Whoever sold you on the idea that all you needed to do was develop highly-honed soft skills to be successful selling and closing deals for your products, services and platforms also fell short of the mark. In essence, they told you that you wouldn’t need to rely on the left side, that analytical side, of your overly-developed right-sided sales brain.

Selling is not prescriptive. Entrepreneurship is not an academic exercise. Engineering and IT solutions become valuable only if the person making the investment fully realizes the translational value of your offering.

Soft skills are powerful. They are to be applied continuously. They become translational as well as transactional when you are willing to listen with both sides of your brain to create ROI and value.

There is no college course in soft skills that is offered to any student, engineering or otherwise. That is no excuse. There is no sales training course on how to memorize enough sales scripts to come across sounding like a peer-level techie to prospective customers. Again, no excuses.

It boils down to your level of comfort interacting with people who may not be as smart as you are, but are the folks with the money to move your venture or established business to the next level.

How comfortable are you with folks with whom you feel you have absolutely nothing in common (aside from the fact that they are the person who signs the checks to fund your venture or invest in your technical solution)?

Many CEOs of nascent startups perceive they can leave the “people skills” stuff up to whomever they hire in to sell their products. Yet these CEOs still are not able to speak investment dollars and cents and gain traction in the investment marketplace.  Many CEOs of established manufacturing and engineering services companies are seller-doers who utilize a skill set that was relevant in the pre-2008 era where money – and willingness to assume risk – were more abundant. Not anymore.

The digital millennium has made more of the business development pre-selection process easier for potential buyers. They can read all about you and your venture or company online – providing you have a well-established presence on social media platforms and your website is more than an “informational” billboard. You are up-to-speed in these areas, aren’t you?

The digital millennium has given you and your venture or established company the opportunity of starting business-building dialogues online with potential funders and customers via a well-developed LinkedIn profile, your comments in LI discussion forums and your blogging (or your comments on the blogs of thought leaders).

There are multiple opportunities to start your first customer conversation prior to that conversation being a selling discussion. Are you taking advantage of learning the mindset and priorities of your target markets?

Communication is the hallmark of humanity, even in a digital age. There are multiple opportunities to practice your soft skills, grow your business and technical acumen, and use your whole brain in the process.

How would you rate your soft skills? What are you going to do about it?

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page.

We carry these people, our trusted circle, around with us like a well-worn blanket, the kind we had when we were children and refused to part with – even when that blanket had become so well-worn with our love that it was nothing more than a tangled mass of fibers.

We never saw our blankie that way. To us, no matter how degraded it became, we continued to see only the pristine, soft, and reassuring blankie what was a constant comfort to us along life’s travails. Perhaps the most famous blankie-carrier is Linus van Pelt, from the comic strip Peanuts®.

How worn is your business blankie?

Your competitors, investors and customers, regarding you and your trusted circle of advisors from the outside-world-looking-in, may consider your business blankie as something of an old-boys or sorority network.  Perhaps you still hang out with everyone from your high school or country club. Any way you choose to look at this, from their perspective, your blankie is well past its prime purpose.

Your business blankie may not be serving you well in today’s globally competitive economy.

While I’m not suggesting you abandon the folks whom you feel have had your back throughout the years, you may need to make a decision to take some independent steps forward. On your own.

Your dependence on your business blankie might be an obstacle to your moving forward as a business person, developing new products and markets, and adapting, adopting, and applying new strategies when seeking investors for your venture.

Your reliance on your existing business blankie may cause you to be blind to the addition of advisors who would complement your existing circle. Are you being more exclusive than you realize?

Your persistence in continuing to do the same things, with the same folks, and expect different results could be the greatest impediment to your company’s becoming not only a competitor, but a leader, in the marketplace.

It’s not going to be “enough” for you to take a few, faltering steps, engage with folks outside your business blankie comfort level, and then run back as fast as you can to your tried-and-true circle of advisors. Whew! That was a close call. Back to your comfort level as fast as you can. Now where did you leave that business blankie of yours?

You will need to leave your business blankie at home. Perhaps you will need to pack it away with your mementoes, to be occasionally taken out and fondly regarded, from time to time. It’s long past serving its original purpose.  It’s tired. It’s time to relieve yourself of the burden of continuing to drag it along with you, wherever you go.

Do you have a business blankie? How worn-out is it?

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page.

Did you ever consider that your collection of social connections might be valuable, and not only to you?

Recruiters and employers certainly have picked up on the power of the personally cultivated network. Why do you think so many of them want you to become part of their Connections on LinkedIn? They want to deep dive into your network, especially if you are in a specific field of expertise.

