I’ve joined forces with a few dynamite design and marketing partners to form aCreativeSource.com.  We are now in a position to offer services across all sales and marketing functions.  Our specialty is blending marketing and sales strategies in a cost effective manner.

As a new entity, we’ve already completed jobs ranging from designing logos, marketing brochures, and Web sites to developing full blown marketing and sales plans to executing a survey and cold call strategy to develop high quality prospect lists.

Oh, the point of this post.  Please check out our new site at http://aCreativeSource.com and if you have a need for our service and are one of the first ten people to mention “EngineersCanSell”, we’re offering 20% off in exchange for a testimonial.

I’ll warn you that I may have another exciting announcement in the months ahead!

This is an area that I am quite passionate about and think that we, as engineers, can gain a competitive advantage.  You need to tread lightly, however.

Depending on what you’re selling, a lot of your customers will look at you like you have two heads if you tell them that they should be following your every move on Twitter.  You run the real risk of alienating these folks - I talk from experience here.  I used to try to keep my marketing and sales methods on the cutting edge of social technology.  I’ve learned over the past few years that my customer base runs literally about two-years behind that curve, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

My point is that you need to know where your customers stand in this arena before you pummel them with zany invites and pitches.  You don’t want to try to sell an Xbox game to someone that is still using Atari.

Start small with simple things like newsletters and blogs and see how your base reacts.  Educate them as you bring them along the technology curve and you’ll be seen as an expert in two fields, and that can never be a bad thing.

I’ve gotten a few emails over the past several months asking exactly what viral marketing is.

I typically explain what it is and how it can help your sales efforts.  I’m finding an interesting pattern where the sales engineers get the concept and want to develop a campaign but upper management isn’t on-board.

We’ve all heard the term ‘viral’ before but it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to explain - until now.  The folks at VM People created this awesome video that we can all understand.

It walks you through the process of using viral marketing and selling to sell more soap.  The main point is to give your product advocates the tools and motivation to help you sell.  Pretty cool stuff.

Sally the saleswoman is responsible for growing sales for her company’s accounting software package. She knows the product inside and out and even passed her CPA exam recently to help illustrate her deep accounting knowledge and give her instant credibility. The company gave her six months to bulk up sales by 15%, a tall order for any product. Here is how Sally exceeded her sales goal and her commission expectations.

• She called on her classmates from her CPA preparation class to ask for advice on finding referrals. Note that she didn’t ask for referrals, but asked for help on getting referrals – that’s a fine line, but an important one to take heed to. By asking for this type of help, Sally let her classmates relax their guard and offer advice. Her classmates are mostly practicing CPA’s, so there is no competition for software sales to worry about.
  
  
• Next Sally poured through as many press releases as she could that dealt with companies that she already sells into and companies she wants to sell into. The releases that had anything to do with a need for an accounting package were treated as lead material. If there was good financial news, Sally called to congratulate them and see if their current software was up to the task. If there was bad financial news, Sally called to explain how her software helped another company save money and brought it back into the black. Expansions – does their current package have easy extensibility? OK enough, you get the picture.
  
  
• She attended a trade show to gain insights into how her product stacks up against the competition. This allowed her to easily handle any objections where the competition was brought up as an alternative. Although, as discussed in another article, she was careful not to downplay or insult the competition to her clients. That strategy will get you no where fast.
  
  
• At the same trade show, she presented a paper on using enterprise accounting software to streamline costs and minimize project cost overruns.
  
  
• Sally bought ad placement from Google’s Adwords to help rapidly spread the word about her product.
  
  
• Finally, she cruised LinkedIn for leads into companies that she wasn’t able to reach with the above methods.

The result of her efforts led to a 21% increase in business and the hiring of an assistant to help her manage all the extra business.

A critical, but often overlooked, area of the tour is how your workforce projects themselves - in particular the technicians on the shop floor.

You should be continually coaching them on how important it is for them to smile at guests and say hi and to ask them if they have any questions.  I’ve found that the best way to get them on the same page is to ask them beforehand if they would mind talking about their area to the prospects.  You can then say something like “Joe, would you mind telling us a bit how this press works.”

