Sales Aerobics for Engineers

What kind of engineer are you?

 

How would you describe yourself, and what you bring to the table, to:  

1.)   a prospective employer, 2.)   a prospective customer, 3.)   a colleague at a professional association, 4.)   someone outside the engineering field, and/or 5.)   an academician?

 

We know all engineers are not the same. Everyone brings a little something different to the table. So even in companies full of engineers, those engineers aren’t all cut from the same mold. The corporate toolkit is full of engineers who won’t see the light of day unless there are special circumstances. Some engineers are the day-in-and-day-out individual who brings consistancy, but perhaps not creativity or increase in revenue, to the table. How do you utilize this toolkit? How do you evaluate your own toolkit? How do you let others (professors, employers) understand your skillset and how to strategically, as well as tactically, best utilize what you bring to the table?

How would you describe the type of work that you prefer to do? Do you:

a) prefer to sit in a cubicle and solve abstract problems? Without any consequences to your deliverables? (Hint: do you pay for yourself?)

b)    prefer to sit in a cubicle and implement design solutions? Without any consequences to your deliverables? Do you pay for yourself?

c) prefer to leave the cubicle to interact with peers in engineering meetings? Taking the risk of engaging in discussion of your proposed solutions? Perhaps leading toward innovation that might pay for itself based on cost of development?

d)    prefer to participate in multidisciplinary business development discussions with peers outside the engineering discipline? Incorporating differing perspectives into your personal toolkit? Perhaps leading to entrepreneurship that might pay for itself over time?

e) prefer to teach engineering to undergraduates and graduate students? Within a traditional academic setting. Which may impact the quality and output of engineering education?

f) prefer to teach engineering to post-grad or returning/retraining engineers? Within an evening college or community college setting? Which may impact the quality and output of manufacturing engineering?

The rules for evaluating what we bring to the table change once we leave academia. So be honest with yourself about the type of work you prefer to do. Once we enter the workforce, the practical meets the conceptual – and needs to be articulated to business owners. The business owner isn’t going to pass or fail us, or give us First Honors or Second Honors. They are simply going to choose whether or not to continue doing business with the company we either own or work for.  And believe me, profit and loss considerations are far more profound than the difference between academic grades or Pass vs. Fail.  One can’t sit for an exam again, later on, hoping to get a better mark. Especially after clients fire you because of cost overruns or failure to understand, from project inception, the scope of work involved.

Doing one’s specific job isn’t going to be enough for you to keep your job or retain your client base, not in this expanding global economy. While academia can prepare us all to do a competent job in the workforce, the CONTEXT for our work is provided by the setting in which we elect to contribute our talents. And while we may / may not have complete control over where we lend our skillset (let’s face it, we are all grateful to be employed/educated), we do have control over how we can augment what we bring to the table.

So let’s be honest with our collective selves.  How do we utilize the contexts of our work environments to develop our skillsets, our personal toolkits?  If we are business owners, would we hire ourselves? If we are cubicle-sitters, how realistic is it for us to expect folks to feed and maintain us if we are uncomfortable explaining to business owners– in simple terms – the return on investment of our design solutions? What are our minimums and maximums? What are our tolerances?

How do we utilize the context of our current professional environment to improve our own processes, output and throughput? Are we continuing our education? Are we expanding our perspective? Or are we stagnating and expecting our own status quo to maintain us through a career… of how long?

Does graduating with an engineering degree define a set piece that is immutable over time? Keeping up with technology and translating it into how we think, making decisions and implementing our toolkit throughout our careers doesn’t end with graduation and job placement. It’s only the start.

What kind of engineer are you? Would you have hired yourself in the first place? And would you continue to employ yourself?

Think about it….

 

What they DIDN'T teach you in engineering school.

I invited Masha V. Petrova to guest blog today. This year I am going to be exploring gaps in engineering education and their impact on the engineering-sales/business development interface. I couldn't think of anyone more insightful than Masha to kick things off, so I interviewed Masha!  Her responses to my questions follow.

Masha V. Petrova holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and is a founder and CEO of MVP Modeling Solutions.  Her weekly blog on a variety of engineering topics, can be found at http://mvpmodelingsolutions.com/mvpblog/ . Her blog on Increasing Your Professional Value can be found at  http://successfulunemploymenttoolkit.com/blog/. 

 

Babette:  Masha, how well equipped were you, as a PhD engineer, to undertake a business development role in past companies you worked for as well as your current consulting company?