The network you create is of tremendous value. Even if you don’t see your network in the same way that other folks view it.

The May 2013 edition of Inc. magazine cited that:

• “50% of companies with high [employee] retention rates decreased their investment in job boards last year.” (Aberdeen Group)
• “47% of hires who were referred by other employees are more likely to stick around than job-board candidates (14%).  (Jobvite)
• “While 98% of recruiters are using LinkedIn [among other social media sites mentioned] to recruit, only 38% of job seekers are using LinkedIn to find work.” (Bullhorn, Jobvite)
• 48% of social-savvy employees are being motivated by cash bonuses to refer job candidates. (CareerBuilder)

]]> http://salesaerobicsforengineersblog.com/2013/05/16/whats-in-your-network/feed/ 0 http://salesaerobicsforengineersblog.com/2013/05/14/if-you-build-it-sell-it/ http://salesaerobicsforengineersblog.com/2013/05/14/if-you-build-it-sell-it/#comments Tue, 14 May 2013 09:07:45 +0000 Babette Ten Haken http://salesaerobicsforengineersblog.com/?p=4378 There’s been a lot of online chatter lately about how to create your first sales team for your startup, including feasible compensation strategies.  I hope you haven’t put off having your first selling conversations until you secure funding to hire your first VP of Sales.

 If so, you are already behind the 8-ball.

Your first selling conversations start with customer discovery, and encompass those pitches to investors as well.

If you are the CEO, you sell. If you are building it, you are responsible for selling it.

The problems start when the CEOs of startups (and some mature service companies) put the sales function back into the same status quo silo in which it has always existed. Selling is someone else’s responsibility. You didn’t go to engineering or architecture school to sell. You went to school to create and to “do.”

So you leave the most critical transactional, and translational, aspect of your venture up to Them: those sales types.

There are Sales Types and there are Sales Types. The problem continues when you leave the selection of those sales types up to the investors of your early stage startup. Investors and advisors just may bring in the folks who sell like it’s 1990 to get those periodic spikes in sales when it’s time to apply for another round of funding. They just may bring in the sales trainers who have their tried-and-true one-size-fits-all used by millions canned spiel.

They may over-structure your organization long before you really need a sales force.

Startups are not miniature versions of large companies. Why make your startup vulnerable by refusing to take the helm as the first Chief Business Development officer? If the buck stops with you, then get down to work generating the buck.

Take the time to learn how to articulate – in words everyone seated around the business table can understand – the value that your product, service or platform brings to investors and early adopters. If you can’t articulate this value proposition to your early stage partners, how are you (or investors) going to be able to articulate it to the first VP of Sales?

If the first VP of Sales is unable to meet your strategic, but poorly stated, financial expectations, you may be out $200,000 and one VP of Sales within 12 months. You may become a lot wiser as well, but why learn in this manner?

It’s exciting to set up a sales force for your startup. It’s thrilling to gain a funding round and hire staff and create the look and feel of an established and thriving company.  Go-to-market, launch time may project your startup into a trajectory where quotas cannot be met because target markets are insufficiently defined.

Yes, there may be millions of folks out there who could use your product, service, or platform. No, these people aren’t buying when you ask them to.

How many customers did you, Ms. CEO, speak to before you decided to throw your sales force at the problem of revenue generation?  Waiting for your sales force to tell you that your venture doesn’t quite fit into the marketplace is not the way to gather customer discovery feedback. That’s customer service and market research, not selling. You may be too far down the product development road at that point to make those critical pivots that would have allowed your product, service or platform to become a viable and preferred choice for customers.

Your first selling conversation starts with you. Have these early on, and often. Those startups that thrive and lead the field are the startups where the CEO isn’t too far away from the customer interface.

Make the decision to become that type of CEO-Leader.

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page.

One of the first signs that the wheels are coming off a startup is when everyone is at odds with one another. If you are in a small, family-owned business, however, this type of dysfunction may be the status quo and, unfortunately sanctioned, norm.  Along the sales-engineering interface®, tension between disciplines can become so palpable that you can cut it with a knife.

You are all playing in the same sandbox, every day.

You shouldn’t be playing games, either. Your startup is your passion. Your small business is your livelihood. You have perfected your technical and engineering expertise over the years. You are a business development rock star.

Regardless of where you fit into this equation, when you aren’t able to collaborate effectively with the rest of the team, it drains everyone’s energy at best. At worst, the situation can degenerate into a business-threatening sideshow.

There’s one key strategy for remedying this scenario. Communication. Top-down, bottom-up, and sideways. What’s the communication situation in your Sandbox?

