A key differentiator between Sales Engineers and other roles within the organization is that a Sales Engineer is usually compensated by salary plus commission as most Account Representatives are. This commission is usually paid out when the Account Representative is paid. Far less common is the case where a Sales Engineer is compensated with a base salary plus bonus. The bonus can be based upon the revenue generated within an assigned territory, set up as a Management By Objective(MBO) bonus, or a combination of the two. Either way, a Sales Engineer will make a base salary that is proportionally higher than their Account Representative counterparts, and much more than the traditional engineers in an organization.
Sales Engineers can spend 20-70% of their time traveling and work a flexible schedule due to the needs of the Sales organization they support. Most Sales Engineers telecommute or spend a limited amount of time in the office. Skills with teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and web conferencing (Webex, Live Meeting, etc.) are put to good use both on and off the road.
Sales Engineers, like their Account Representative counterparts, are hired based on their geographic location rather than their proximity to the corporate, or even regional, office. Working in another part of the country, or even outside the country, where the corporate offices are, a Sales Engineer may only make it to corporate once or twice each year
Monday, 2 March 2009
What is a Technical Sales Engineer
Many products and services, especially those purchased by large companies and institutions, are highly complex. Sales engineers—who also may be called manufacturers’ agents, sales representatives, or technical sales support workers—work with the production, engineering, or research and development departments of their companies, or with independent sales firms, to determine how products and services could be designed or modified to suit customers’ needs. They also may advise customers on how best to use the products or services provided.
Sales engineers sell and consult on technologically and scientifically advanced products. They should possess extensive knowledge of these products, including their components and processes. Sales engineers then use their technical skills to demonstrate to potential customers how and why the products or services they are selling would suit the customer better than competitors’ products. Often, there may not be a directly competitive product. In these cases, the job of the sales engineer is to demonstrate to the customer the usefulness of the product or service—for example, how much money new production machinery would save.
Engineers apply the theories and principles of science and mathematics to technical problems. Their work is the link between scientific discoveries and commercial applications. Many sales engineers specialize in products that are related to their engineering specialty. For example, sales engineers selling chemical products may have chemical engineering backgrounds, while those selling business software or information systems may have degrees in computer engineering. (Information on engineers, including 17 engineering specialties, appears elsewhere in the Handbook.)
Many of the duties of sales engineers are similar to those of other salespersons. They must interest the client in purchasing their products, many of which are durable manufactured products such as turbines. Sales engineers often are teamed with other salespersons who concentrate on the marketing and sales, enabling the sales engineer to concentrate on the technical aspects of the job. By working on a sales team, each member is able to focus on his or her strengths and expertise. (Information on other sales occupations, including sales representatives, appears elsewhere in the Handbook.)
Sales engineers tend to employ selling techniques that are different from those used by most other sales workers. They generally use a “consultative” style; that is, they focus on the client’s problem and show how it could be solved or mitigated with their product or service. This selling style differs from the “benefits and features” method, whereby the salesperson describes the product and leaves the customer to decide how it would be useful.
In addition to maintaining current clients and attracting new ones, sales engineers help clients solve any problems that arise when the product is installed. Afterward, they may continue to serve as a liaison between the client and their company. Increasingly, sales engineers are asked to undertake tasks related to sales, such as market research, because of their familiarity with clients’ purchasing needs. Drawing on this same familiarity, sales engineers may help identify and develop new products.
Work environment. Sales engineers may work directly for manufacturers or service providers, or they may work in small independent sales firms. In an independent firm, they may sell complementary products from several different suppliers.
Workers in this occupation can encounter pressure and stress because their income and job security often depend directly on their success in sales and customer service. Many sales engineers work more than 40 hours per week to meet sales goals and client needs. Although the hours may be long and often irregular, many sales engineers have the freedom to determine their own schedules. Consequently, they often can arrange their appointments so that they can have time off when they want it.
Some sales engineers have large territories and travel extensively. Because sales regions may cover several States, sales engineers may be away from home for several days or even weeks at a time. Others work near their home base and travel mostly by car. International travel to secure contracts with foreign clients is becoming more common.
Sales engineers sell and consult on technologically and scientifically advanced products. They should possess extensive knowledge of these products, including their components and processes. Sales engineers then use their technical skills to demonstrate to potential customers how and why the products or services they are selling would suit the customer better than competitors’ products. Often, there may not be a directly competitive product. In these cases, the job of the sales engineer is to demonstrate to the customer the usefulness of the product or service—for example, how much money new production machinery would save.
Engineers apply the theories and principles of science and mathematics to technical problems. Their work is the link between scientific discoveries and commercial applications. Many sales engineers specialize in products that are related to their engineering specialty. For example, sales engineers selling chemical products may have chemical engineering backgrounds, while those selling business software or information systems may have degrees in computer engineering. (Information on engineers, including 17 engineering specialties, appears elsewhere in the Handbook.)
Many of the duties of sales engineers are similar to those of other salespersons. They must interest the client in purchasing their products, many of which are durable manufactured products such as turbines. Sales engineers often are teamed with other salespersons who concentrate on the marketing and sales, enabling the sales engineer to concentrate on the technical aspects of the job. By working on a sales team, each member is able to focus on his or her strengths and expertise. (Information on other sales occupations, including sales representatives, appears elsewhere in the Handbook.)