 

Masha: Aside from giving me a solid technical foundation, my engineering PhD did not prepare me for working in sales, marketing or for starting a company in any shape or form. Even for business development in a very technically oriented company, like MVP Modeling Solutions, skills completely unrelated to engineering become much more important. For example, being able to “see the big picture.” The process of getting a technical PhD teaches you the complete opposite – focusing on minute details, zeroing in on a very small focused area of research, looking at a very specific problem from every different angle, and researching your PhD topic to death.

 

Which is what you need to do, in order to conduct great research. Best technical papers focus on a very well defined problem and examine it from every possible angle. In business, especially small business, it is very important to have a big picture vision and to constantly correlate every action and task to that vision. They don’t teach you that in grad school.

 

Another thing grad school does not teach you, but that is crucial to a successful small company or to a consultant, is how to deal with people. In academia, especially in technical areas, the idea that being able to work with people is more important than your technical knowledge is seen as rather ridiculous. I cannot recall one piece of advice or knowledge from my instructors or from any of my classes that advised me how to work with other human beings effectively.

 

On the other hand, when I worked as a sales/marketing engineer at a software company, every single day I had an extensive lesson in human relationships and communication. And I can tell you from experience - learning people skills was harder then getting a PhD in Engineering.

 

Babette:  As an undergraduate, how many courses did you take that cross-trained you to speak the language of business, as well as engineering?

 

Masha: None. Even though it was a great engineering program and graduates from my class went on to work in the corporate world right after graduation, we had practically zero preparation for any type of business related work. Sure, there were senior and junior design projects, where students worked with engineers in industry and where we had to adhere to a certain project budget. That’s about it. In fact our undergraduate curriculum, at the time, made it nearly impossible to have even a minor in any non-technical subject (such as business).

 

Babette:  As a graduate student, were you encouraged to take marketing, sales or economics courses as well as grad engineering courses?

 

Masha: No. In fact, I knew of maybe one other student who took some courses after his requirement for the core engineering courses were completed. I enjoyed taking courses and continued signing up for various non-engineering courses until I graduated. But that was seen as rather strange and people kept asking me why I am bothering to learn stuff even though my course requirements for PhD were filled.

 

As grad students, no one really ever tried to explain to us how important it is to be able to understand the world of business and people relationships, whether you planned to stay in academia, work in industry or start your own company.

 

Babette:  Would you say that your education was "typical" in terms of how engineers are trained, at least in the US?

 

Masha: For the most part, yes. I got a BS in Engineering from University of Delaware, although I did manage to sneak in a minor in Religious Studies. Which is probably not a typical minor for engineering students. That helped me enormously by developing written communication skills.

 

What was not typical in terms of my graduate career was that I had an absolutely amazing thesis advisor. Extremely knowledgeable and brilliant, he was also helpful, kind and liked by everyone who knew him. That’s a very rare find in academia. Professor Forman Williams is not a typical thesis advisor. I was very lucky.

 

Babette:  What is the biggest disconnect, then, in terms of undergraduate engineers coming out of school and entering the workforce? Is this disconnect different after receiving a graduate degree? Why or why not?

 

Masha: I would say the largest disconnect was that in undergraduate school we were overwhelmed with to-do tasks. There were so many engineering courses to take, so much homework to do along with constant tests, that the main concern of an undergrad engineering student was to just get the tasks done. Typically, it was not to understand the subject in depth or to understand a particular problem, but to pick up just enough information out of the textbooks, and teaching assistants, to get the homework done and pass the tests.

 

Grad school taught me to think in depth about each subject I was studying and to actually understand what I was learning. However, neither grad nor undergrad education has prepared me for dealing with customers, dealing with a variety of people (not just other researchers), or understanding the sales, marketing and PR processes. 

 

Babette:  Should the structure of engineering education be amended in the future to create more engineers who are capable of assuming business development functions in today's global economy?

 

Masha: Most definitely. That would give engineering students an edge in the corporate world and would foster more pleasant working environments and increase creativity and innovation.

 

Babette: What advice would you give undergraduate engineering students in terms of preparing their skillset for a successful entry into the workforce?

 

Masha: No one is responsible for your education, except you. University may provide you with a curriculum, with instructors and with career fairs, but at the end it will be you looking for a job, working with people and putting food on your table. So take every opportunity to make sure that you’re prepared. Always look for internships and apply for them.  If you’re on a semester schedule, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t have a different internship lined up for every winter and summer semester.  Take business, entrepreneurship and liberal arts courses if you can.

