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:

–Wow Factor. Don’t discount it. Cool stuff will get shared.
-The presentation is crisp and unaltered each time it is viewed. I believe that all sales materials should continue to sell for us long after we leave.
-They can be easily created to have multiple paths.

This last point is important. Although we may present to someone above the line, the presentation may need the nod from someone below the line (back to justification). The right sales tool allows you to have a message specifically catered to the viewer-even though there will be more than one. No PPT deck can do this.

I burn our custom presentation (animation) onto a mini-CDROM (bizcard), then affix the account manager’s business card to it, in sticker form. We include all PDFs for reference, white papers, etc., and when the CD is inserted into a mac or pc, it starts playing automatically with a menu. This idea never fails to please.

And as for addressing a concern, one great piece of advice I give VPs and AMs is to consider a ‘try before you buy’ approach to penetrate a difficult account. I started doing this while at Paranet/Sprint. We would ask the prospect what their top few problems were (having something they don’t want, wanting something they don’t have). You know, the ones they are late delivering, or are getting inundated with calls about. We then offer to fix/consult on a specific problem (that best utilizes and highlights our business proposition).

I stressed that we not bill them for the time (unless we’d already negotiated a paying gig, which is preferred obviously). This let us start immediately (nothing for legal to sign!), making a good impression, gathering intelligence on competitors and uncovering opportunities. I say this because one of my sales methodologies involves where to acquire DSOs (see blog), these are categorized into the following 3 ways:

-Stated
-Discovered
-Created

Stated means they say they want/need it, Discovered means we found it while the DSO was in the pipeline, and Created means, well, that we manufactured an opportunity where there wasn’t one (read into that whatever you like-welcome to the real world).

Again, methodologies come to the rescue. These are all examples of how a Sales Engineer at the top of their field makes things happen.

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