Sales engineers tend to employ selling techniques that are different from those used by most other sales workers. They generally use a “consultative” style; that is, they focus on the client’s problem and show how it could be solved or mitigated with their product or service. This selling style differs from the “benefits and features” method, whereby the salesperson describes the product and leaves the customer to decide how it would be useful.
In addition to maintaining current clients and attracting new ones, sales engineers help clients solve any problems that arise when the product is installed. Afterward, they may continue to serve as a liaison between the client and their company. Increasingly, sales engineers are asked to undertake tasks related to sales, such as market research, because of their familiarity with clients’ purchasing needs. Drawing on this same familiarity, sales engineers may help identify and develop new products.
Work environment. Sales engineers may work directly for manufacturers or service providers, or they may work in small independent sales firms. In an independent firm, they may sell complementary products from several different suppliers.
Workers in this occupation can encounter pressure and stress because their income and job security often depend directly on their success in sales and customer service. Many sales engineers work more than 40 hours per week to meet sales goals and client needs. Although the hours may be long and often irregular, many sales engineers have the freedom to determine their own schedules. Consequently, they often can arrange their appointments so that they can have time off when they want it.
Some sales engineers have large territories and travel extensively. Because sales regions may cover several States, sales engineers may be away from home for several days or even weeks at a time. Others work near their home base and travel mostly by car. International travel to secure contracts with foreign clients is becoming more common.
Cold Calling v Tele Marketing
What really is the difference between B2B Cold Calling and Traditional Telemarketing, anyway? In truth, the basic fundamentals are identical. But, there are certainly differences.
Clients who hire VSA or create their own internal VSA-type B2B cold calling teams want a prospecting arm - a group who finds potential gems in a pile of names and gives these potential gems to someone who will close the sale. Typically, clients who hire a traditional telemarketing firm are looking for a sales arm - a group who finds new clients and sells them directly over the phone, eliminating the extra step of using a sales person.
There is a need for both kinds of calling, but the two categories do not have identical skills, processes or technology. I am intent on defining the difference between the two categories because l want to help our readers find the calling team that best fits their companies' needs.
Similarities: There are tremendous similarities between VSA-type Cold Calling programs and the kind of telemarketing calls you receive at work (from a long distance company) or at dinner (from your local newspaper). Ability to get on the phone with complete strangers and talk! Hours and hours of telephone calls to find individuals who are interested in your product or service.
Belief that your product or service can truly help your prospect. Thick skin and ability to take rejection. Telephone sales skills to keep someone on the phone long enough.
Ability to overcome specific objections. Endurance, knowing when someone is interested and moving them into the next phase of the sales process Tracking results of each call. Make modifications during the program, as needed to ensure success.
Differences: The differences are subtle, but they are critical. Many firms who perform traditional telemarketing work also perform VSA-type B2B Cold Calling programs.
Represent complex products or services, which require sophistication to explain quickly over the phone, and a sales person to truly close the sale. Typically call for high-margin or repeat-purchase products or services. Never read from a script, even when answering objections.
Ask open ended questions. Become knowledgeable about the product or service to answer simple questions and sound as though you're sitting right in your client's office. "Navigate" a prospective company's calling system to find the right decision maker - normally this means not using an automatic dialer because callers might make 3 dials for every record to find your decision maker.
Update your record with the correct decision maker. Excellent notes so the next time you (or a colleague) call(s) the company you can reference previous conversations. Lead an interested prospect to a sales appointment - at some future date - and keep the sales momentum! Get off the phone as soon as you sense there is no need or no interest. This might be after one objection. Do not call a prospect again (by you or a colleague) - EVER - if he or she asks to be removed from future calls.
Never jeopardize your client's reputation by being perceived as a pest. Don't sell over the phone, only identify potential sales/leads. Your job is to know enough not to be dangerous, since products or services are typically quite complex and require a sales person to close the sale. The program's overall success depends delivering qualified leads AND on the sales person's ability to close your appointments. Making a lot of appointments is NOT ENOUGH!!
This list can help any company identify the technical capabilities, caller-skills, and process requirements to make a phone campaign successful. VSA is happy to answer questions, regardless of whether you make calls in-house, are looking for traditional telemarketing, or want to outsource a B2B cold calling campaign.
Clients who hire VSA or create their own internal VSA-type B2B cold calling teams want a prospecting arm - a group who finds potential gems in a pile of names and gives these potential gems to someone who will close the sale. Typically, clients who hire a traditional telemarketing firm are looking for a sales arm - a group who finds new clients and sells them directly over the phone, eliminating the extra step of using a sales person.
There is a need for both kinds of calling, but the two categories do not have identical skills, processes or technology. I am intent on defining the difference between the two categories because l want to help our readers find the calling team that best fits their companies' needs.
Similarities: There are tremendous similarities between VSA-type Cold Calling programs and the kind of telemarketing calls you receive at work (from a long distance company) or at dinner (from your local newspaper). Ability to get on the phone with complete strangers and talk! Hours and hours of telephone calls to find individuals who are interested in your product or service.
Belief that your product or service can truly help your prospect. Thick skin and ability to take rejection. Telephone sales skills to keep someone on the phone long enough.
Ability to overcome specific objections. Endurance, knowing when someone is interested and moving them into the next phase of the sales process Tracking results of each call. Make modifications during the program, as needed to ensure success.
