2012 September | Sales Aerobics for Engineers ® Blog

7 Tips for Selling to Techies – Part 2

September 28, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 6 Comments

Techies rattle salespeople. In fact, it can be quite a sport for them. Technical professionals enjoy asking what they feel are provocative questions about your products, services, and platforms. It’s tough not to spout what sounds like a canned spiel in response. It’s your fear response taking over from your listening logically response. The more they sense your fear is when the techies seem to really get going and start cross-examining us about technical minutiae. So much for a sales conversation and controlling the business development process.

While talking with techies can be uncomfortable for most of us, it doesn’t have to be. With a little insight into their mindset, you will find you two have far more similarities than differences. This post is the second in a two-part series entitled: 7 Tips for Selling to Techies.

The first 3 Tips were published yesterday. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development process, sales expert, selling to techies, techies, technical professionals

7 Tips for Selling to Techies – Part 1

September 27, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 3 Comments

Have you seen that National Geographic special on Orca, or killer, whales? In the program I was watching, a pod of 40 whales lunched their way through a seal colony. OK, yes, I know, yuck. The older whales were departing for other hunting grounds, except for two young whales that hung back and decided to have a bit of post meal fun. They swam up onto the shoreline to snatch a young seal.

Dessert?

Not exactly. They started to toss the seal back and forth between them, like a ball, for about 15 minutes. Just when I thought they were playing with their food, one of the orcas placed the seal gently in its mouth and swam back onto the beach and deposited the frightened seal on the sand. Game over. The seal made a bee-line for higher ground. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: sales, salespeople, selling to techies, techies, technical professionals

3 Tips for Having Your Customers at Hello

September 25, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

If you have seen the movie Jerry Maguire ®, you remember this famous line. At the film’s high point (there are many), the heroine goes into a long spiel rationalizing her behavior. The hero stops her with this one-liner. Of course they embrace and kiss and all that stuff.

Where am I going with this post, you might ask?

How would your engineering and sales life be if all your customers were that “sold” on you?

If you have your customers at “hello”, they: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business development, engineering, entrepreneur, sales, selling technology, start-up

Is Entrepreneurship The New Flavor of the Month?

September 21, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

There’s a lot being written about entrepreneurship today. Entrepreneurism’s resurrected popularity in today’s marketplaces and universities may be a direct result of the global economic meltdown from 2008. That economic event dragged all of us, quite firmly, into the digital millennium. No more post-industrial mindset. There is no turning back to the “way things used to be.” And for some generations, that’s the only way things will ever be.

Instead of a job for life. Instead of being a company man or woman. No more job security. So how does that impact personal longevity in the marketplace?

Entrepreneurship certainly is nothing new when you think about it. Perhaps cultural development could be viewed as a chronicle of entrepreneurship in response to environmental opportunities and challenges.

No doubt that we are being challenged, economically. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration Tagged With: digital millennium, entrepreneurism, entrepreneurship, post-industrial mindset

Life with Engineers – How Much Logic Can One Tolerate?

September 19, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

As sales people, you know how much fun it is calling on technical folks. If you don’t know your stuff, the techies will toss you around like a couple of orca whales tossing their prey before they eventually decide to eat you alive for your lack of technical knowledge. So if you are “spieling the sales spiel” without understanding one word of what it really means, do yourself a favor. Stop. Run your spiel by an internal technical colleague first. Figure out what the marketing folks (the ones who wrote your corporate messaging) have you saying. Because you know that the marketing folks didn’t bother to vet the scientific logic of their wordsmithing before they got creative.

Welcome to my world. It’s a world where word choices are important. It’s a world where customers listen to every word you say – to make sure it makes sense to them. I work with manufacturers, academicians and technical entrepreneurs. I blog for sales engineers, manufacturers, and technical start-ups. I read technical journals and engineering blogs. For fun. Really.