 

Babette: What advice would you give current engineering professionals in terms of career development as we move forward into 2010?

 

Masha: I don’t mean to sound like a commercial, but the www.SuccessfulUnemploymentToolkit.com is designed to provide engineers with tools to help fill the missing gaps that might have been left there by their engineering education. Take a look at the website and read the blog: www.SuccessfulUnemploymentToolkit.com/blog for more advice on increasing your value as an engineering professional.

 

 

 

Feeling Ambiguous? Schedule A Walkabout For Yourself This Year.

Wikipedia defines the term “walkabout” as “a rite of passage where male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months. In this practice, they would trace the paths, or ‘songlines', that their peoples’ ceremonials ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds.”  An alternative term in Wikipedia refers to a Walkabout as a “disambiguation.”

When’s the last time you engaged in “disambiguation”?  

Oh, and you don’t have to be a male.

Folks tend to take personal and professional stock of themselves each December.  You know, what they did and didn’t “achieve” or “accomplish” in the past year. It’s “natural” (?) in the sense that the fiscal year is coming to an end, the tax year is coming to an end and people are going to be evaluated by management.  In other words, you feel as though you are self-evaluating. Yet it’s pretty much all about how you measure up in someone else’s eyes.

January becomes a clean slate. If you are in sales, it’s all about “forget what you did last year and the accolades you earned – what have you done for me lately?”  Yikes!  I’m only as good as my last sale in the eyes of management? If you are in a technical field, it’s more like whether you were able to not only bring in but also manage projects on time and at or under budget… especially last year. It’s a measurement of not only your technical acumen but your “people” skills. You know, that right-brain left-brain interface that is hardly a natural place for most engineers .

Again, your sight line is focused on someone else’s idea of how you should be measured.

What is your own horizon, your own personal benchmark? How can you determine your personal benchmark, even your starting point?

How ambiguous are you? To yourself?

Walkabout. I’m taking a week in February to do a lot of technical, sales and, yes, spiritual reading. I need to catch up…. not with my reading… but with myself. Where am I at? How has the sum total of everything that I have accomplished in 2009 affected my perspective and approach to business and life moving forward in 2010? After all, I’m the only person that can write my own Operating Manual. I can’t write it if I don’t take the time to understand just what type of equipment I am operating.

Disambiguate. I’m taking a week in February to learn best practices about becoming better at planning and conducting Webinars. And I’m going to be composing a theme and game plan for lacing these webinars throughout my blog. I’ve got some great business associates online who are tremendous thought leaders in their own right. When we guest blog or conference call it’s synergy. There’s a lot to offer to our online communities.

Marinate. I’m taking a week in February to mentally marinate some new paradigm thinking regarding how decisions are made and how the traditional and consultative sales processes may be incomplete. I’m studying innovation, its sources, how to encourage my customers to embrace the risk associated with innovation and discover who, within their organizations, are true innovators.

Find your spiritual coordinates. I’m taking a week in February to reconnect to the Who is responsible for the journey that I’m on and that we all are on. As far as I know, we all have only One Ultimate Reporting Relationship.  Sometimes we lose sight of this factor when we are chasing someone else’s performance goals.

Whether you have 30 minutes per week or a weekend a month or a week per year, go on a Walkabout. Every year.  While I have been blogging about how the new global economy will force businesses to recalibrate, we all should recalibrate each year. It’s not just a matter of taking stock of our successes and failures – usually economically or professionally related.

Disambiguate yourself.  I am. Let’s take  the time to clarify, define and, quite frankly, get to know ourselves. We will make ourselves less ambiguous, more consistent and clear to others.  Our thoughts and ideas are not compartmentalized but are stored in readily accessible areas in our brains where they can be combined and recombined for innovative strategies and solutions.

Walkabout.  Something you need to decide to do rather than being forced into a situation of self-evaluation by your bosses. It’s your operating system. No one else’s. You write the operating manual.

Think about it. What is the value of disambiguation in your life?

Taking the low road is never an option. 10 suggestions for goal setting.

There have been a few blogs recently written about setting goals for 2010. I realize all of us are looking forward to 2010 as an alternative to a grim and realistic 2009. Lessons learned. Goals set, for us and by us.

I have 10 suggestions you may want to consider when goal setting in any year.

1. Establish your horizon.  I’m not talking short term goals vs. strategic goals.  Find your personal horizon. As you advance yourself and your career, I certainly hope you are taking the steps to grow yourself as an individual by making contributions to society as well as your company’s – and your own – bottom line. If not, think about it.