If you don’t communicate:

• it’s hard to play well with the other kids when you don’t know the rules of the game you are playing.
• it’s frustrating to play well with the other kids when the rules are constantly changing or only apply to certain players on the team.
• it’s difficult to create deliverables that are valuable to colleagues and customers when you constantly feel you will have your legs taken out from under you by a team member going rogue.
• it’s irritating to have a team meeting and find out afterwards that various factions are pulling in different directions, towards different objectives.
• it’s challenging to go to weekly team meetings never knowing which team is going to show up.
• it’s bothersome to have certain individuals take up everyone’s time with drama and petty differences.
• it’s painful when the biggest impediment to collaboration and synergy is the CEO of the company, and their sons, daughters, and family members.
• it’s burdensome to be made to feel like you are on the outside, looking in, rather than being respected as a Person of Worth.
• it’s not easy to learn the language of the folks seated around the table, so that they better understand what you are talking about.
• it’s Herculean to learn the language and mindset of sales when you’ve been so immersed in engineering and IT and peer discussions.
• it’s easier said than done to concede that your marketing research and sales data are qualitative impressions now quantified, which perhaps don’t stand up to the scrutiny of your scientific and technical colleagues.
• it’s formidable to tear down discipline-driven, status quo mindset and corporate departmental silos (even in small companies with less than 5 employees) and learn to collaborate and work cross-functionally.

How valuable is the breadth and depth of your team’s experience and knowledge? This realization can make a difference in your bottom line. Develop a robust and healthy corporate culture that your customers want to continue investing in.

It begins by scrutinizing the dynamics of your business sandbox. For starters, try communicating. What’s in your Business Sandbox?

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page. 

If you want to grow a business garden that’s varied, educational, and self-renewing, here are 3 Tips for you.

1. Think ABD instead of ABC. Always be Developing, instead of Closing. Till the soil. Buyers may not be ready to buy; however, they are always in need of development. Your network also needs development. The Contact you meet today may refer you – without your knowing about it – to someone who might become your best strategic customer. Attend meetings and networking events that are educational and relevant to your own business development needs. Seek out meetings and networking events that your target markets attend, not your sales buddies. Move 1 millimeter outside of your current comfort level. Grow yourself and develop your business at the same time.
2. Fertilize and cross-pollinate your brain and your customer base. The most robust species have the capacity to adapt and be flexible across a range of environmental factors. While I’m not suggesting you become all things to all people, think about the common denominators – common themes and issues -occurring across multiple business segments. Remain open to creating discussions which pull information and experience you’ve gained in working with companies in one segment, into another segment. This ability not only allows you to grow your own knowledge base for thought-leadership, but also provides you with the tools to begin provocative and relevant dialogues with customers in different industry segments who might have more in common than they think. You may find yourself in the position of brokering deals with multiple vendor-customers, instead of simply selling your – or your employer’s – stuff.
3. Weed your garden frequently. If your customer base is loaded with anyone who you can get to do business with you, err on the side of quality instead of quantity. Review your customers, and your targeted prospects, each month. You should always have a plan for your business development garden. What types of customers, what types of contracts, what types of projects? If there are customers in your garden who take up all of your time reinventing a non-lucrative wheel, or who are not the types of folks you do your best work for, consider pruning backyour commitments to them. Weed out the low-hanging fruit which may never grow into long term, loyal customers and advocates. Make the best use of your time, and that of your customers, by selecting the right types of folks to work with, in your well-planned business garden.

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper by clicking here at the Free Resources Page.

You can opt-out of the draw, depending on your experience and level of confidence. Let’s consider that customer base you’ve been assigned. Where did they come from? Who worked these accounts previously?

All that glitters in the renewal pan may not be gold. Your renewal base may turn out to be rubbish.

Inherited renewal accounts that have been turned in by your sales team, in order to provide sales newbies with a “base” of core accounts, can become both time-consuming and distracting. After all, you are planning on hitting the ground running and focusing on new customer acquisition. Your renewal accounts may have other plans for how you use your time. Naively making phone calls to introduce yourself may yield an earful of renewal customer dissatisfaction about your predecessor’s performance.

Before you are distracted by renewal accounts, follow these tips for keeping you firmly focused on new customer acquisition.

1. Conduct a renewal account autopsy. What’s their investment history with your company? Are they “in” one year and “out” the next? Do they have unrealistic expectations about the time frame in which your company delivers ROI? Is their annual spend high one year and low the next? This pattern may reflect the economic well-being of their company. Do they pay their invoices on time? Is there a different key contact name on the account from year to year? Understand your company’s can of worms as well as the renewal customer’s.

