The Trusted Advisor Sales Engineer by John Care

Author:John Care
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Business
ISBN: 9781099750397
Publisher: Mastering Technical Sales
Published: 2016-07-12T05:00:00+00:00

The Five Factors

Credibility. As mentioned above, the fact that you are willing to take a little risk and draw your solution or idea or even facilitate a meeting does wonders for your credibility. The downside is that you definitely have to know your material, as you don’t have a bunch of bullet points on a PowerPoint slide to use as a presentation crutch. The upside is that you gain the flexibility to adapt to the client and the collaboration to work with them instead of present to them. As a starting point practice being able to design and deliver your own personalized 6-8 minute vignette pitch on a number of topics. A good selection would be a big picture, overall value proposition, architecture overview and a diagram/explanation of some competitive differentiators.

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. Remember that nothing you draw is going to hang in the Louvre or Tate Gallery; it just has to be good enough to get your point across so that the customer can both remember it and understand it.

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. In a small setting (i.e. 1:1 or 1:2) visualization is a great way to pull your client out of a formal office environment and have a conversation in the cafeteria or a coffee shop. In an even larger group setting (i.e. 1:3 to 1:8) you can still get everyone engaged up at a board and eliminate the email distraction.

Self. Much as with any other communications mechanism, you need to be aware of the difference between a presentation and a conversation. Provide your audience plenty of opportunity to agree, to modify and even to redraw part of the sketch. When used at an appropriate part of the sales cycle, it encourages collaboration and buy-in because a joint diagram becomes a joint solution, and that’s a massive psychological step forwards. In situations when I want to encourage collaboration I make a point of putting spare markers on the table for the audience to use, or else I give my client their own pen if I’m in a 1-on-1 situation. It’s about empowerment.

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