2. Relax your timeline. I’m finding many Gen Y’s have a 3 year timeline that includes spec’ing out who they are going to marry (including pedigree!), the type of car they are going to drive, the home they are going to live in, and just what their life is going to look like. Wow.  Sounds prescriptive. Talk about coloring within the lines. What if life doesn’t quite happen that way?

3. Revisit your priorities. Constantly. What’s important to “them” may not really be important to you. Do you run your life by committee? What’s important to you may be relative to your personal experience and the curves that may or may not have been thrown at you up until now. If you get tied to where you are now, you may never end up where you truly are supposed to be, down the road.

4. Be impeccable with your word. This one item is inflexible and immutable. You need to be true to what you say – and what you say you will do. Your word is not the currency of your career advancement, saying one thing to one person and another thing to another person, all for personal gain. All for achieving your personal timeline. Your word is your bond. For life.

5. Develop a sense of stewardship. What do you give back to others? Selflessly? It’s not just a matter of dropping a donation in the mail. Or occasionally volunteering for something.  What are you actively involved with, hands-on? What could you be more actively involved in?

6. Always take the high road. The low road is never an option. Never. Regardless of tactics used by your peers and managers. Reacting to their methods reinforces their success, not yours. They can’t control a person who refuses to fight back using their tactics. Take the high road. It forces them to follow along that path… or at least recognize your path.

7. Taking the high road means finding your personal high road. What does the high road look like to you? It’s great to have a timeline and set goals. Achieving goals doesn’t just happen.  You must choreograph and respond (not react) and have latitude for pursuing optional pathways to achieve your endpoints. You are the constant in all this. Constancy implies a core set of values that are immutable, regardless of circumstances. Your core values make you trustworthy. Are you?

8. Leave room for the epiphany that your personal high road may not be the high road at all. While we all have a sense of immediacy for achieving goals, allow some room for personal growth. You may find that your idea of the high road was merely one rung higher than the low road.  Hint: you may not be the one responsible for identifying the high road for yourself. No kidding.

9. Be honest with yourself and with others. Some folks make value judgments based on what they feel is “fair” at the time. Fair is an over-used word based on a personal sliding scale of what we feel needs to happen in order for us to benefit. Hmmm… fair doesn’t sound fair at all, does it?  Being straight forward and communicating honestly with others as to why you feel compelled to make the decisions you have made is a good habit to develop. Plus you never have to remember what you tell everyone since you tell everyone the same thing. Which makes you not only honest, but trustworthy. I think these days this is called “transparency.” Something to consider. Regardless of semantics.

10.  Take the road less traveled. You’ll find you are not alone. You’ll find that the folks you meet on this road are honest, trustworthy, ethical and have high personal integrity. You will teach them and learn from them.  You will serve and be served by them.  And you will be rewarded in ways that are beyond the limits of your personal goal setting.

The low road is never an option for achieving anything. Don’t even consider it. You short-change yourself …. and others.

Note to Self: Rock My Own Boat in 2010

After the roller coaster ride of sales and technical business development in 2009, I’ve taken the time to examine what’s important to me in terms of how I approach my client relationships. I’ve also taken the time to re-examine how I process information – sales and technical – and how well I communicate what I need to know to the folks I need to know it from. I figure if I can ask better questions, my customers and prospects can give me better answers.  

2009 was such a non-traditional business year. Yes, an understatement. It profoundly affected how I now view the entire business development process. So I don’t view 2010 as being a return to the status quo or whatever things were like in 2008, either.  Since 2009 rocked my boat – in fact, it rocked everyone’s boat, didn’t it? – I decided to continue rocking my boat. I liked how it felt. Go figure.

Boat rocking keeps me on my toes. I don’t take anything for granted. I don’t make any assumptions. I don’t forget to do my homework when developing new business relationships. I don’t lump my customers and prospects together in terms of a “one approach fits all” business development strategy.

In fact, I go about developing business as though the boat might capsize tomorrow.

Rocking my own boat helps me develop a sense of balance in terms of which customers are just kicking the proverbial tires and which customers are serious in terms of doing business with me. Rocking my own boat keeps my conversation fresh and engaged in what my clients and prospects are saying to me. Rocking my own boat keeps me searching for new ways to identify the factors impacting their decision to buy.

Now, let me clarify myself here. I’m not looking for new ways to manipulate folks into buying what I am selling. I’m looking for questions I need to be asking to assist people in identifying the offline factors impacting the decisions they make daily.

