2013 January | Sales Aerobics for Engineers ® Blog

Stop Percolating. Start Producing.

January 31, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

It’s easy to focus on all our business development possibilities, rather than drilling down on those which we – and only we – do exquisitely well. That’s why we have competitors: they focus on producing deliverables more efficiently than we do, in spite of their deliverables not-quite-being what we would have produced.

Probably because our competitors are not half as creative as we are. Probably because they realize this and focus on what they are capable of producing instead of bemoaning the fact that they can’t do it like we can.

After all, if they can get deliverables out the door into customers’ hands, who knows the difference? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps Tagged With: business development, competitive space, competitors, engineering, sales, start-up

Why Targeting Business Stasis isn’t Realistic

January 29, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Have you ever told yourself: “Once I get my business to this place, I can relax?” At one time or another, most of us have felt like a hamster on a wheel, churning and spinning on an endless business development journey leading to a finish line that seems just outside of our grasp.

Running your own business is both exhilarating and exhausting, regardless of whether you are an independent sales rep or engineering professional, the head of your department, an entrepreneurial start-up, or a small business owner. There are lots of items on your “to do” list and hopefully you have enough sense not to flail about at all of them simultaneously.

Yet when you get to where you think you are going, that oasis of business stasis, there always seems to be another new bright, shiny object just outside your grasp. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: business ecosystem, business goal, business stasis, dynamic equilibrium, engineering professional, entrepreneurial start-up, homeostasis, independent sales rep, small business owner

Are you an entrepreneurial dabbler in a corporate ecosystem?

January 25, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Are you a serial entrant into the job security sweepstakes? That’s a nice way of asking you how many positions you’ve had in the last 10 years. If your professional resume embarrasses you as a chronicle of what you feel are your professional short-comings, perhaps you are focusing your job searches (and your job, once you get hired) on: 1) whomever and wherever you can get a job; 2) the title of the position which you feel entitled to pursue, based on your education and certifications; 3) a script in your head of “how it’s supposed to be, and who I’m supposed to work for, and how I’m supposed to play my role” that you formed in grad school (even if you are not anywhere near being a recent grad); or 4) positions that are supposed to add to your resume (receiving more than you are giving) instead of showcasing what you already bring to the table (giving more than you are receiving). [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling Tagged With: job searches, professional resume, resume, serial re-employment

Get down to your meat and potatoes

January 24, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

You are responsible for understanding and articulating, in language everyone can understand, how your core capabilities, your products, your services, your platforms, your intellectual property, provide value to your colleagues, your organization, and your clients. (from Do YOU Mean Business?, p 61)

Keep it simple and succinct, please.

No matter how many degrees or certifications you have earned. No matter where you teach. No matter how many fantastic deals you have closed. No matter how super-duper you feel your entrepreneurial idea is. No matter how complex you think what-it-is-you-do.

If I don’t understand what you and your product, service, or venture are all about, I won’t contract for it, buy it, fund it, or give you my time.

Have you ever thought about you and your product, service, or venture from the customer’s / investor’s perspective?

Your parents and family (FFF or, in venture capital speak, Friends, Family and Fools) may be diplomatic as they throw more bootstrap money in your direction and tell you, “Well, that’s nice, dear.” Perhaps you became an unintentional entrepreneur and are now trying to build your business. Your colleagues and customers may tell you: “OK, I’ll think about it and let you know what I think.” Except they never do take the time to think about it and certainly don’t get back to you. Your employers may tell you: “We’ll see how that fits into next year’s budget.” Which means they put your idea on the farthest back burner in the nether reaches of the furthest business cosmos they have in their arsenal.

Because they not only don’t “get” what you do. They also don’t “get” how what you do helps them generate revenue. Because that’s what they want, and need, for you to do for them.

Just get down to the point of what it is – that tangible benefit I will receive – from doing business with you. Why is working with you valuable to your customers and funders, in helping them build their businesses.

