More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There are also numerous exercises and worksheets in the book or referenced on the website (www.masteringtechnicalsales.com/tabook).
Remember these measurements
Exactly!
For an SE it is a combination of honoring your commitments, speaking the truth, and acting in the best interests of the customer – even if that may occasionally conflict with the best interests of your own company.
Take about 2-3 minutes and write down as many words or phrases you associate with T/A – without actually using the words Trust or Advice.
You will probably have used some phrases like: Honest Believable Transparent Straight Forward Does The Right Thing Reliable Has Tough Conversations Respect Skilled Professional Open Minded Knowledgeable Listens Valued Keeps Confidences Competent Problem Solver Great Attitude
Now move to the other extreme and think about someone who is absolutely not a Trusted Advisor – the proverbial second-hand car or snake-oil salesman. Go through the same exercise and take 2-3 minutes to list words or phrases that describe non-T/A behavior. You’ll find that this is an easier list to generate –
You will probably have used some phrases like: Dishonest Unreliable Just Talks Does Not Listen Own Agenda Me, Me and Me Pushy Arrogant All Promises Self-Serving Transactional Lone Wolf Condescending Unethical Not Accountable
They defined trust as measured by the four factors of Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy and Self-Orientation.
One of the biggest “C” traps is feeling that you have to prove your value every minute you are in a meeting. Sometimes the best credibility comes from listening very hard, and then speaking. The counterpoint to high credibility might be that you are viewed as someone who loves to hear themselves talk (even though what you say might be accurate and useful). A very simple two-part definition of SE Credibility, from a customer viewpoint, is “Does the customer believe what I say, and do they see the value in what I say?”
Show Passion. Show some passion and enthusiasm for your product / solution / services and for helping the customer. Do relax and take a breather so you don’t speak too quickly from an adrenaline high.
Do The research. Know as much as feasible about the company, their issues, and the people that you meet. Just saying “I read that article in the Straits Times yesterday” can really help – as long as you actually did read it!
Firstly, you need to establish control of your time (calendar) and your inbox, as it is far more likely that lack of time, rather than lack of desire or talent will hurt your reliability. Secondly, you need to be realistic and not always follow the SE instinct of automatically pleasing the customer or the salesperson.
Intimacy measures how well you know and understand the customer, both personally and professionally.
In essence, it is all about putting yourself in the customer’s shoes. The intimacy also extends to the business issues, as (to foreshadow the next chapter) the #1 thing most mid to senior level executives expect from a vendor’s presales organization is someone who understands their business.
Your job as an SE is to adapt to your customer.
Based on our survey data from workshops to date, Intimacy is definitely the weakest of the five factors for an SE both in terms of their actual scores and rankings and in how comfortable they are in even discussing it.
“what are the skills that you value most from your vendor’s presales engineering team?”
Rank Skill #1 Someone who understands my business #2 Someone who can design innovative solutions with my staff #3 Someone who I can trust to do the right things for us #4 Someone who can communicate effectively with me #5 Someone with deep technical knowledge
In essence, deep technical skills are now just table stakes. It’s what your customers expect you to bring into a relationship as part of your job. What matters most to them is how you use that knowledge as shown by the four attributes that score above it.
So let’s look at those top five responses in a little more detail as they relate to the Trust factors. #1 – Someone Who Understands My Business Customers don’t expect you to know the everyday minutiae of their business, but they do expect you to understand the big picture, the industry trends and to share what others might be doing.
#2 – Someone Who Can Design Innovative Solutions With My Staff
Your customer is looking for collaboration, as well as some education and teaching, and not just a pre-packaged solution. That is the value add of the Sales Engineer. That translates to high Credibility, Intimacy to work with and assist the client team, and a healthy dose of Positivity to convince them, in many cases, that what you are proposing will work.
#3 – Someone I Can Trust To Do The Right Thing
Customers repeatedly told us that they were tired of being sold something that didn’t necessarily benefit them as much as it should have.
#4 – Someone Who Can Communicate Effectively With Me You may be the most capable and innovative SE in the world, but if you cannot explain your ideas and thinking to the people who really count – it all amounts to nothing. Far too many SE’s are so proud of their technical capabilities (see next point) that they lose sight of the fact that you actually have to be able to speak, present, listen and communicate in order to be effective.
#5 – Someone With Deep Technical Knowledge
This shows how the role of the SE and the SE-salesperson interaction has changed over the past 30 years. It used to be that deep technical knowledge was enough to ensure you a job as a Senior SE for life, but not anymore. This attribute is primarily driven by Credibility.
Now reflect on those five top attributes and write down your preferred order based on your customers. If you think there is something even more important feel free to add it to the list (I won’t be offended). Then think about your interactions with those customers over the past few months – has that been your priority? How well has that relationship developed? Is there anything you can do in the next 4-6 weeks to switch or to improve your priorities to match those of your customers?