Your customers aren’t going to decide to buy what you are selling until you stop forcing the conversation towards your solution – as their only solution I might add. Your clients and prospects are expecting you to “sell” them. They want you to “pitch” them. So they can commoditize you, quite frankly, as a “typical sales rep” or “typical sales engineer.” However, they just might not be ready to make a decision, even if you are driven to “sell” your solution to them. Even if your solution is right for them.

So I’m learning how to rock my boat and keep it upright. I’m reading a lot of books. Taking training courses.  Communicating with clients. Asking questions of peers. Asking a lot better questions of my customers and prospects that impacts how they put information together towards solving their own problems.

Because, like the Wizard of Oz, there’s always somebody (or lots of “somebodys”) behind the curtain pulling lots of strings and jerking chains that are impacting my Client’s decision to purchase a solution or product, from me or anyone.  And I figure if I can get a handle on identifying these factors, and ask good questions up front that allow that individual or team to understand the ducks they need to have in a row, I bring value to our relationship.

Making a decision is the hardest thing we ask our customers and prospects to do.  I need to understand the decision making process better. This decision making process is not selling, or closing the sale. It’s everything that precedes the actual sales process.  It’s why folks decide to place a solution in the first place. It’s why folks decide to put making that decision on hold.

After all, my customers and prospects are the ones with the answers, not me. They best understand how their internal systems work. And I need to understand how to understand their internal systems. Because it impacts their decision making processes and my business development cycle.

A bit complex, yes.

That’s how I am rocking my own boat in 2010.

What are you doing to rock yours?

 

 

Are You Putting Yourself In Your Customers' Shoes, First?

Whether you are involved in business development (aka “sales”) or technical development (aka “engineering / IT”) you need to revisit where the customer fits into your equation. I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, to address this situation. And it’s more important as we crawl out of recession into “where the economy is going.” Because we are the ones impacting that direction. A sobering thought.

Traditionally, business development continues to be all about directing the customer / prospect towards the solution that your company provides. As though that’s the only solution that’s right for them. As though that’s the only thing they have on their minds. I don’t think so.

Traditionally, engineering / IT has focused on emphasizing why their solution offers superiority, flexibility and all answers to all questions compared to what currently is in place or what the competition has to offer. As though the customer is in search of the “next greatest thing.”

When’s the last time you made a decision to upgrade your home internet service? Did you upgrade all of your peripherals at the same time? Did you assess the impact the upgrade would have on all the other gadgets you currently do or don’t have in place at home for hi-def, ISP, communications? Did you do a fair amount of thinking prior to making the purchase, in terms of the economic impact the decision to purchase this solution might have on the State Of Your Home Electronics situation? Or did you run out and blindly purchase the next greatest thing because everyone else had it, or you had to keep up technically?

When’s the last time you made a decision to purchase a new car or truck? And finance it? Based on your current credit score, the lending environment and your perception of your job security?

OK, now let’s get back to business development. And please put yourself in your customer’s and prospect’s shoes. They are the same shoes you wear. Every day. They have a lot more on their minds than what you are selling or the services you offer. They have to factor in a lot of stuff that’s happening behind the scenes in order for them to make a decision to solve their problems and perhaps purchase a solution.

If you are not factoring in the behind-the-scenes stuff into your business development strategy, and “simply” trying to justify why your solution fits their needs, you need to go back to the drawing board. You can identify “needs” all day, and drag the customer over the coals to emphasize how great their need is. But like most individuals, they have made do with and will continue to make do with, the status quo. Because it’s a known entity and comfortable. Because they may have internal resources committed to making the status quo continue to work. Not because your solution doesn’t really offer them what they need. It probably does.

There are a lot of behind-the-scenes factors impacting decision making on investing in solutions. By taking into account these factors during your initial business and technical development discussions, you may shorten your sales cycle. And yet this has nothing to do with “selling” or with product or service placement.

It starts by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. First.

How comfortable are you with this strategy?

Think about it.

Got Your Priorities Straight For 2010? Five considerations for the New Year.

I’m not even talking about a New Year’s Resolution. I’m talking about defining, or perhaps revisiting, your personal and professional priorities.

Yes, most of us lived under the specter of 2009”s Priority #1: keeping your job – even if it isn’t the right job for you in the first place. Let’s get beyond that. Really. Because asking yourself these five questions should influence your career path and the people who, well, populate your life.