Differences: The differences are subtle, but they are critical. Many firms who perform traditional telemarketing work also perform VSA-type B2B Cold Calling programs.
Represent complex products or services, which require sophistication to explain quickly over the phone, and a sales person to truly close the sale. Typically call for high-margin or repeat-purchase products or services. Never read from a script, even when answering objections.
Ask open ended questions. Become knowledgeable about the product or service to answer simple questions and sound as though you're sitting right in your client's office. "Navigate" a prospective company's calling system to find the right decision maker - normally this means not using an automatic dialer because callers might make 3 dials for every record to find your decision maker.
Update your record with the correct decision maker. Excellent notes so the next time you (or a colleague) call(s) the company you can reference previous conversations. Lead an interested prospect to a sales appointment - at some future date - and keep the sales momentum! Get off the phone as soon as you sense there is no need or no interest. This might be after one objection. Do not call a prospect again (by you or a colleague) - EVER - if he or she asks to be removed from future calls.
Never jeopardize your client's reputation by being perceived as a pest. Don't sell over the phone, only identify potential sales/leads. Your job is to know enough not to be dangerous, since products or services are typically quite complex and require a sales person to close the sale. The program's overall success depends delivering qualified leads AND on the sales person's ability to close your appointments. Making a lot of appointments is NOT ENOUGH!!
This list can help any company identify the technical capabilities, caller-skills, and process requirements to make a phone campaign successful. VSA is happy to answer questions, regardless of whether you make calls in-house, are looking for traditional telemarketing, or want to outsource a B2B cold calling campaign.
Principle of Technical Sales
'Nobody can buy your product or service if they don't know you exist'
That's pretty obvious isn't it? There is a bit more depth to the corollary; 'The more people who know of your company the more business you will get'
The principle is easy to see with websites. Suppose you have an attractive offer, the product is in demand and the price is right, but no traffic. You won't sell a thing.
But, to go to the opposite extreme, if you can make most of the population aware of who you are, what you do and how to contact you, you'll get a massive amount of business.
Pizza Hut advertises, before and during The Simpsons - peak time TV, with an audience of millions. That is exploiting this principle to the maximum.
Now let's consider how this relates to the typical entrepreneur, inventor or small business owner. If that's you, how many of your potential customers know that you are ready, willing and able to help them?
I've put this question to hundreds of delegates at my 'Selling for Engineers' seminar. It can take a fair bit of consciousness-raising before the true scale of the opportunities becomes apparent.
For a bit of fun, I introduce the concept across like this:
'Here's a number, 6,700,000,000. That's how many people there are on planet earth'. Then I ask, 'How many of those people have heard of Coca Cola - or Microsoft, Nike, Honda?
And then I enquire, 'How many of them have heard of your business?'
This generally gets a laugh and someone is bound to hold up their hand making the zero gesture. For most of the other participants their customers number only a handful.
Since you can't sell to people who don't know you exist, task one for increasing sales is to let your market know what you do and how to contact you.
At this point I sometimes get the comment, 'Our customers know where we are if they need something'.
But things never stay the same, new organisations are born, old ones become dissatisfied with their existing suppliers, personnel change. The market place isn't static there are always new opportunities.
Besides, we exist in a global village these days. Nowhere on the planet is more than 24 hours away by plane. With phone and email it's only seconds.
So we can proceed in two ways; first look hard to find more prospects in your local area. Second, consider where else in the world you can service. You may not need any local office, agent or staff; for many organisations the internet makes them redundant.
Make a start like this; where are your main customers? In that geographic location, how many other organisations are there which could potentially use your products or service?
There are many sources of information. In the past, you'd take a huge directory and pore over it to extract prospects. Now you can do all that on-line with little effort and usually free of charge.
Simply use your favourite search engine and enter the name of a location and a relevant product or service. Example, This is what Google gave me today: Results 1 - 100 of about 656,000 for Electric motors Yorkshire.
Or look for a directory of your product and the area <(your product)(area) directory>. If you find one, compared with the first method, you will save time going through the listings.
Either way, you'll have plenty to get started with. Then you can consider if there are other districts / cities / regions / countries where there are users of what you supply.
If you are serious about wanting more business. Here is a very simple method which always, repeat, ALWAYS works.
Every day, contact a few new prospects, briefly introduce yourself and tell them what your business does and send them some information.
Suppose you called 5 new people a day, which could be done in half an hour, and you kept this up for a month. 5 X 20 days equals 100 new contacts. If there is even a little demand for what you do, a percentage of the people you reach will be interested. Let's assume it's only 5%. Now you have got 5 extra customers after a month.
Apply some self-discipline, keep the program going, and after a second month you have 10 customers you wouldn't have had before. Pretty soon you are going to need some help to deal with all the jobs that are coming in and your turnover will be climbing.
And on the subject of money, what has this process cost? Apart from phone calls and perhaps the printing of flyers, there has probably been no other expense. You haven't paid for advertisements or a marketing consultant.
Sounds good doesn't it, a lot more customers at little or no cost? Then why don't more business people follow this simple plan?
There is a collection of answers - 'don't have the time', 'you can't do that in our industry', 'it's unprofessional', 'it wouldn't work', 'people hate unsolicited calls'. But in reality, what these protests amount to more than anything is fear of the unfamiliar.