In return the workers get a sense of pride and your prospects really see that you connect with the workforce and have the ability to track their orders through your manufacturing system.

Yes, I realize you may know more about the machine and could talk more eloquently - keep your trap shut.

Spread the fame around and always thank them with donuts (or oat bran muffins) the next morning.

It’s meant to show how ridiculous these type of high pressure salespeople are - it’s worth 4:00 minutes of your time to watch.

If you wait for them to bring up the topic, you might have already lost.  Bring it up on your terms and with your point of reference.

Almost universally, you’re product/service is going to either make them more money or save them money.  Decide what that is before your sales call and do one of the following to shake things up a bit and get yourself noticed.

Right off the bat before plugging in your overstuffed laptop or passing out your shiny brochures, throw one of these out:

If you MAKE them money: “I was hoping to start off with an example of what we do and a quick discussion to get us all on the same page this morning.  We implemented our widget to StarCompany’s assembly line three months ago and they’ve already earned back 3 times their investment.  [then add 2-3 sentences saying what you technically did].  Can we talk about if there are any parallel processes like that here?”

If you SAVE them money: “I was hoping to start off with an example of what we do and a quick discussion to get us all on the same page this morning.  We implemented our widget to StarCompany’s assembly line three months ago and their rejection rate has dropped 78%.  This is saving them about $30,000 per month. [add your technical description here]  Can we talk about if there are any parallel processes like that here?”

This is getting long, and I’ve gotten feedback to keep the posts short, so I’ll save some actual sales call stories for a later date.

I’ve been eagerly searching for one of his new Airblade hand drying units and found one at a local resort this past weekend.  I must have gone into the bathroom four times before my wife asked if everything was ok.  I told her what marvel lay in the latrine and she said “not Dyson again!” - I was on a big Dyson kick for a long time after reading his autobiography - which I HIGHLY recommend.

So how does the awesome new hand dryer lend itself to a sales lesson?  Well at his heart, I sense that James is an engineer that simply wants to solve problems.  Now he went about it and actually solved the problems himself - I’m not suggesting that you have to do that.

But why not look for your customer’s problems that your company might be able to help alleviate and work with your team to at least propose a better solution.  You can bet Hoover laughed at Dyson until they noticed significant market share going his way - what if one hard working Hoover sales engineer would have spotted the need Dyson recognized, do you think Dyson could have survived?

I contacted Dyson’s PR department to ask for permission to use this photo (granted) and to see if I could shoot Mr. Dyson a few questions about his sales philosophy - I was told that they had to prioritize his time and he was too busy; oh well, it didn’t hurt to ask.

BTW, Mr. Dyson, if you ever read this I have a few product ideas for you that I think your cylclone technology would perform brilliantly at and the markets are enormous.

My readership has really started taking off recently - thank you all!

As some of you know, I’m a fan of people and sales sites that are run by people that are actually selling for a living.  A recent friend of mine, Mike Sigers of Simplenomics is doing just that.

I like a lot of things about his site, but my favorite is his writing style.  He tends to weave personal stories in to help explain whatever theory he’s discussing.  On top of all that, Mike may be the only person capable of having a picture of the late-great Meatloaf on a sales blog!

My take on Mike’s basic message - be honest, work hard and use common sense.  There, you’re already ahead of 70% of your competition.

1. Prepare customer proposals on weekends and evenings.
2. Never say no to a customer; everything is negotiable.
3. Make customers feel good about you - not just your product.
4. Meet customer requirements, even if it means fighting your own bureaucracy.
5. Do things for customers you don’t get paid for, like solving billing problems.
6. Know your competitor’s product better than your competitor does.
7. Be early for meetings.
8. Dress and groom yourself sharply so you look like a superior product.
9. When it’s time to go home, make one more phone call.
10. If you stay in the show a long time in the morning because you don’t look forward to work, find another job.

Pretty good, but I have to respectively disagree with number 2, perhaps it warrants a post in itself.