1. What are your core values? What are the values you carry with you day in and day out, regardless of whether you are in a personal or professional situation? You shouldn’t have values that you take on and off like a set of clothes, depending on the occasion. Your core values are what you bring to the table no matter what, regardless of the “occasion.” Your core values are not an act. Your core values are – ultimately – who you are.

2. Have you run out of “learning room?” When’s the last time you read a book that improved your on-the-job performance or perhaps deeply impacted your concept of self and your core values? When’s the last time you challenged yourself to move 1mm outside your comfort level? If you have circled the wagons and live comfortably inside a closed circle of knowledge, friends and ideology, perhaps you should consider rocking your own boat. If you’ve got a substantial set of core values, your boat will withstand the storm. If not, you will build a stronger boat. What kind sailor are you?

3. Where does personal integrity fit into your life? Do you find yourself easily compromised? Do you tell one thing to one group and another thing to another group? Are you just a “yes” man or woman? Do you ”play” people or are you constantly being “played?” (Hint: #1 + #2 = #3)

4. What skill sets can you add to your professional portfolio to improve your value to yourself and, hence, your company? When is the last time you attended a course to improve your knowledge base beyond your current skill set? Attending a certification course to preserve your status quo doesn’t count. In fact, preserving your status quo should not be an optional answer for this question.

5. What will it take for you to become a more confident individual, both personally and professionally? Will it take an earth shaking event to create your epiphany? Have there always been signs and symptoms which you have skillfully ignored? Do you feel your last sales year or your technical degrees buy you job security and define who you are?

It is that time of year for reflection.

In 2010, make reflection a year-around habit, not something you save up for December. It doesn’t matter what generation you are a member of. Media streams are no excuse for not making time for reflection. You are not a product of your media streams or the blogs you read or how many followers you have on Twitter. You are a product of your upbringing, education, experiences and what you make out of yourself in spite of and because of all of these components of Who You Are.

So what are your priorities for 2010?

Think about it. I know I am.

 

 

 

   

Are Your Customers Making You Jump Through Hoops?

 

Ah, the end of the fiscal sales year!  Anyone in business development – sales folks and engineers alike -  knows that it’open season for that favorite non-Olympic business sport: customer-induced hoop jumping!

Hoop jumping is defined as customers and prospects putting business development folks through their paces over and over again, holding an impending renewal or new business contract in front of their nose like a proverbial carrot. No matter how well you have done your homework. No matter how adamantly you have advocated on their behalf. No matter how hard you have tried to understand the offline factors that impact that customer’s decision making process. No matter how good your engineering solutions have been. No matter how many extras you have incorporated into service quality delivery – at no charge.

What’s this all about?

Seasoned business development professionals anticipate this activity and leave wiggle room for hoop jumping… so that they have the time to honor the real stuff. After all, these same customers do this to you, year after year.  And I hope you or your company doesn’t have a book of business that’s full of this type of customer persona. Especially if you have done your homework and made your numbers and completed your projects for the customers and prospects who are authentic.

Are you ready to jump through hoops for your customers? (Note: this activity is not the same as going the distance for your customers or prospects.)

End of year hoop jumping has several different formats. And some of us find ourselves participating in several different events:

1. “Because I said so Hoop Jumping” - Your current customer waits until the 11^th hour to decide whether to renew your services, just because he or she can, because you know they will renew your contract. But still they do this year after year, in spite of your superlative service quality delivery. Which makes you wonder whether it’s the value of your solution, or your ability to jump through last-minute hoops, that is the basis for your relationship with this customer.  And yeah, you let them do this to you, once again, because of the size of their account and their longevity with your company. And remember, they treat everyone this way – including their own employees.

 

2. “Something is better than nothing Hoop Jumping” - Your prospective customer just can’t make up their mind. And you really don’t want to tell them about pending deadlines, which makes you sound like a typical, commission-hungry sales person. Yet if they don’t start their service contract with you by the deadline, their business development strategy for 2010 will be compromised. Really. But they can’t seem to get to “yes.”  This situation compromises your own ethics of managing the process and taking the high road. So you go for some small fraction of the total solution, hoping to get a year end sale.

 

3. “You never had me from ‘hello’ Hoop Jumping” - Your prospect seems like they are going to sign the contract.  Yet multiple visits later, they are still asking you to rationalize why they should “go” with your solution vs. the competition’s, who is giving away free trials (and probably will include a Christmas ham if the prospect plays their cards right.) Depending on how new at this sales game you are (since this type of prospect equates value with getting something for nothing), you keep gathering more competitive data to show the prospect how you offer the superior solution.  They figure they are the customer and they have the right to make you jump through hoops to win their business.  They won’t ever sign with you.  It takes less energy to walk away from this type of prospect than to jump through their hoops.  

