maker is. Ask that engineer to refer you to that Key Decision Maker, which includes having them send your LinkedIn profile as a means of introduction.
Do your homework about the company you want to call on – even if you currently do business with that company. Go online, Google the company and find out the latest news about them. Go to their website and read about their products and services. Go to LinkedIn and do a company search to determine whether the corporate hierarchy have profiles. Find out about the personalities behind the brand.
When you make your initial phone call to that Decision Maker, you still may be put into their voicemail. Don’t take this as a sign of disinterest. There are not enough hours in the day for folks to answer every phone call. Reinforce your referral status in your voicemail, let them hear what your voice sounds like. Leave them a message that makes them think.
Leave an engaging voicemail that validates you and justifies their choice to answer the next time you call…even if it’s to ask you to call back at a different set time and date.

“Hello, this is Sally Jones from Awesome Engineering. Sam Bennett from Engineering recommended that I contact you about some engineering solutions we’ve discussed that can significantly improve productivity and reduce maintenance downtime at your Company. I will call back on This Day at This Time.”

6. Then follow up. Make sure you do what you say you are going to do. That voicemail message differentiates you from engineers that are simply asking for the opportunity to respond to an RFQ to get their foot in the door. When you follow up with the Decision Maker, continue that discussion you started in your voicemail.

I recommend reading Selling to Big Companies, by Jill Konrath. This slim book offers a comprehensive review of prospecting Decision Makers. Her account entry strategies emphasize your becoming a resource to your prospects, who then become your customers.

Be prepared to walk your talk. By LISTENING. It’s more productive to ask good questions and let the Decision Maker do the talking. You can discover far more than tactical problems by conversing on a peer level with the Decision Maker. Good questions start by putting yourself in their shoes and asking open ended questions.

“Mr. Decision Maker, in working with my customers, I’ve found that near-capacity production goals have impacted the ability to schedule maintenance downtime. How does this situation play out over the course of the year for your company?”

Keep in mind that you didn’t just dream up this question. You did your homework about the company and hypothesized that based on their current track record, this might be a situation that applies to them. And the Key Decision Maker knows you did your homework – and appreciates your effort.

Ask the question and be prepared for the fact that they may take it in another direction, such as responding “We don’t have to worry about that situation because…..” or “That doesn’t apply to us.” In which case you ask “What are the biggest challenges you are facing in meeting production schedules…?” Start a dialogue. Start a peer conversation.

Colleen Francis, of Engage Selling, focuses on becoming comfortable engaging your prospects and current customers in interactive discussions.

Keep in mind that every discussion doesn’t result in a project to bid on. You are simply starting a discussion that may lead to more discussions. If you revert back to Order-Taker vs. Innovator mentality, you’ve blown your credibility and Mr. Decision Maker will feel duped by your voicemail message to engage in a discussion that is nothing more than a sales pitch in the long run.

If you are going to engage at the C-level, start to learn how to have a C-level discussion. You have so much expertise to offer these individuals. And they have so much strategic insight to offer you. And there’s only one way to learn. By doing.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: engineering, proposal writing, RFQ, sales funnel, sales methods, sales-engineering

Introduction to Social Networking

May 20, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Last night I gave a talk about social networking to the local chapter of the American Society for Quality. It was so well-received I decided to post it.

As engineers are outsized, downsized and forced into a sales function within their companies, it’s important to understand how social networking can establish your Personal Brand. While most of you think that social networking is what keeps your kids online at night and not doing their homework, it’s becoming the primary fulcrum for business and personal development.

Social Networking involves:

online communities of people sharing/exploring interests, activities, products and services for the purpose of communicating and sharing information over a broad group of users
utilizing various Internet sites to get your Personal Brand out to a series of audiences who might be interested in YOU
THE way of landing a new job because you are creating demand for your Personal Brand rather than participating in a flood of resumes sent in response to some posting on Monster.com (which means you are simply a commodity)
viral marketing – the new Word of Mouth, or how information gets passed around

What is the value of social networking?