Anybody who has done sales the hard way, door-knocking around houses, industrial estates or cold-calling on the phone for a really tough sale, such as advertising space, insurance or real-estate listings knows that even if it's not always fun, it works. And that is with difficult products.
But if you offer something that is not widely promoted, you'll be surprised at how interested and welcoming prospects are.
They don't say 'go away and stop bothering me', typically they want to know more, and ask for information to be sent or for someone to call and see them.
You don't need to talk anyone into anything, just let them know you exist.
That's all it takes.
That's pretty obvious isn't it? There is a bit more depth to the corollary; 'The more people who know of your company the more business you will get'
The principle is easy to see with websites. Suppose you have an attractive offer, the product is in demand and the price is right, but no traffic. You won't sell a thing.
But, to go to the opposite extreme, if you can make most of the population aware of who you are, what you do and how to contact you, you'll get a massive amount of business.
Pizza Hut advertises, before and during The Simpsons - peak time TV, with an audience of millions. That is exploiting this principle to the maximum.
Now let's consider how this relates to the typical entrepreneur, inventor or small business owner. If that's you, how many of your potential customers know that you are ready, willing and able to help them?
I've put this question to hundreds of delegates at my 'Selling for Engineers' seminar. It can take a fair bit of consciousness-raising before the true scale of the opportunities becomes apparent.
For a bit of fun, I introduce the concept across like this:
'Here's a number, 6,700,000,000. That's how many people there are on planet earth'. Then I ask, 'How many of those people have heard of Coca Cola - or Microsoft, Nike, Honda?
And then I enquire, 'How many of them have heard of your business?'
This generally gets a laugh and someone is bound to hold up their hand making the zero gesture. For most of the other participants their customers number only a handful.
Since you can't sell to people who don't know you exist, task one for increasing sales is to let your market know what you do and how to contact you.
At this point I sometimes get the comment, 'Our customers know where we are if they need something'.
But things never stay the same, new organisations are born, old ones become dissatisfied with their existing suppliers, personnel change. The market place isn't static there are always new opportunities.
Besides, we exist in a global village these days. Nowhere on the planet is more than 24 hours away by plane. With phone and email it's only seconds.
So we can proceed in two ways; first look hard to find more prospects in your local area. Second, consider where else in the world you can service. You may not need any local office, agent or staff; for many organisations the internet makes them redundant.
Make a start like this; where are your main customers? In that geographic location, how many other organisations are there which could potentially use your products or service?
There are many sources of information. In the past, you'd take a huge directory and pore over it to extract prospects. Now you can do all that on-line with little effort and usually free of charge.
Simply use your favourite search engine and enter the name of a location and a relevant product or service. Example, This is what Google gave me today: Results 1 - 100 of about 656,000 for Electric motors Yorkshire.
Or look for a directory of your product and the area <(your product)(area) directory>. If you find one, compared with the first method, you will save time going through the listings.
Either way, you'll have plenty to get started with. Then you can consider if there are other districts / cities / regions / countries where there are users of what you supply.
If you are serious about wanting more business. Here is a very simple method which always, repeat, ALWAYS works.
Every day, contact a few new prospects, briefly introduce yourself and tell them what your business does and send them some information.
Suppose you called 5 new people a day, which could be done in half an hour, and you kept this up for a month. 5 X 20 days equals 100 new contacts. If there is even a little demand for what you do, a percentage of the people you reach will be interested. Let's assume it's only 5%. Now you have got 5 extra customers after a month.
Apply some self-discipline, keep the program going, and after a second month you have 10 customers you wouldn't have had before. Pretty soon you are going to need some help to deal with all the jobs that are coming in and your turnover will be climbing.
And on the subject of money, what has this process cost? Apart from phone calls and perhaps the printing of flyers, there has probably been no other expense. You haven't paid for advertisements or a marketing consultant.
Sounds good doesn't it, a lot more customers at little or no cost? Then why don't more business people follow this simple plan?
There is a collection of answers - 'don't have the time', 'you can't do that in our industry', 'it's unprofessional', 'it wouldn't work', 'people hate unsolicited calls'. But in reality, what these protests amount to more than anything is fear of the unfamiliar.
Anybody who has done sales the hard way, door-knocking around houses, industrial estates or cold-calling on the phone for a really tough sale, such as advertising space, insurance or real-estate listings knows that even if it's not always fun, it works. And that is with difficult products.
But if you offer something that is not widely promoted, you'll be surprised at how interested and welcoming prospects are.
They don't say 'go away and stop bothering me', typically they want to know more, and ask for information to be sent or for someone to call and see them.
You don't need to talk anyone into anything, just let them know you exist.
That's all it takes.
Motivating Sales People
It is common knowledge that many sales people can calculate how much commission they have earned faster and more accurate than any super computer. Indeed, money is a key driving force that motivates most, and certainly for the more successful ones.
However, is money then the ONLY motivator, or are there anything else?
If you were to ask anyone why they want to be one, there will usually be 3 answers:
1. For the money (of course); 2. Being able to directly link their efforts to tangible results; and 3. Having the (relative) independence and flexibility in their jobs
As such, while money may be the key driver for most, it certainly is not the only one. They are also motivated by a sense of achievement, and the more successful ones usually have large egos as well.
