ATCP, LLC

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 »

I just fired off a little stress relief to my primary 401k company, Fidelity:

“[At Fidelity] I currently own/invest in:

Fidelity Dividend Growth FDGFX
Fidelity Magellan FMAGX
Fidelity Select Software & Comp FSCSX

I owned 10 funds at one time, but when I saw them all falling through the roof I converted most to cash, so I could ride this out.

The problem is, YOU DIDN’T!
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I think that in photography how you carry your precious gear is a complex, personal, and probably hotly debated topic. My solution to a good in all cases need was the straps from PacSafe. Their Photography section has two products in particular that I’ll talk about today:

-CarrySafe 100 – For cameras
-CarrySafe 200 – for camera bags

The 300 is to lock the bag to a pole, chair, etc.

One of the nice things about these straps is that they are made of steel cables. Not the heavy kind, but light, flexible stranded cable that cannot be cut. They appear completely normal and unimportant on the outside. The other significant thing about their design is that they each have a way that prevents the strap from being disconnected from the camera or bag. In the 100 it is a nifty block for the D ring, and the 200 is literally bolted on.
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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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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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