Day: October 8, 2008

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Part 1 – Organizational Change… Why?

Part 1 (of 3) of a white paper I wrote 10 years ago for a customer that had just recently started selling professional services, but had sold product for over 20 years. This deliverable was one of several I created over the years to train sales and delivery staff in the ways of professional services and intangibles in general. Part 2 is here.

All Sales Engineers must be keenly aware of how their organization is constructed, and at which maturity it (and it’s parts) are at. This is also of key importance to Sales Engineers as they are the only ones in an organization paid to make all the departments work together as a team to get/close the deal. -pat

Note: Confidential is the company that was acquired by YYY, and is used to refer to both the old company and new division (for simplicity’s sake) -pat

Growth Phases – Evolution and Revolution
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Tradeshow Booth: V-Ray Glass to the Rescue!

Part of being a Sales Engineer is knowing how to display a product/service in any setting-even trade shows. The best Sales Engineers have no boundaries on their imagination, and use all their tools in ways that were not thought of previously. This is why it is important to own all your own software. If you are waiting for your next appointment (or worse yet consulting), you will get rusty fast.

In this article I discussed easy glass with V-Ray. In the article above, only one image from this project was included. Since I get so many hits to that article (where the tutorial is), I thought it might be nice to include all the renders I did for that client.

I’ll just post all the pictures here, with links to the larger versions by just clicking the thumbnails below. But first I should set this up.

The client asked for a modern trade show component (not the whole booth) that would allow prospects to play with the futuristic controls. These controls and displays are for super-yachts, so it had to look good. You’ll see the PC driving everything underneath, as these exhibits need to be designed completely, with all aspects of their operation taken into consideration.

As an aside, this type of glass (with the reflective falloff) is my absolute favorite! It effectively conveys not just futurism, but realism.



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How Does a Sales Engineer Improve/Enhance the Deal?

One example illustrates how my methodologies help secure business. On my blog I focus on Sales Engineering, and bettering the profession. In this article I discuss the importance of methodologies in the sales process, and one of my high level methodologies. This methodology alone secured the largest proserv engagement in Sprint’s history ($4.5M), and was directly attributable, per the prospect, to my methodologies. You know when you’ve done this properly when at the the start of the signing the prospect leans over and asks me which page he/she needs to sign. :)

Prospects don’t want the lowest price. They want the best value-just like you and I do when shopping. Sales Engineers are in the justification game. Anything, regardless of the price, that can be justified will be purchased. It is our job to do just that.

As for presentations, I routinely create custom flash animations in place of static PowerPoint decks (why are we still putting prospects through PowerPoint?). These serve many purposes that have secured business for our account team in the past:
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