The Sales Engineer

I was looking for a way to have all my tables have a unique GUID (Globally Unique ID) as well as a “Last Updated” column that would automatically update both on INSERT and on UPDATE.

Through a few hours of experimentation, I created the following:

CREATE TABLE dbo.testing
    (guid            uniqueidentifier    NOT NULL DEFAULT NEWID(),
     lastUpdated     datetime2(7)        NOT NULL DEFAULT GETDATE(),
     col1            nchar(10)           NULL,
     col2            nchar(10)           NULL)
GO
CREATE TRIGGER dbo.trLastUpdatedTesting
ON dbo.testing
AFTER UPDATE -- not insert!
AS
BEGIN

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I am going through an exercise where I’m trying to find a way to compute stock metrics (technical indicators). What I need is a way to iterate over the rows in a database, computing each technical indicator, then putting that value into the table’s row for that date.

I found an example, and modified it to work on SQL SERVER 2008 R2. I hope you, too, find this solution extremely interesting:

DROP TABLE #google_stock
GO
create table #google_stock
(
quote_date [datetime],
open_price [decimal](6,2),
close_price [decimal](6,2),
high_price [decimal](6,2),
low_price [decimal](6,2)
)
GO

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A colleague turned me on to an article here that talks about 5 stunningly awful mistakes for demos. I don’t think these are all that bad, and certainly not stunning, but I’ll include the 5 here, as we have a few more practical ones to add after:

1. Misunderstand the customer’s needs: Harbor Cruise Don’t make a demo in the hope that your customer will eventually see something of interest. Inexperienced salespeople often inflict these demos on their customers as a replacement for doing their homework. Jaded sales engineers offer these demos when they receive little or no pre-demo information from their sales colleagues. Do the research to figure out what your customers need in advance. More »

GMail recently took away the ability to have an RSS feed create signatures for us. Luckily I’ve been using Wisestamp (http://www.wisestamp.com) for years, and it is just the thing you need. With it, you can take the output of any RSS feed and put the text at the bottom of your signature in every email you send out.

http://blog.atcp.us/wp-admin/post.php?post=3049&action=edit&message=1

Above, I’ve created a simple signature in Wisestamp, and when you do this in the editor, you have some really diverse choices below. More »

I certainly hope not. But most of us have no doubt experienced this attitude across marketing and sales organizations throughout our career. And Scott Adams’ Dilbert clip below has certainly been based on some part of society’s belief that the expectations from sales can be quite low.

Regardless of what you may think, most high performing sales reps are smart, hard working, experienced individuals that know how to get at the right information, at the right time to help move their opportunities forward. And our sales operations teams need to better integrate with marketing along the areas of “customer intelligence” and “sales enablement” to improve these folks’ productivity and to help our “B” players be more successful.

Here are a few ideas to help this process (i.e., in addition to past posts on this blog regarding sales enablement and customer intelligence for sales):

• Get marketing and sales operations folks out on sales calls to help break down the barrier between your quota-bearing headcount and the “rest of the customer creation team”;
• Create a regional helpdesk for sales reps to call into when they can’t find something on your sales enablement portal/platform, or if they’re simply new to the organization and need help with other related activities. Provide a social media channel to better leverage this helpdesk. (e.g., the helpdesk personnel could play a dual role, acting as the internal, community moderator)
• Develop a longer term approach to investing in your sales teams’ skill-set and knowledge development. (e.g., establish a standard curriculum for sales managers and sales reps that extends beyond their on-board training) Not only will this help their learning process, but more importantly, it will send a strong message to them that you value their continued education.
• Get your first and second line sales managers on-board with your sales enablement processes, and provide them the training and tools that they need to be better coaches to their sales reps. (clients of IDC’s Sales Advisory Service should refer to a recent best practices study in sales manager coaching)

Please share any additional tactical ideas or examples that you may have below, or send them to me directly at mgerard@idc.com.

I certainly hope not. But most of us have no doubt experienced this attitude across marketing and sales organizations throughout our career. And Scott Adams' Dilbert clip below has certainly been based on some part of society's belief that the expectations from sales can be quite low. Regardless of what you may think, most high performing sales reps are smart, hard working, experienced individuals that know how to get at the right information, at the right time to help move their opportunities forward. And our sales operations teams need to better integrate with marketing along the areas of "customer intelligence" and "sales enablement" to improve these folks' productivity and to help our "B" players be more successful. Here are a few ideas to help this process (i.e., in addition to past posts on this blog regarding sales enablement and customer intelligence for sales):

• Get marketing and sales operations folks out on sales calls to help break down the barrier between your quota-bearing headcount and the "rest of the customer creation team";
• Create a regional helpdesk for sales reps to call into when they can't find something on your sales enablement portal/platform, or if they're simply new to the organization and need help with other related activities. Provide a social media channel to better leverage this helpdesk. (e.g., the helpdesk personnel could play a dual role, acting as the internal, community moderator)
• Develop a longer term approach to investing in your sales teams' skill-set and knowledge development. (e.g., establish a standard curriculum for sales managers and sales reps that extends beyond their on-board training) Not only will this help their learning process, but more importantly, it will send a strong message to them that you value their continued education.
• Get your first and second line sales managers on-board with your sales enablement processes, and provide them the training and tools that they need to be better coaches to their sales reps. (clients of IDC's Sales Advisory Service should refer to a recent best practices study in sales manager coaching)

Please share any additional tactical ideas or examples that you may have below, or send them to me directly at mgerard@idc.com.