If you cannot deliver the advice in a format that the customer will accept and process then almost everything else is pointless. Self is also a leading indicator, as the client needs to feel that you are looking out for them, and not providing them with a self-serving recommendation.
Instead of saying, “does everyone understand that?” in class after reviewing part of a lesson, you say, “did I make that clear?” The first version puts the pressure on the student to say that they didn’t understand, whilst the second version puts the pressure on the teacher for not clearly explaining. It’s a minor point, but when I implemented this in my workshops some 10-12 years and suggested the technique to my other instructors we noted a sizable increase in questions. Just think about that next time you explain a technical feature or function.
Do this!
It is all about finding a way to provide advice such that it is both listened to and ultimately acted upon[9]. There is no room within a T/A vocabulary for phrases such as “I told you so!” The burden is on you to deliver appropriate advice that checks off both the emotional and logical acceptance criteria for your clients.
In the absence of any other meaningful or pre-existing relationship, who is that customer naturally going to trust more – you or the salesperson? It’s YOU. Why? Because the salesperson is there to sell the customer something. Which is OK as that is their job. You gain in trust level simply by comparison to the salesperson. That is not a bad thing, and is more a reflection on the profession of sales rather than the individual rep. However, it is an advantage for you to capitalize upon, and it is an advantage that can easily and rapidly disappear.
Your job as a Trusted Advisor (and actually just as a good Sales Engineer) is to help the customer, which will allow the salesperson to “sell” the customer. Your best strategy is to ask some great questions, listen to the answers and then process the information. Then you provide some insight and recommendations based on that information. Listening is one of the premier, and one of the hardest, skills for a SE to develop and then master.
The instant you explicitly try to sell something, transparently apply a marketing spin on an issue, or even go sales-like by directly asking about budget or timelines, that trust may disappear. Once an SE loses the trust of a customer it is incredibly hard to win it back.
Information Flow. Customers will tell you things that they would never, ever, tell the salesperson. You can find out about internal politics, competition, personal wins and many other items.
You can find an electronic copy of this worksheet, and all the others,at www.masteringtechnicalsales.com/tabook .
That said, Discovery is usually the #1 place where there is friction between the SE and the salesperson. Many organizations rely on the salesperson to perform initial Discovery, uncover the business issues, and then brief the SE on what they discovered. The SE then takes this second-hand information, translates it into their product / services / solution set – and presents it back to the client. According to research data from the 3rd Edition of MTS, around 40% of the time this misses the mark and ends up in a less than satisfactory customer interaction.
You Are There To Help. Your attitude is that you are in the room, or on the phone, to help the customer – not to sell them something. Anytime you are explicitly selling or closing you are anything but a Trusted Advisor. Turn ABC - Always Be Closing into Always Be Consultative.
Many of your customers will be looking to you for alternative suggestions and ideas as to how to tackle their problems. Be creative.
Questions asked just for the sake of asking questions (or running through a routine checklist) are likely to slow things down. The instant your client thinks “why is she asking me that question?” you are going to have Credibility issues. Just as in all sales situations, listening and then demonstrating your understanding of the current (and future) state is vitally important.
Phil’s secret was one magical question, phrased in a number of different ways. He simply asked “and how does that impact you personally?” or “and what do you feel about that?” His customers would just open up and tell him.
Create An Agenda. Even if the salesperson has created a very high-level agenda, create one of your own that details exactly what you are going to show and why it is important to the customer. A small degree of personalization makes a big difference.
Technology by itself won’t build trust and it won’t get you the sale unless you link it back to the business drivers.
You are the master of your own technology, so what is important is that you can effectively link it back to the customer’s situation and to their hopes, needs and desires. The better you can help the customer walk into the future and envision how they can utilize your products / services the higher your credibility. It demonstrates that you have listened, that you have taken the time to internalize some examples and that you have personalized your work.
No one wants to feel they are being given a repeatable, reused, second-hand off-the-shelf pitch even if they ask for it!
If presentations and demos are a key responsibility of your position, then take the opportunity to make them professional, relevant and even entertaining. By showing the customer the possible successful outcomes from utilizing your product and then linking those back to the business drivers and the requirements you will be ahead of the game. Middle management and executives in the room will appreciate not being overwhelmed with technical features, while the individual contributors will appreciate you doing a great job in front of their boss and their boss’s boss.
Reliability. One of the more advanced characteristics of Reliability is anticipation. Be prepared for questions the customer may have, anticipate a “what-if” solution to a new problem. If you know your solution well enough and have sufficient customer examples you can whiteboard almost anything.
Intimacy. One part of intimacy is being to communicate in the manner that is easiest for the customer – which puts them at ease and makes them naturally more receptive to your thoughts. According the Visual Teaching Alliance[11], 65% of the population are visual learners so it’s a method to personalize and customize for your client.