1. Expand your network

2. Obtain references

3. Own your online brand

4. Find jobs

5. Build thought leadership

6. Stay on top of industry trends

7. Stay on top of breaking news

8. Demonstrate you’re on the leading edge

9. Improve your productivity

10. Learn from others

11. Improve your writing

12. Become a better editor

13. Clarify your thoughs

This list is courtesty of Dave Fleet.

How to use Social Networking to achieve personal and professional branding as well as professional development

Expand your network: you never know when you may need one. If you do one thing, establish yourself on LinkedIn. Create a Profile. It becomes your internet presence, fulcrum for personal branding, platform for your body of work and your resume, site of references and recommendations, list of groups you belong to, a snapshot of who you are professionally. IT’S WHERE PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS AND EMPLOYERS GO TO CHECK YOU OUT.
Every time you update your Profile, it’s announced to your Contacts or Network depending on your LinkedIn settings. Updating your Profile is dynamic and a means of keeping your name in front of your Internet public.

What is your “network” on LinkedIn and other sites and how does it reflect your Personal Brand?

Some folks contact everyone they ever knew and build a big, bulk network list (“my network is bigger than your network”). By establishing Contacts, you are LinkedIn to the contact list of your Contacts, which means your potential contact list grows exponentially with each new Contact you acquire.
Some folks contact everyone within their organization to achieve immediate critical mass (another form of “my network is bigger than your network”). If your network only encompasses who you work with, how can your ideas expand if you are still thinking inside your box?
Some folks start their network by contacting thought leaders they respect and KNOW (only contact folks you know, please), valued colleagues in their field or at their company, and people (including hierarchy at your company) who you want to keep in your loop as you build your Personal Brand
Join LinkedIn Groups. Currently ASQ has 73 Groups on LinkedIn, all focusing on niche areas. Groups align you with folks having similar interests and /or perspectives. Groups are characterized by Discussions which are started and managed by the Group Manager.
You can check (for free or subsciption) who’s been checking you out on LinkedIn.
Join the ASQ local Section Users Group on LinkedIn.
Join in or simply monitor Group Discussions, depending on corporate policy or personal preference.
Sign up for blog feeds to stay on top of trends and get your Personal Brand known.

Obtain References

References are critical to personal brand building. References talk about how you deliver against your values, skillset and ethics.

If your corporate policy allows you to post references on your LinkedIn profile, do so.
References are a great way of demonstrating your body of work to potential and current customers. You – and no one else – have earned these references.
Every time you receive a new Reference, it’s announced to your LinkedIn list (Contacts or Network depending on your settings)
References assist you in building your Personal Brand
If you need to center on Who You Are, read about yourself on LinkedIn.

What is your Personal Brand?

What are your attributes and how do you consistently deliver against these attributes? Dan Schawbel basically invented the term when he started his blog several years ago.

It’s walking the talk and being impeccable with your word.
Which gets into ethics
Which means you share ideas
Which means you don’t hold your cards close to your chest
Which means you move 1mm outside of your comfort level.
Try it.

Top Social Networking Venues for achieving personal and professional branding as well as professional development

LinkedIn – #1 site for professional networking, over 35 million subscribers. Indexes by Name, Group, Keyword.

Facebook – launched Aug. 2007, 1.5 million subscribers in 12 months, projected hundreds of millions of subscribers by end of 2009 (Wikipedia).

Twitter – real-time social messaging, a lot of one-time usage, used by marketers to influence decision making, build body of opinion.

Additional Social Networking Venues: Blogs

A blog (contraction of terms web log) is a type of website maintained by an individual who (ideally) regularly posts commentaries on specific niche topics, descriptions or events or videos or photos.

I recommend these blogs for assisting you in developing more insight into the sales aspect of engineering.

Alltop - helps you locate blogs on relevant topics, such as engineering, business, ethics, religion, quality, etc.

Selling To Big Companies – Jill Konrath’s fantastic website and blog about account entry strategies.

Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel’s (author of Me 2.0) blog includes a variety of bloggers posting about various relevant and timely Personal Branding topics.

Patrick O’Malley – guru of how to use LinkedIn effectively.

Selling To VITO – discusses sales methods. However, the book by this name offers a great summary of the personalities and mindsets of C-level management, engineers, and support staff. Know who you are talking to and stop those peer discussions. Go for the top!

