2009 December | 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.