2. Create a strategic persona for new customers which aligns with your core sales competencies. Create a lucrative income stream for yourself and provide ROI for them. Identify which renewal accounts fit this strategic new customer persona, are candidates for strategic upselling, will become loyal to your brand, and therefore complement your core strengths as a SalesPerson of Worth. Compare the two customer sets: your new customer persona should align with that of renewal customers. Otherwise you are nothing more than a glorified customer service agent to your sales predecessor’s disgruntled renewal customer. You constantly will be pulled in two directions.

3. Decide your role with new customers as well as renewal accounts. Nurturing weak and tactically-oriented renewal accounts to “save” them is busy work. Not all of them are worth saving. Not all of them are good business people. Not all of them should have been prospected, let alone sold. These accounts may be someone else’s idea of low-hanging, easy-to-sell fruit. If you can’t easily align renewal accounts into your persona for strategic new customers, it’s time to turn them back in and stop wasting your time.

4. Check your sales pulse each week. How much time are you spending on acquiring new business vs. serving renewal accounts? Set time limits on the amount of time you devote to renewal customers. With the hire of yet another sales newbie, you may find yourself returning many of these time-consuming renewal accounts to your territory’s account garbage pail for re-assignment. It’s like passing on a hot-potato. It’s up to your management to decide when to cut their lifeline and jettison them.

You have better things to do with your time as a sales professional than muck about with garbage renewal accounts. Do your upfront account analysis, call it the way you see it, set a time limit on handling these potentially non-productive accounts, and stick to acquiring new, YOU type of business.

Good selling!

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page.

They are not alone. There are a lot of mature business and technical professionals out there with nondescript LinkedIn profiles as well.

It seems that everyone is waiting for Someone to hand them a Recipe for Their Success. Don’t hold your breath.

Do you find yourself hesitant to put yourself out there and take a chance on your first job, or changing jobs? Your hesitation may be founded on your not knowing what the outcome of your decision will be: your decision to take the chance in the first place.

If you are applying for jobs, or are in a current position and want to move on within your present company or apply to another company, take a look at the job description you are targeting. Is it titled: “This is the perfect job for YOU and only You. As a result of being hired, you will now have a perfect life, will understand how to do your job perfectly from Day One, will get along with everyone perfectly, and will never experience any self-doubt or stress.”

I didn’t think so either.

Don’t lose sight of the fact that education does not prepare you to do your job perfectly. In fact, it may not even prepare you to do your job at all. Education provides you with a set of skills that can be applied to functional job requirements. The outcome depends on you, the company, your work environment, the deliverables specified by customers, and, quite frankly, what you ate for breakfast today and whether it’s allergy season or not.

Hopefully, the skill sets you have acquired via various educational and certification processes will provide the structural underpinning that allow you to produce output that is deemed valuable by your employer and the customer. However, often there is a steep learning curve involved in taking what you learned in college and applying it to the real world.

You will learn a lot on the job. What you learned in school, in very short order, will morph into how “what you know” is applied to the technical and business world. That stuff can’t be learned in a book. You can’t prep for all of the scenarios that will be thrown at you.

It’s not perfect. It’s not supposed to be.

Practical application of skills training has as many outcomes as there are people seeking to produce the same type of product or deliverable.

The goal is homogeneity of output. Especially if you are in a Six Sigma, or Zero Defect or Lean environment.

In the process of creating output, meeting sales quotas, producing deliverables, it’s not going to be perfect.

Every day, if not hour, may introduce a wrinkle into the equation. There are times you won’t be sure about what you are doing. It’s no one’s call but yours whether to ask for help or continue winging it. You’ll find out in short order whether you made the right call or not.

There’s no recipe someone is going to hand you for how to not mess up at work. You will. More than once. Just don’t repeat the same mess up. Please go on to bigger and better ones: it means you are comfortable taking risks rather than leading a prescriptive business life.

There’s no mirror you can preen and watch yourself role-play at doing your job. You aren’t participating in a reality show. You are living your professional life front and center on your own stage.

You are responsible for writing your own recipe for success. Living your life through the eyes of others doesn’t cut it.

Enjoy cooking!

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper by clicking here at the Free Resources Page.

There are only three pairs that I wear on a regular basis. They fit well, support my feet, align my body when walking, and contribute to my overall feeling of well-being. They fit me, my needs, and my feet, like a glove. I trust in them and can depend on them.

How about you? How many pairs of shoes do you have in your closet – compared with the number of shoes you wear, day in and day out, on a regular basis because you can depend on them to take you through your business day?