Seth Godin’s Blog – the guru of internet marketing on various topics, ethics and ideas. A great inspiration.

What are you waiting for?

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: engineering, engineers, personal branding, sales methods, social networking

Creating a Sales Funnel or an RFQ Mill? (Part One)

May 16, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

What’s your least favorite task? Ah, the dreaded “P” word: PROSPECTING. If you’re in business for yourself or work for small to mid-sized companies, you probably wear multiple hats. You do the engineering but are also responsible for developing new business for your company. Without new business coming in, you might not have all that much to do in the workplace, right?

With today’s economic challenges, engineering staff are often asked to fulfill a sales function. They tend to fall into the trap of calling prospective companies and asking to bid on upcoming projects. Engineers equate the RFQ process with selling. In fact, it’s the quickest way of turning your company into an RFQ mill – providing multiple responses to what may involve the same RFQ being bid on by multiple vendors.

An RFQ mill doesn’t create the proverbial sales funnel needed to drive revenue. In fact, it’s the quickest way to deplete your pipeline or fill it with less-than-profitable jobs due to the amount of time, rework and rebid that goes into participation in the RFQ mill. If done to excess – or as the sole means of business development - there will not be enough hours in the day for you to respond to these RFQs. Which means you won’t have enough time to devote to those projects already won that are the basis of your job function. Think about it.

An RFQ mill is not a sales funnel. It’s the road to business development insanity. And we know Einstein’s definition of insanity.

This three-part series looks at the three critical-to-success areas impacting business development.

Part One deals with WHO you are calling on
Part Two looks at WHAT you are saying when you call folks
Part Three examines WHEN you need to understand the sales process, work outside your comfort level and talk to key decision makers – which is all the time

So just WHO ARE YOU CALLING ON WHEN YOU PROSPECT?

Most of the time, you are calling on your peers. Why? Because it’s easier to have a conversation with someone you know. So keep in mind that when you are prospecting, you want to create that type of rapport - even with folks you might not know, initially.

Otherwise you are basically talking to yourself…. with a person who may not be a decision-maker….at your company’s hourly billing rate….on a project that may or may not be approved let alone funded….and spinning out “what-if”….and giving away your precious expertise….so that the individual on the other end of the phone/email/table can take your knowledge and apply it to someone else’s solution.

That doesn’t sound very productive let alone profitable.

I recommend your looking at Anthony Parinello’s Selling To VITO book and website, Selling To VITO. While it may or may not fit your personal style, to me the most important learnings from this book are the personality portraits and decision-making algorithms of the prospective company’s hierarchy.

If you know the mindset of the person you are talking to, they become your peer – even if they are several layers up the food chain from where you sit. And they will value this type of discussion.

CEOs, VPs, GMs are solutions-focused, interested in gaining market share, improving their company image, being competitive, increasing revenue, decreasing/controlling expenses and waste and measuring tangible results of the benefits and advantages your services provide. They are NOT interested in features or discrete projects or outcomes. These are the folks you should be initiating your discussions with.

Technical Sales Staff and Engineers are well-educated, extremely loyal, risk-averse (and therefore hold their cards close to their chest), divisionally aligned and tend to immediately focus on features and discrete outcomes rather than advantages and benefits. Unless they are the Owners, these individuals can influence a C-level decision but may not be able to clinch the deal. Asking them to make your case to their higher-ups is asking them to take a risk on your behalf. Keep in mind that they tend to be risk averse. So why are you depending on them to win business for you? They are stuck in the same place you are.

Internal Support Staff are job- and task-focused and want to preserve their position within the company. They stick to the status quo. They are a good resource to find out more about the culture of their organization. They usually have no decision-making impact. Choose your time wisely.

If you want to get out of RFQ Mill Syndrome, you MUST engage the top level staff in your initial discussions. OK, get off the mental ledge you just climbed onto.

The good news is: while it may be outside your current comfort level, you already have the knowledge base to provide a high level conversation that says a lot about the value you and your organization bring to your prospective customer’s table.