If we were to look deep into what motivates people, here are 2 factors that we need to consider:
1. Are the rewards attractive (or punishment severe) enough? 2. Am I able to achieve it?
Avoiding Pain vs. Seeking Pleasure
While making money is a great pleasure for many people, including sales people, some are first motivated by avoiding the punishment of NOT achieving their monthly, quarterly or annual sales targets. Hence, it's a very common practice for sales people to "hide" potential contracts to "save them for the next financial period", rather than to risk NOT meeting the sales targets for that period.
Sales people are indeed masters of work flow optimization in this sense. However, this does not help you in getting results from your sales team, and sometimes deals may be lost due to the delays caused when sales people want to "save them for the next quarter".
When companies use money as the only motivator, it is also a riskier proposition. There's nothing to prevent competitors to use the same motivator to entice your best people (along with your best customers) to defect. While there may be some non-competitive clauses in employment contracts, these are seldom enforceable, especially in Asia.
As mentioned earlier, successful sales people usually have large (sometimes over-sized) egos. Nothing feeds the ego other than believing (correctly or otherwise) that you had singlehandedly contributed millions of dollars to your company's sales revenue. However, massaging the sales person's ego (either by making them superstars when they succeed, or "humiliating" them when they don't deliver the intended results) is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it will drive people to achieve super-human results. On the other hand, they may be so focused on their self-achievement that they become insensitive to issues such as:
Serving customer needs, Maintaining healthy margins, Ensuring cross department support and other factors that will impact business results.
When the egos become over-sized, some people can have a false sense of "invincibility". Some live on past glories, even when current sales results are not as good or outstanding as before. To overcome this, Dell Computers have made sure that their egos are in check by just focusing on the present and future. Past performance mean nothing to Dell's sales managers, and a top performer is only as good as the next sale. They are as such motivated to maintain their "successful" status every single day.
Eventually, sales people get burnt out. Depending on the industry, they usually achieve their peak about 1 to 1.5 years after joining a company. How they perform beyond the peak period is a matter of how you motivate and nurture them.
Besides dishing out ever better incentives (usually money-related), many companies chose to promote their top sales to be sales managers. Unfortunately, both motivational strategies are not effective. When they feel burnt out, it's not an issue that can be resolved with money (or most incentives). In addition, only 15% of top sales people can be competent managers.
When they feel burnt out, it is usually they found that they are not further developing themselves or learning anything new anymore. Usually, they found they have reached some kind of plateau in getting better sales results, and the repetition of doing the same old thing is becoming boring to them as well.
This is also the phase when good people are the most vulnerable to defecting to your competitors. To overcome this, we will have to looking into other overlooked motivators.
Can I Do It?
As mentioned earlier, the other aspect of motivation is whether you feel you are able to do your job well.
In some industries where sales management practices tend to be Neanderthal (email me to find out which ones), the attrition of new sales hires are astonishingly high. These new hires are motivated by making more money, just like any successful sales person will be. However, due to the lack of proper training, coaching and guidance, as much as 90% of these new hires leave within 1 month. If they don't see brightness of the future, they'll just go.
While such companies do provide some level of sales training, as much as 87% of all sales training evaporates within 1 month of the training. And this statistic refer to companies with better sales management practices in place. For companies with weaker sales management, most of these training are outdated and don't really prepare the sales person to handle customers in the real world. Without a post-training supporting environment, the new hires feel overwhelmed and and helpless, and then they just leave.
When sales people find that they are not able to achieve better results, or net bigger deals, or improve margins, what they need now is support from management on how they can achieve breakthroughs. They know that if they can do better, the monetary incentives are all there waiting for them. What they really need is the right guidance and support them how they can do so.
Besides providing the usual training, here are other ways that managers can get their people proceed to the next level of performance:
Align sales strategies to market realities. Sometimes, due to rapid market changes, sales strategies mapped out 6 months ago may have already be outdated. A sales strategy re-alignment may help close more sales;
Provide recognition of improvements in sales process. While people are rewarded (or punished) based on results (sales targets), few sales managers actually recognize the improvements that sales people made in their sales process. If sales people made sales process improvements, it is very likely that this will lead to better results. Such improvements need to be recognized, reinforced and made as good examples for others to follow.
Motivating the Sales Force Without Using Money
In a nutshell, when people join the sales force, they may do so in the hopes of making more money. However, if you want to get them to perform to the next level of performance, you will need to improve their skills and abilities to achieve better results. In fact, management guru Ram Charan mentioned that if using incentives as the main means to get better performance from the sales team is an outdated approach
If you find isolated cases of poor performance from your team, then perhaps these few bad hats are just making excuses not to work hard. However, if you find that poor performance is widespread and pervasive in your sales force, then you, as manager, are making THE excuse for not providing the necessary support and guidance for your people.
However, is money then the ONLY motivator, or are there anything else?
If you were to ask anyone why they want to be one, there will usually be 3 answers:
1. For the money (of course); 2. Being able to directly link their efforts to tangible results; and 3. Having the (relative) independence and flexibility in their jobs
As such, while money may be the key driver for most, it certainly is not the only one. They are also motivated by a sense of achievement, and the more successful ones usually have large egos as well.
If we were to look deep into what motivates people, here are 2 factors that we need to consider:
1. Are the rewards attractive (or punishment severe) enough? 2. Am I able to achieve it?
Avoiding Pain vs. Seeking Pleasure
While making money is a great pleasure for many people, including sales people, some are first motivated by avoiding the punishment of NOT achieving their monthly, quarterly or annual sales targets. Hence, it's a very common practice for sales people to "hide" potential contracts to "save them for the next financial period", rather than to risk NOT meeting the sales targets for that period.
