| 10 Tips for SEs During the Economic Winter |
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Even though sales reps are stuck in the economic muck, there is no reason why SEs should be. SEs can continue moving deals forward. Here are a few tips to guide your thoughts:
10) Get technical decisions faster - How can you win faster? Control the time to the technical decision -- this is independent of the money decision. Get there as fast as possible, and then help the customer defend the decision for the long haul. Can you do a controlled proof-of-concept instead of a trial? Can you do a custom demo instead of a POC?
9) Improve the quality of deals - How often do you lose to "do nothing"? Is this deal worth your time? If not, what must you know to improve its quality? If the customer does not know things like the technical decision timeframe or the quantified business impact of the solution, help them figure it out. Do not be afraid to walk away from deals that are a waste of time.
8) Grow deal sizes - You are in a perfect position to dig for pain and new business problems that are always lurking under the surface. More business problems = more solutions = more revenue.
7) Improve the technical win rate - Improving the quality of deals will improve the technical win rate. Identify each stakeholder's technical decision criteria. Prioritize the stakeholders. Resolve their criteria step-by-step in priority order. Ensuring key technical decision criteria are being resolved will win allies, and improve the likelihood of a favorable outcome.
6) Prioritize your time - For any activity, ask yourself, "Is this a good use of my time?". Do not agree to blind on-site calls. Do not agree to blind demos. Don't do it! Just say "No". Ensure yourself you are using your time wisely - Your time is too valuable to be abused.
The details of the final 5 tips may be found in our Blog.
5) Check in with existing customers
4) Check in with partners
3) Check in with product marketing, engineering, tech support
2) Check in with your manager
1) Get SALES training
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| Waznu at salesengineering.com |
Check out what'z new at SEDC. We continue to evolve our programs to help pre-sales organizations achieve significant measured business impact.
The SE Improvement Program
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This change management program gains leadership support, defines a success plan, trains, enables with tools, reinforces regularly, and measures performance gains. Its pre-sales process aligns with any sales methodology. |
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See a Case Study where in 6 months one district grew annualized revenue from $500k to $3.8M.
The program cost can have minimal impact on your income statement -- As an Intellectual Property investment, it can be an amortizable asset, not a large one-time expense.
Part 1) Gaining Leadership Support and Commitment
The Executive Workshop is a one-day planning event for sales and SE executives. The business impact of pre-sales improvement is identified. A success plan is defined that addresses sales / SE interaction, policies for SE and sales rep adoption, and metrics to be tracked.
JumpStart is a 2 week $4,995 program that achieves quick measured evidence of pre-sales business impact. Recently, an SE took training on Jan 13-14 2009, and one day later on Jan 15 used their plan from class to acquire Solution Closure of a $100k deal.
Part 2) Training
SEskills, Project Managing the Solution Sale, shows SEs how to engineer Solution Closure and impact key pre-sales metrics such as solution closure time, deal size, funnel quality, and win rate. SEs create an actionable plan to close one of their stalled deals.
SEchannels, Project Managing the Channel Solution Sale, is part of the Channels SE Improvement Program. Channel SEs technically qualify and enable partners with technical and sales skills. SEDC tools help ChSEs prioritize time, evaluate partner gaps, and analyze effort relative to partner potential. ChSEs define a Channel Enablement Plan for an existing partner.
SEleaders, New: Leading Pre-Sales Teams, puts the "manage" into "manager". Topics include adaptive management styles, change management, praising and reprimanding, measurement, and motivating pre-sales staff to drive consistent, repeatable, and efficient behavior. SE Managers define a Pre-Sales Improvement Action Plan.
SEforPS, New: Pre-Sales for Professional Services, helps consultants drive new business. Consultants learn to proactively discover business problems, assess deal quality, adapt to stakeholder decision tendencies, objection handle, and hand off to/from sales.
SEpres and SEdemo, Technical Presentation/Demonstration Skills, improves the effectiveness of these tactical events. SEs learn to quickly establish credibility and implant lasting images of the solution and its value. Videotaped peer review provides quick skills improvement.
Sales Conference Keynotes are a great way to provide some edutainment for the troops, and leave them some key takeaway skills and tools.
Part 3) Pre-Sales Productivity Tools
SEbase, SE Knowledgebase, is a collaborative web-based product to share pre-sales intelligence such as qualification questions, value messages, competitive analysis, product availability, gotchas, glitches, workarounds, or any user-defined topic.
| SEplanit, Technical Opportunity Planner and Management Dashboard, is the first Pre-SFA. "Smart PSFA helps SEs improve funnel quality, prioritize time, get faster Solution Closure, and grow deals. Alerts flag problem deals, e.g., deals forecasted to close in 30 days that are still unqualified. SEplanit interfaces with SFAs that support links such as Siebel and salesforce.com. |
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Part 4) Post-training Reinforcement and Measurement
Training alone is not enough -- We forget 85% of material after 3 weeks. The post-training program makes new skills operational, ensures regular practice of new skills, and measures long term benefit. The standard program bundles in reinforcement and measurement activities.
Services are available to assist your efforts around pre-sales organization, assessment, compensation, motivation, recruiting, management coaching, SE coaching, etc. |
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Please feel free to email me your comments and stories at sedc_philjanus@salesengineering.com
Sincerely,
Philip Janus
Founder & CTO
salesengineering.com
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