Now let’s get to work on your tools and skillset.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: engineering, RFQ, sales engineers, sales funnel, sales methods, sales skills, sales-engineering

Consulting or just acting like a consultant?

May 9, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

I had lunch with a friend of mine about a month ago. While we were eating it was hard not to overhear the conversation in the next booth. A man and a woman, obviously employees of a large, well-known local corporation, were having a discussion about the drop in quality for their products.

My friend, a consultant, asked me whether or not I felt he should reach out to them when the employees finished their lunch and got up from the table. It was so obvious to him that their company had a problem and he knew he could fix it. I told him that, as far as I could tell, this was a private conversation. I felt that these folks would view his professional overture as a violation of their privacy.

Sure enough, the couple got up to leave and my friend, with a “nothing lost nothing gained shrug” got up, introduced himself to them with his business card in hand, and told them he couldn’t help but overhear from their lunchtime discussion that there were some problems he knew he could help them fix.

What amazed me was that my friend was shocked when the man cut him off, mid-sentence, telling him he wasn’t interested in the services my friend was offering and left abruptly with the other employee. Clearly, their lunch had been ruined. Clearly, in the future, they wouldn’t be airing company information in a public place where it could be overheard, either.

Clearly, my friend didn’t have a clue that his spontaneous “consulting pitch” wasn’t going to open doors for growing his business. Saying you are a consultant and acting like one are two different things.

Anybody see the real problem here? Consultants don’t sell. They consult. They are solutions providers who work with companies due to relationships, confidence and trust that have been built over time. And people with problems rarely admit they have them.

Consultants don’t “fix” problems. If you want a quick fix, hire a repair service. Consultants walk the talk because they wear it, live it, breathe it, mean it and appreciate that timing and understanding the value they bring to the table are everything.

Another friend of mine was co-consulting on a project I had brought him in on. He sent me an email asking me whether he should call on well-known Company B while he was attending an out-of-town seminar near their corporate headquarters. This company, and a specific problem, had surfaced during discussions with our client, Company A. I asked him why he felt he could violate a confidential discussion and use the information to gain account entry into a major corporation where he had no prior history or credibility for that matter?

Consultants, the real ones, understand that the only way to build credibility – and their business – is to earn it. Account entry and referral is won through a body of work and relationship building that merits one’s referral to other companies.

Using confidential information – either overheard or resulting from a single meeting with a client – is no different than buying a leads list and cold calling. And it’s not consulting, either. It’s just selling something without having done your homework on that particular company. And expecting someone to give you an appointment to talk about their company’s problems, because you are a “consultant,” is naive.

Consultants who act the act without embodying a code of business ethics cannot expect to acquire top clients.

Think about it. What’s the basis for your consulting relationships?

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development, consultants, engineering, ethics, sales methods

There are no discrete problems for people with an eagle’s eye view.

May 2, 2009 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Productive sales aerobics can help you shed habits which make your interactions with others less-than-engaging and therefore, less sought-after.

It’s not about the folks you work with “getting it.” It’s about your being able to “get it” about what these folks need from you… quickly, succinctly.

This is not about explaining in painfully specific technical language what your job entails or what it’s like to be an engineer, or how complicated the situation is. It’s about listening with four ears: simultaneously putting yourself in the shoes of the individual asking the question and then offering a refreshing and enlightening exchange of ideas, options, direction… Not discrete solutions for discrete problems.

There are no discrete problems if you listen and ask questions. That’s contrary to your mindset and how you’ve been taught to see the world. Take a 50,000 ft. eagle’s eye view of the situation. Imagine the perspective you gain by encompassing the perspectives of the different disciplines seated around the table, and drawing out these differences in a productive and meaningful way.

Demonstrate that a) you understand their challenges, from a strategic level, b) you have identified specific areas requiring tactical solutions, c) you have the skillset or network to achieve specific tactical solutions to meet their strategic objectives over a specific amount of time and that d) working with you will provide a cost-effective solution to the multiple issues on the table.

You just may find folks become comfortable communicating with you. And they may identify a few more problems that need your help to resolve…… over time….as a productive, innovative, communicative engineering resource.

You may just become sought-after.