Sales people are indeed masters of work flow optimization in this sense. However, this does not help you in getting results from your sales team, and sometimes deals may be lost due to the delays caused when sales people want to "save them for the next quarter".
When companies use money as the only motivator, it is also a riskier proposition. There's nothing to prevent competitors to use the same motivator to entice your best people (along with your best customers) to defect. While there may be some non-competitive clauses in employment contracts, these are seldom enforceable, especially in Asia.
As mentioned earlier, successful sales people usually have large (sometimes over-sized) egos. Nothing feeds the ego other than believing (correctly or otherwise) that you had singlehandedly contributed millions of dollars to your company's sales revenue. However, massaging the sales person's ego (either by making them superstars when they succeed, or "humiliating" them when they don't deliver the intended results) is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it will drive people to achieve super-human results. On the other hand, they may be so focused on their self-achievement that they become insensitive to issues such as:
Serving customer needs, Maintaining healthy margins, Ensuring cross department support and other factors that will impact business results.
When the egos become over-sized, some people can have a false sense of "invincibility". Some live on past glories, even when current sales results are not as good or outstanding as before. To overcome this, Dell Computers have made sure that their egos are in check by just focusing on the present and future. Past performance mean nothing to Dell's sales managers, and a top performer is only as good as the next sale. They are as such motivated to maintain their "successful" status every single day.
Eventually, sales people get burnt out. Depending on the industry, they usually achieve their peak about 1 to 1.5 years after joining a company. How they perform beyond the peak period is a matter of how you motivate and nurture them.
Besides dishing out ever better incentives (usually money-related), many companies chose to promote their top sales to be sales managers. Unfortunately, both motivational strategies are not effective. When they feel burnt out, it's not an issue that can be resolved with money (or most incentives). In addition, only 15% of top sales people can be competent managers.
When they feel burnt out, it is usually they found that they are not further developing themselves or learning anything new anymore. Usually, they found they have reached some kind of plateau in getting better sales results, and the repetition of doing the same old thing is becoming boring to them as well.
This is also the phase when good people are the most vulnerable to defecting to your competitors. To overcome this, we will have to looking into other overlooked motivators.
Can I Do It?
As mentioned earlier, the other aspect of motivation is whether you feel you are able to do your job well.
In some industries where sales management practices tend to be Neanderthal (email me to find out which ones), the attrition of new sales hires are astonishingly high. These new hires are motivated by making more money, just like any successful sales person will be. However, due to the lack of proper training, coaching and guidance, as much as 90% of these new hires leave within 1 month. If they don't see brightness of the future, they'll just go.
While such companies do provide some level of sales training, as much as 87% of all sales training evaporates within 1 month of the training. And this statistic refer to companies with better sales management practices in place. For companies with weaker sales management, most of these training are outdated and don't really prepare the sales person to handle customers in the real world. Without a post-training supporting environment, the new hires feel overwhelmed and and helpless, and then they just leave.
When sales people find that they are not able to achieve better results, or net bigger deals, or improve margins, what they need now is support from management on how they can achieve breakthroughs. They know that if they can do better, the monetary incentives are all there waiting for them. What they really need is the right guidance and support them how they can do so.
Besides providing the usual training, here are other ways that managers can get their people proceed to the next level of performance:
Align sales strategies to market realities. Sometimes, due to rapid market changes, sales strategies mapped out 6 months ago may have already be outdated. A sales strategy re-alignment may help close more sales;
Provide recognition of improvements in sales process. While people are rewarded (or punished) based on results (sales targets), few sales managers actually recognize the improvements that sales people made in their sales process. If sales people made sales process improvements, it is very likely that this will lead to better results. Such improvements need to be recognized, reinforced and made as good examples for others to follow.
Motivating the Sales Force Without Using Money
In a nutshell, when people join the sales force, they may do so in the hopes of making more money. However, if you want to get them to perform to the next level of performance, you will need to improve their skills and abilities to achieve better results. In fact, management guru Ram Charan mentioned that if using incentives as the main means to get better performance from the sales team is an outdated approach
If you find isolated cases of poor performance from your team, then perhaps these few bad hats are just making excuses not to work hard. However, if you find that poor performance is widespread and pervasive in your sales force, then you, as manager, are making THE excuse for not providing the necessary support and guidance for your people.
Technical Performance Review
Your performance review looks back at your last review period to assess your progress against agreed objectives or operational measures. Your performance review is also a great opportunity to give your boss feedback too. It is also very important to ask powerful questions in your Performance Review in order to spot future opportunities and understand the future of your role, department and organization. Here are eleven powerful questions to ask during your next performance review.
The first three questions are the simplest and most powerful of all. You should receive a lot of information with these few alone.
1. "What should I continue to do?"
2. "What should I stop doing?"
3. "What should I start to do?"
The next 8 are designed to draw out more specific information from your reviewer and to help you spot development opportunities and even more responsibilities you could take on.
4. "What personal goals will deliver the most value to our organization?"
5. If you're in a technical role then ask "What emerging technologies could I investigate and report back on their potential value to our organization?", or if you're in a management role ask "What emerging management practices could I investigate and report back on their potential value to our organization?"