 

4. “What have you done for me lately Hoop Jumping” - Your corporate hierarchy is all over you to make your numbers. This situation has been especially interesting in 2009. You’ve been churning and burning, calling any and every prospect, cramming your schedule with visits to anyone who will speak to you. Which goes back to what does your book of business look like and how well do you manage the sales process during the course of your sales year? Selling something to anyone results in a lot of business that goes down to the wire all of the time. And probably won't renew next year. This sales strategy is the most energy-intensive and has the hoops that are the most difficult to jump through. It is ready-fire-aim selling.

Keep in mind that hoop jumping stresses your offline relationships with your support folks. If you can anticipate which customers and prospects are going to take things down to the wire – and let your support and engineering staff know about this possibility ahead of time – at least you can control that part of the “process. “ Manage the stuff that you can manage, control the variables that can be controlled. And minimize this type of performance art in the future.

I don’t like hoop jumping. I don’t recommend it as either a sales or a customer service strategy.  I can’t deny that no matter how well I feel I’ve managed my client relationships during the course of the year, there are still those few customers who feel the need to put me – and my support folks – through my paces at the end of sales year, year after year. And while I duly anticipate this activity, I still don’t care to stress out my support staff because of this type of behavior.

I prefer to provide superlative business development solutions that drive revenue to my customers via their internet initiatives, branding and innovation. There’s no room for hoop jumping when you are doing your best work for these best-in-class type of customers, year in and year out.

OK. Now back to end of year hoop jumping. Which is at its absolute minimum. Sigh…..

Are You Articulate Or Do You Talk In Circles?

OK. Before you read my blog, you gotta read yesterday’s (Sunday, December 6, 2009) Dilbert comic strip. Or rather, Dogbert The CEO.  No further explanation needed.

If I asked you “what do you do” could you tell me in about 45 words or less (Dilbert took 49)? What would you tell me? Would I understand the services you could deliver to me and the benefits I might anticipate from working with you?

I’m not talking about what you sell or the technical aspects of what it does. Features and benefits are irrelevant – even for highly engineering services. I am talking about what YOU are all about and what your delivery of your skill set brings to the table. Because that’s what the communication interface is all about, be it sales or engineering. People aren’t buying standardized products or services. If they were, they should be dealing with robots or worse yet, customer service reps.  Instead, they are making decisions about whether incorporating you and your company’s skill set will make a difference to the competitive viability of their company.

I have spent countless hours asking engineers what their value proposition is. And they have talked in circles because they haven’t ever been challenged to define it.  Instead,  perhaps engineers have felt  I would be wowed by their technical skills, how many certificate names and numbers they could rattle off, and their experience, and post graduate degrees. They have attempted to distract me from my original question by spinning the discussion all over the place. Guess again.  I didn’t forget my question. And I would ask, and re-ask the dreaded question again and again. Evading the answer is not an option.

The majority of CEOs and business owners/decision makers want to understand how well your service quality delivery integrates into their company. They care about how well you can anticipate, even project, their needs. The more you talk in circles, rattling off your resume instead of providing a value proposition, the more you become stereotyped, “dilbertized” and commoditized as, well, an “engineer.”

How can you inspire your clients? How can you describe your deliverables in a nontechnical manner that they understand? I am not talking rah-rah. I am talking your ability to simply and succinctly put into 45 words what working with you will deliver to them. Or do you talk in circles, going in one direction and then the other? Trying to cover all bases. Trying to say what you think folks want to hear?

Jill Konrath, award-winning author of Selling To Big Companies (I book I strongly recommend) defines a value proposition as:

“A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services.  It is focused on outcomes and stresses the business value of your offering.” (p 52, Selling To Big Companies)

If you are impeccable with your word, you will arrive at your value proposition. And once you arrive at your value proposition, it will be your constant, the fulcrum of everything you do. Because it is WHO YOU ARE. And your clients will know this. Innately. That they are dealing with the real thing. Because of your passionate commitment to who you are and what you are prepared to do for your clients.

Yet how many of us are able to take this self-introspective look at ourselves and define ourselves? Most of us talk in circles. And I’ve got news to you. Talking in circles is incredibly frustrating to clients and makes them ill at ease. Because if you don’t know who you are or what you can deliver, how can they entrust their company business to you?