The same holds true for business solutions, technical solutions, sales training solutions and just about anything else you are offering to the market place.

Your customer has an entire closet full of solutions they have purchased, tried, and abandoned. These business and technical solutions seemed like good choices at the time, but were transient efforts, incapable of going the distance. 

Yes, I know there are vendors out there touting their solution as tried and true and tested by thousands of folks. Yet how many of those thousands of businesses jettisoned these sales training solutions into the back of their customer closet? That “one size fits all” strategy didn’t fit the bill over the long haul.

How many of you have resurrected technical RFPs from prior projects, and slapped a different name on the cover, did some minor editing, and represented it in response to an entirely different customer – and then wondered why you didn’t win the bid? Guess how many other manufacturers sent in RFPs using the same strategy? Your customer collected another bunch of status quo, superficial shoes that didn’t fit their situation very well and were judged as an insufficient strategic match.

In order to provide the types of solutions which are enduring and valuable, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and walk around for a while. You know, the status quo shoes they wear day in and day out; shoes that are comfortable to them and represent their habits, processes, attitudes and values.

Figure out whether your customers’ shoes fit you – do they chafe and rub and cause blisters and discomfort? Perhaps your customers’ shoes are not all that comfortable for them, as well. Perhaps it’s time for them to find a new pair of shoes – one that they can slip their feet into every day, walk around, and accomplish their tactical objectives and strategic goals.

If your solutions are going to become your customers’ new pair of go-to shoes, there’s no “one size fits all” to this concept. Take the time to understand their needs. More importantly, determine the context in which your “shoe solutions” are going to be put into play: is there lots of rough terrain to constantly negotiate? Are you walking on silk carpet or egg shells most of the time?

It’s not about selling them another pair of shoes that they will tire of wearing in short order. It’s about improving their quality of business life over the long haul. That means understanding what it feels like to wear their shoes, as well as your own. Your thoughts?

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers. Download her newest White Paper by clicking here at the Free Resources Page.

When’s the last time you were in touch with your core personal values?

The answer to my question should be: Daily. Consistently. How did you answer my question?

Core personal values involve our ethics and the value system which reinforce our ability to scrutinize situations and guide ourselves through our business and personal lives. Core personal values are not like a set of clothing that you chose to wear sometimes, and leave in your closet for other situations.

Core personal values are your second skin. Your personal mantra. What are yours?

Mine are: Trustworthiness, Professional Integrity, Ethical Behavior and Respect. My customers know that from the get-go. They can expect these values from me.

I, in turn, expect the same from them.

When you align with people whose value systems are harmonious with your own, you don’t have to remember what you said to everyone. It’s always the same thing. No shape-shifting allowed in your core value system.

When you consistently deliver on your value system across your personal and professional experiences, you build a network that is engaged, mentoring, and protective. You have their backs; they in turn have yours. There should be no opportunity for betrayal.

When you cultivate new relationships, both professionally and personally, you trust your gut and intuition – founded on the breadth and depth of your experiences – to guide your decision to accept or decline the invitation. To walk away from the business table or to stay. To run – or not – with the pack regarding the latest industry trend, social app, or venture investment.

Perhaps you struggle with determining, let alone adhering, to your value system. There are so many temptations in the marketplace. So many quotas to meet, appointments to set, output to deliver, work to get off your desk so you can reload the next day.

There are so many distractions that keep you from firmly, definitely, and consistently setting your course, focused on your core personal value system.

Defining your core personal values is not something you can keep putting off until tomorrow.

Deep dive into the sum total of all of your life experiences. Identify the common themes, personae,  and scenarios, that you keep becoming involved in. That endless loop of spinning your wheels, hoping for traction this time and a different outcome. Except there won’t be a different outcome until you take that 10,000 foot eagle’s eye view of your own situation.

Choose to extricate yourself by creating your compass point focusing on your core personal values.

Once you make this decision, once you define your value system, everything changes. You have made your personal pivot. How can any of the old stuff align with the new personal course you have identified?

You got it. You are the person who realigns. Everyone and everything else has their own stuff to distract them. Not your problem.

You will notice the difference immediately. People are more attentive to what you have to say. Your input-throughput-output looks and sounds different, because you express yourself – you communicate – differently. Because you are aligning yourself, constantly, daily, along your core personal values. Your core personal values, not theirs – whatever they may be.

What are your core personal values? Something to think about this week.

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, brings entrepreneurial mojo back into small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. She builds vibrant revenue-producing business strategies for technical start-ups seeking investors and early customers.