6. "What criteria should I satisfy to move onto the next level in this organization?"
7. As your boss "What can I do to make you more successful?"
8. "How will my role align to company direction in the future?"
9. "I see that department [choose one!] is a big internal customer of our department, so how could I understand more about its contribution to the business and how I impact its effectiveness?"
10. "What impact has my training had on the department, and what further training should I take to add more value?" or "If external training isn't available, then what else should I consider?"
11. "Who do you think is a great role model for me in the organization?"
Try them out in your next Performance Review and see what impact they have!
The first three questions are the simplest and most powerful of all. You should receive a lot of information with these few alone.
1. "What should I continue to do?"
2. "What should I stop doing?"
3. "What should I start to do?"
The next 8 are designed to draw out more specific information from your reviewer and to help you spot development opportunities and even more responsibilities you could take on.
4. "What personal goals will deliver the most value to our organization?"
5. If you're in a technical role then ask "What emerging technologies could I investigate and report back on their potential value to our organization?", or if you're in a management role ask "What emerging management practices could I investigate and report back on their potential value to our organization?"
6. "What criteria should I satisfy to move onto the next level in this organization?"
7. As your boss "What can I do to make you more successful?"
8. "How will my role align to company direction in the future?"
9. "I see that department [choose one!] is a big internal customer of our department, so how could I understand more about its contribution to the business and how I impact its effectiveness?"
10. "What impact has my training had on the department, and what further training should I take to add more value?" or "If external training isn't available, then what else should I consider?"
11. "Who do you think is a great role model for me in the organization?"
Try them out in your next Performance Review and see what impact they have!
Friday, 27 February 2009
Technical Competence
There is a high expectation that the leader be competent in the assigned task or specialty he is supervising. This expectation exists to some level in all endeavors. Workers want the boss to know what they do and to have, at least, a rudimentary understanding of how it is done. At a minimum, the leader should be familiar with the task. Even better, he should have some proficiency at it. Employees at all levels consistently cite the importance of technical competence in their leaders. First, this is a respect issue. Second, it is a direction issue. Employees correctly believe that if the boss doesn’t know what they do and how they do it, he will be unable to make the right decisions on how to effectively employ them, implement changes that positively impact performance, and improve the team’s ability to capitalize on future opportunities. `
Even more important is the willingness of the leader to admit when he doesn’t know how to do something. People who do the task daily don’t expect the leader to be an expert on the task they routinely perform. They do expect him to be familiar with it and to take an interest in it. When the supervisor asks questions about what the employees are doing and sincerely listens to the responses, he establishes a positive relationship with his employees. When you, as the leader, take the time to talk to the person repairing equipment in the repair ship, the message comes thorough loud and clear: “I care about you and what you are doing.” Employees recognize this and tend to respond with increased loyalty and dedication.
Manager, boss, foreman, etc. All titles used to describe that person with responsibility for getting a job done by directing other people. The key point is that this person must accomplish a certain amount of work beyond that which one person is considered capable of doing. They are expected to oversee the production of others to get that work done.
Often this person occupies their position because of demonstrated proficiency at the task they are supervising. For example, a carpenter may be great with his tools and very efficient at doing his job. One day he is told he will now supervise three other carpenters. He becomes the foreman. No big deal really, as he generally works alongside the three of them, setting the pace, and taking corrective action right away when one of his crew does something wrong. This foreman is often cited for his ability to “make it happen” and his behavior is reinforced with this praise. Perhaps this foreman gets promoted and then supervises three foremen yielding the same results. This situation is not limited to the field. Consider the accounting supervisor who is known for her attention to detail. Nothing got by her when she was a clerk, and now, nothing gets by her as a supervisor. The reason nothing gets by her is that she is basically replicating the work of her team as she very closely rechecks their work. Or perhaps the super sales person, who is now the sales manager.
These people fail to recognize they are no longer getting paid to actually do the work. They are getting paid for the work to get done – by others. They are relying on their own expertise to get the job done rather than teaching others to do it. Unfortunately, we often end up rewarding them for the result rather than the method.
Successful leaders know and understand the jobs they supervise. They are able to make decisions based on that knowledge, which increases their credibility. Successful organizations recognize the new skills and responsibilities necessary for continued success at higher levels, and they work to put qualified people into those positions of greater impact and responsibility.
The willingness to “get dirty” once in a while demonstrates respect for the people being led. It enables the leader to understand the conditions the employees face and to craft strategies to help them succeed. The leader who knows the requirements of the tasks is better able to troubleshoot when things go wrong, and to help employees. Competence also enables leaders to know to detect when they are not being told the whole story.
The issue of technical competence vs. technical expertise is critically important. Yet, it is one that many leaders fail to grasp. The most effective leaders are able to balance this approach. It is a fine line, but one worth walking.
Even more important is the willingness of the leader to admit when he doesn’t know how to do something. People who do the task daily don’t expect the leader to be an expert on the task they routinely perform. They do expect him to be familiar with it and to take an interest in it. When the supervisor asks questions about what the employees are doing and sincerely listens to the responses, he establishes a positive relationship with his employees. When you, as the leader, take the time to talk to the person repairing equipment in the repair ship, the message comes thorough loud and clear: “I care about you and what you are doing.” Employees recognize this and tend to respond with increased loyalty and dedication.
