Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Fine Line or Slippery Slope.


You have heard me say before that Technicians like to figure things out. Well Sales Engineers like figure things out and then teach or at least tell others about them. I think most Sales Engineers could be teachers, if they wouldn’t get bored. So this raises the point, are you training your prospects, or selling them?

Where is the line, can you see it? The location of the line depends on many things, primarily the technical level of the prospect. The amount of information you have to tell the prospect grows exponentially to their technical level, but even though you are providing much more information, you still are not training. You need to provide enough information to inform your prospect enough to make an informed decision.

Here is a basic example. Explaining that a specific process is possible is informing, showing them how to set it up, is training. If you have answered that it is possible, and they want you to show them, what do you do? Showing how to do something is still informing, so do that. Setting up items is training, and boring, don’t go here.

So remember the line is a moving target from deal to deal, but it should be easy to identify where it is after your discovery call with the prospect. When faced with a mixed group of technical and non-technical people (subject of a future blog), the short answer is who do you need to convince to get the check signed?

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