Some of my best friends are engineers, as well. And news flash: they don’t turn off their quest for logic when they leave the lab, either ! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration Tagged With: manufacturers, physicist, sales engineers, sales people, start-ups, techies, technical colleagues, technical entrepreneurs

New Sales Simplified is Michael Weinberg’s Passion

September 17, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Michael Weinberg is passionate and fearless about dragging people and companies firmly into prospecting for new business acquisition. Earlier this year, I met Michael Weinberg at a round-table meeting we both were invited to and realized he was a collaborator in demystifying and simplifying the sales process. Plus he has a killer sense of humor and a no-nonsense approach about going hand-to-hand with the pundits of Sales 2.0. His new book is ruffling more than a few feathers in the world of sales and business development. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: Book Review, Michael Weinberg, new business acquisition, New Sales Simplified, prospecting, sales

SWOT Yourself Every Now and Then

September 14, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

When’s the last time you took a good look at your company, from the outside looking in? The same way your customers and prospects see you. If you are an entrepreneur or a start-up, this tool should become your best friend.

A SWOT analysis is used to evaluate the strategic Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to a project or entrepreneurial venture.

Got SWOT?

Try growing some SWOT antennae. This exercise keeps you from getting comfy in your status quo. You know, the way things are. It keeps you connected to the stuff that’s important to your customers, not the things you “think” are important (that’s looking at yourself from the inside out, where it’s comfy). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business model, entrepreneur, financials, start-up, SWOT analysis, value proposition

Are You A Horse With Stripes or A Zebra?

September 13, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

How do you introduce yourself at meetings? Do you state your job title and professional certifications? Do you showcase the number of professional publications you have or whether or not you are the winner of the quarterly sales contests or the annual top sales leader award?

What do you really bring to the table, day in and day out? You are more than your job title or latest accolades. Those are nouns. What adjectives would you use to describe your professional core competencies – those deliverables that your colleagues and customers can expect to receive from you consistently, professionally, and with unending excellence? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales & Engineering Collaboration Tagged With: common denominators, cross-functional meetings, entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs, professional core competencies, sales, sales-engineering interface

3 Tips on how to be A Sales Geek

September 11, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

How comfortable are you using the left side of your brain to develop business? Now that’s something to think about. For engineers, let’s just say the left side of your brain may be a bit over-used. For sales folks, well, you need to do some work.

The fulcrum for today’s innovative business development is leveraged by collaboration between technical and non-technical professionals. If your role is selling, it’s important to become comfortable wielding data and communicating it simply and succinctly to people outside of your professional discipline.

Because not everybody “gets it.” Because you won’t always be speaking with your professional peers. So slinging the lingo, and speaking business babble or techno-speak, will end up marginalizing the very folks you want to be collaborating with. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business babble, business development, engineers, non-technical professionals, sales people, technical professionals, techno speak

7 of This Week’s Best Posts

September 9, 2012 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

If you read a lot of blog posts, news articles, and online journals the way I do, there are a few that stand out each week and are worth bookmarking, tweeting about (if you are so inclined), and re-reading from time to time. Each re-reading makes more sense as we relate the content to our current and ongoing experiences in the wild world of manufacturing, entrepreneurship, startups, engineering, and business.

These are my top picks among the content I read this week.

Have any favorites of your own? Let me know.

Enjoy reading!

Things I Wish I Knew Coming Building A Business Online Three Years Ago, Justice Wordlaw

Closing The Sale After You’ve Closed The Sale, by Michael Boyette

What To Do If Your Boss Is A Moron, by Dan Waldschmidt

Send The Proposal Just Before The Telephone Call or Video Call, By Mark Hunter

How To Manage Your Client’s Expectations, by S. Anthony Iannarino

Does Integrity Matter in Social Media, by Rebel Brown

Repeating Instructions: A Three-Step Process To Avoid Unproductive Communication, by Laura Stack

Babette Ten Haken blogs about manufacturing, startups, business, and engineers. Her company, Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, works with manufacturers and technical professionals – and really anyone who sells –on how to have business-building conversations that both you and your customers are comfortable having with each other. Think what a loyal and retained customer base means for your revenue stream. Connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.