How does working with you translate into my bottom line? Not so easy, is it?

The more words you throw into your pitch or product/service/platform deliverables will not make what you are selling more attractive, lofty, intellectual, or valuable. It’s just a whole lot more verbiage to slog through.

People don’t have time to slog through lots of words. Especially when the words you’ve chosen appear to dance around the meat and potatoes of the subject.

How does working with you translate into my bottom line?

The meat and potatoes is all about what you can do for them. It’s not about how great you and your idea or product is. It’s not about requiring them to think about how they can use your services in their organization.

They don’t want to have to Think; they want to Do. Connect the dots for them. Make their decision to fund or purchase you and your venture the obvious conclusion for them to reach.

Serve them a meal, not an abstract conversation that leaves your customers and funders feeling up in the air about taking action.

Give them something solid. Something they can chew on. Something they readily envision making their business lives more rewarding.

What’s your value proposition? I bet it’s delicious.

Babette Ten Haken provides technical people and other sellers a solid strategy for how to explain a product, its benefits, and its value in ways that buyers can easily understand and sellers can comfortably present. She gets people together who are often on opposite sides of the table, like engineers and sales people or entrepreneurs and investors. Her company, Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, works with technology-intensive entrepreneurs and manufacturers, focusing on revenue-generating business development strategies to take your business to the next level. Her book, Do YOU Mean Business? was named 2012 Finalist, Top Sales & Marketing Awards.

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: core capabilities, intellectual property, investors, IP, revenue generation, venture

Who are you and why are you sending me stuff?

January 22, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken 5 Comments

It’s the new year and companies are building their sales pipelines. Like you, my Inbox is filling with email blasts from people I don’t know trying to sell me stuff I may not need.

Because I do what I do, I end up reading through many of these emails. I try to figure out the logic of whatever the sender (usually a small business or solopreneur) thought they had in mind by sending these obvious email blasts out to their contact list.

If you, as a small business or sole proprietor of a company, are engaged in the activities I just described, here is what your Ready-Fire-Aim “sales prospecting” strategy looks like from the customer’s perspective:

1) If I don’t know who you are, I will delete your email without reading it. Even if it has a catchy subject line. I don’t have the time to slog through my Inbox in the first place. If I don’t know you, then I assume you are a) a spammer or b) being indiscriminate and naive in your email marketing strategy.

2) If I decide to read your email, I will check you out on LinkedIn and Google first. If you are an individual who has recently connected with me, and immediately feels this connection entitles you to send me email solicitations for your business, I will not only delete your email. I most likely will purge you from my list of Connections. It’s obvious you were only interested in connecting with me for the purposes of list-building for your business. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: email blasts, sales pipelines, small business, solopreneur

How Inexperienced are You?

January 18, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

If you are nearing graduation, you may be contemplating what your first job is going to look like. If you already are part of the workforce, perhaps, you take that stroll down memory lane from time to time, thinking about the type of job functionality you were prepared to assume way back when you graduated.

Let’s face it. You really didn’t know squat, even though you thought you did.

You may have been well-educated but you lacked the professional experience to assume responsibility and understand exactly where you could add value.

In other words, you learned on the job. You were inexperienced. We all are when we start out.

Leveraging Coincidence

January 17, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered about how your professional life tends to fall into place (or not)? One thing appears to lead to another, which then leads you in one direction or another. One seemingly lucky set of circumstances ends up playing out, over time, into a job opportunity, a promotion, a career, a life choice.

Some people will chalk that up to coincidence. You just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

It’s not coincidence that you understood exactly what to do with those opportunities, once presented.

Who’s the Expert?

January 15, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken 6 Comments

You spend a lot of time and money and years honing your skills, whether they are technical or business oriented. You’ve got certificates, diplomas, awards and a significant investment in continuously growing and improving your expertise. You attend sales schools, social media summits, professional association conferences. You are a speaker, mentor, advisor.