Any of you who are freelance consulting engineers need to pay attention to this blog message. If you have been displaced, you more than likely have hung out your shingle as a freelance engineer. If you become part of the engineering outsourcing groups, they will place you in temporary employment.

Are you prepared to determine whether this is the type of company you may want to work for on a permanent basis? If so, you need to be interviewing them. If you are waiting for them to “discover” you, and offer you a permanent position, you are leaving your fate in someone else’s hands.  .

If you wish to make your own opportunities, you need to stop talking in circles. Take the time to develop a value proposition that is articulate, succinct and a strong statement about who you are, the value you bring to the table and how this value translates into a competitive advantage for customers, peers and future employers.

Start thinking about it.

 

 

Are You Impeccable With Your Word?

These are the days of Personal Branding, reinforced by your internet presence via LinkedIn professional profiles and participation in online discussion groups, Facebook, Twitter and various other venues. There are country western songs parodying the online persona you can create and how that compares with reality (yes, I like country western music… opera too for that matter).  There are blogs, led by Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, that extol the virtues of creating your Personal Brand. Sales Aerobics for Engineers training and consulting incorporates social media into business development strategies for technically intensive companies.

So much for all this internet hoopla. It seems daunting keeping your online personal brand strategy up to date.  The bottom line is: are you impeccable with your word? If folks had to describe what you are about, personally and professionally, how many of them will say your word is your bond? Think about it.

Dan Schawbel and many bloggers – this one included – emphasize that the internet is not the place for hiding behind a murky veneer that doesn’t match up once people meet you in person, listen to interviews or participate in webinars. Yet, how many of us are comfortable with who we truly are, 24/7/365? How many of us constantly strive to do the best possible job we can at any point in time? How many of us are impeccable with our word?

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his landmark book, The Four Agreements, lights the beacon for the importance of being one and the same with your word.  And this one singular agreement – as are the other three – becomes critical to your providing value to yourself, your customers and your organization.

If you are true to your word, you don’t have to remember what you said to anyone because you tell the same thing to everyone. There is consistency and uniformity in your responses as a person and as a professional. You don’t tell people what they want to hear; you don’t say one thing to one group and another thing to another group. Come on, you know people like this within the workplace. Perhaps this is your own modus operandi. I strongly suggest that you cease disrespecting yourself and your peers. Strive to be impeccable with your word. It is not easy, not easy at all.

In this most challenging of economies, with companies zigging and zagging as they jockey for competitive position, being one and the same with your word, values and ethics is no mean feat. In unifying your approach, you focus your energy towards the underlying principle of impeccability with one’s word. And you know what happens when you engage in becoming impeccable with your word? You have more energy to give, professionally and personally, because you aren’t as fractured or compartmentalized. This is a journey you take by yourself, for yourself. And ultimately, everyone is on the receiving end of your efforts.

In this most challenging of economies, with self-help books, how-to sales books, online sales blogs and folks looking for recipes for personal and professional success, you are only as good as your last sale. If your year-end sales record is your greatest self-defining moment , your context for self-evaluation must reside on a constantly shifting playing field.  Take a step back, and another step back. What is the 50,000 eagle’s eye view you have of yourself? At the end of the day, do you peers and friends define you as “Oh, that’s Bob. He sold $250K of new business this year. Wonder how he’ll do next year.” And…?

In this most challenging of economies, your engineering and technical acumen will only carry you so far. There’s more to who you are than your last completed project or the last technical certification you received.  OK, so you are a Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Look, I used to process map my kids’ weekly sports practice, game and tournament schedules during high school (I’ve since recovered). Being precise and organized and minutiae oriented is admirable. Being the go-to person who organizes chaos is a pretty good skill set. But…..?

We all bring far more to the table than our jobs allow us to. What if we decided to “bring it” anyway, all the time? What if you take the time to discover or re-discover “what” you are all about and become impeccable with your word?

Being impeccable with your word allows you to bring passion, enthusiasm, objectivity, consistency and energy into everything you do for yourself, your family, your clients and your organization.

Yes, this is something that all of us need to work on daily. Being impeccable with one’s word has a significant impact on our relationships. We feel everyone has changed as a result of our being impeccable with our word. In fact, we are the only folks who have changed and, in turn, the people we interact with are impacted, and react, well, differently because we are truly bringing ourselves to the table, authentically, impeccably, every time they meet with us.

Did you ever think about what the real meaning of Walking The Talk is?

Be impeccable with your word.