• Pre-Sales
• Sales and SE Management
• Field Development
• Channels
• Training
• Services
• Products

There are no existing commercial sales methodologies providing a start-to-finish workflow for pre-sales engineers to achieve fast, repeatable Solution Closures.

Leverage Pre-Sales to Reduce Cost of Sales and Drive Revenue

Measureable Business Impact:

We recognize that commercial sales methodologies ignore the pre-sales role. Our SE Skills Improvement Program empowers SEs to "project manage" acquisition of Solution Closures. As a result, SEs directly impact cost of sales and revenue by:

• Increasing the number of qualified deals to improve the funnel quality
• Decreasing the time to solution closure so revenue can be accelerated
• Increasing deal sizes through larger configurations and holding price through compelling value so revenue grows
• Increasing the solution win rate
• Decreasing the sales reps' time spent with technically oriented stakeholders and tasks

Our patent-pending Solution Sales Process uses engineering techniques to achieve efficient, repeatable, scalable, forecastable, and teachable Solution Closures.  This process "plugs into" any sales methodology to facilitate the alignment of sales rep and SE workflows.  See FAQs for more detail.

Project Managing the Solution Sale

We take the title “Sales Engineer” literally. Before a Civil Engineer puts one shovel in the ground to build a bridge, they draw up blueprints to analyze the structural design. Before an Aeronautic Engineer starts the engine, they run through a checklist to ensure completeness. Why should a Sales Engineer be any different?

We show SEs how to systematically project manage achievement of Solution Closure. Models, checklists, and project plans are a sample of the techniques SEs use to provide a “method to the madness” in solution sales. The engineering approach resonates well with the SE’s technical roots.

The techniques work just as well on simple small deals as they do on enterprise-class complex deals.

The SE Skills Improvement Program

Training alone is not enough to promote long term skills improvement.  A full program is needed to ensure new skills become operational and measurable benefit is achieved:

Evaluate: A free on-line SE Improvement Assessment Service measures the team's current Solution Sales Process acumen.

Endorse: Gain the support of Sales and SE Management.   A one-day Management Workshop identifies your specific SE improvement program with measureable objectives consisting of Training, Productivity Tools, and Improvement Services.

Educate: Teach the Solution Sales Process and its engineering principles. Facilitators are seasoned ex-SE Managers, not sales trainers.

Embed: Culturalize field behaviors, procedures, policies, and tools. Enumerate: Behaviors are internalized, the process is routine, and improvement is measured.

Successful Change:

Successful implementation of soft skills changes requires hands-on management enforcement of new policies and procedures.

Budget:

Soft skills training is rarely planned for since there is seldom a compelling need.

At the executive level, budgets are soft targets. Funding can almost always be had with a compelling business case.

For minimal impact on the quarterly income statement, treat your skills investment as a "Pre-paid Expense", an asset that can be written down over a period of many quarters.

Alternatively, treat soft skills as an IP investment, amortizing it over several quarters or years.

The Bottom Line: Don't let budgetary issues prevent the opportunity to achieve long term meaningful results.