You’ve got expertise, hands down. You’ve got the credentials, hands down. You’ve got the killer resume and experience, hands down.

That makes you the expert. Right?

Not so fast there…

Getting to “Aha”

January 11, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken 2 Comments

The bulk of our business development efforts focus on developing relationships, consensus, dialogue, discovery and all of the stuff that gets the contracts signed, the deals done, and the projects delivered on time, under budget with zero defects.

To me, it’s all about those “aha” moments that occur along the way. I try to make them happen a lot. I encourage others on my teams to go for those “aha” moments first. Because they catalyze the rest of what happens in the process.

That’s when the magic happens.

5 Tips for Trusting Yourself

January 10, 2013 By Babette Ten Haken 4 Comments

You are familiar with the phrase “what got you to where you are today isn’t going to get you to where you need to go tomorrow.” Then there is the variation: “you got yourself to where you are today; you trust that you can get yourself where you need to go tomorrow.” How about: “you got yourself into this; you are going to have to get yourself out of this.”

You are the CEO of YOU: the common denominator of your enterprise, your career, your job function, your academic, technical or business expertise (or both), your vision, your goals. How well do you trust yourself in today’s rapidly changing, global business development playing field?

Here are 5 tips for evaluating where you are today and trusting yourself about where you are going tomorrow:

Tip #1: Do you trust yourself? That’s the underlying premise! There’s more involved in answering this question than simply acknowledging that you have self confidence about your ability to execute sound business judgment. Are you the same person who passionately started out your career or your enterprise? We all mature over time, as we take a few knocks, learn a lot more, grow older and hopefully wiser, and don’t repeat the same mistake twice. Running a business (or doing our job) may have its ups and downs. The thrill may be gone from time to time as we deal with the daily realities and fire-fighting which temporarily distract us from our long-term vision. Ultimately, do you still know yourself and have an uncompromised value system? Good. I thought so.

Tip #2: Are your core capabilities the same or have they changed since you started out? Your core capabilities are the skill and value foundation upon which your enterprise or job is built. Have you been able to leverage your experiences to augment your core capabilities or have you had to abandon them? Core capabilities can be reconfigured over and over again, as different opportunities present themselves. The best students, entrepreneurs and business owners see their experiences, and core capabilities, as additive so that they are not continually reinventing the wheel.

Tip #3: Are you getting in the way of where you are going tomorrow? This is a tough one for folks who are used to leading, with everyone following or being dragged along. Sometimes, the reason a company or project cannot go forward is that we, ourselves, are holding everything back. In the world of entrepreneurship, we call this a “pivot. Realizing when you need to step out of the way is a form of leadership, rather than being perceived as a sign of failure. ” Let it go if it’s for everyone else’s good, including your own.

Tip #4: Do you give in to second-hand opinion and, subsequently, self-doubt? No one said there was an Easy Button to professional and business development. From time to time, we take on too many challenges, accept projects we may regret, work with folks who drive us crazy. If we played things safe, we wouldn’t be presented with these opportunities. Leading and self-development involves assumption of risk. It’s not a matter of feeling inadequate. It’s more a matter of understanding the tools and knowledge and network we need to access to get to the next level. If in doubt, re-read Tip #1 again. Good. I thought so.

Tip #5: Are you comfortable in expansion mode? Some of us like the comfort of the niche markets and core capabilities we’ve grown for ourselves. Others of us like to put all the pieces together and move out into uncharted waters which are complementary to the skill sets we are leveraging. This question is a variation of Tip #3. And it’s a matter of how well you understand your customers, and your relationship with them.

If you are the CEO of a company which wants to expand, yet you are comfortable in your niche, perhaps it’s time to form a new company based on that niche and on your comfort level. Let the rest of the company sail into what you perceive as those uncharted expansion waters, with someone new at the helm and you on the Board of Directors. You both end up where you are going tomorrow.