Manager, boss, foreman, etc. All titles used to describe that person with responsibility for getting a job done by directing other people. The key point is that this person must accomplish a certain amount of work beyond that which one person is considered capable of doing. They are expected to oversee the production of others to get that work done.
Often this person occupies their position because of demonstrated proficiency at the task they are supervising. For example, a carpenter may be great with his tools and very efficient at doing his job. One day he is told he will now supervise three other carpenters. He becomes the foreman. No big deal really, as he generally works alongside the three of them, setting the pace, and taking corrective action right away when one of his crew does something wrong. This foreman is often cited for his ability to “make it happen” and his behavior is reinforced with this praise. Perhaps this foreman gets promoted and then supervises three foremen yielding the same results. This situation is not limited to the field. Consider the accounting supervisor who is known for her attention to detail. Nothing got by her when she was a clerk, and now, nothing gets by her as a supervisor. The reason nothing gets by her is that she is basically replicating the work of her team as she very closely rechecks their work. Or perhaps the super sales person, who is now the sales manager.
These people fail to recognize they are no longer getting paid to actually do the work. They are getting paid for the work to get done – by others. They are relying on their own expertise to get the job done rather than teaching others to do it. Unfortunately, we often end up rewarding them for the result rather than the method.
Successful leaders know and understand the jobs they supervise. They are able to make decisions based on that knowledge, which increases their credibility. Successful organizations recognize the new skills and responsibilities necessary for continued success at higher levels, and they work to put qualified people into those positions of greater impact and responsibility.
The willingness to “get dirty” once in a while demonstrates respect for the people being led. It enables the leader to understand the conditions the employees face and to craft strategies to help them succeed. The leader who knows the requirements of the tasks is better able to troubleshoot when things go wrong, and to help employees. Competence also enables leaders to know to detect when they are not being told the whole story.
The issue of technical competence vs. technical expertise is critically important. Yet, it is one that many leaders fail to grasp. The most effective leaders are able to balance this approach. It is a fine line, but one worth walking.
Keeping your Job in the recession
It is fair to say in today's society that at some point in your working life you could be faced with the prospect of being made redundant in your job. With globalisation and companies looking to outsource services to developing countries to cut costs and maintain profits, working in the 21st century jobmarket is going to be difficult and extremely competitive.
However, if you are smart there are lots of things you can do to improve your chances of keeping your job longer than most of your peers. There are generally 3 kinds of jobs, they fall under the heading of administrative, technical and sales. If your role comes under the banner of the first two, then your position is certainly more precarious than someone whose job is more salesy or has a sales edge to it. The reason why is that most companies usually outsource the first two roles, after all why pay someone £1000.00 to do up a website for you when you could equally pay just as good if not better designer overseas £100.00. But when it comes to the communication of your business you need people on the ground, in the country of origin to sell your goods, to communicate your services and products and so on, so you run less of a risk.
A good friend of mine told me that within his company, people were being made redundant to cut cost as the business was looking to go in a new direction at the time, everyone was so worried about lossing their job as well as my friend. In the end, it happened that all the administrative staff were layed off from their jobs. Most of the sales people kept their jobs as the business person is thinking if i am to grow my business i need to keep the people who can generate revenue, we can do without admin for now, we will just have to chip in and do all the admin ourselves, this must have been going through the mind of the Director.
So how can you keep your job if you work in technical or admin, and by the way just because you work in sales does not make you impregnable but certainly you do have a better chance of keeping your job especially if you are doing good sales. As an admin or technical person, you essentially have to find a sales dimension to your role, it has been said so many times in many books about the fact that we are all sales people, at the end of the day when you attended your job interview you had to sell your skills, your experience and so on, so why stop thinking like a sales person, if you do stop, then you run the risk of being booted out first when the redundancy rounds begin to take place.
However, if you are smart there are lots of things you can do to improve your chances of keeping your job longer than most of your peers. There are generally 3 kinds of jobs, they fall under the heading of administrative, technical and sales. If your role comes under the banner of the first two, then your position is certainly more precarious than someone whose job is more salesy or has a sales edge to it. The reason why is that most companies usually outsource the first two roles, after all why pay someone £1000.00 to do up a website for you when you could equally pay just as good if not better designer overseas £100.00. But when it comes to the communication of your business you need people on the ground, in the country of origin to sell your goods, to communicate your services and products and so on, so you run less of a risk.
A good friend of mine told me that within his company, people were being made redundant to cut cost as the business was looking to go in a new direction at the time, everyone was so worried about lossing their job as well as my friend. In the end, it happened that all the administrative staff were layed off from their jobs. Most of the sales people kept their jobs as the business person is thinking if i am to grow my business i need to keep the people who can generate revenue, we can do without admin for now, we will just have to chip in and do all the admin ourselves, this must have been going through the mind of the Director.
So how can you keep your job if you work in technical or admin, and by the way just because you work in sales does not make you impregnable but certainly you do have a better chance of keeping your job especially if you are doing good sales. As an admin or technical person, you essentially have to find a sales dimension to your role, it has been said so many times in many books about the fact that we are all sales people, at the end of the day when you attended your job interview you had to sell your skills, your experience and so on, so why stop thinking like a sales person, if you do stop, then you run the risk of being booted out first when the redundancy rounds begin to take place.
Sales Engineer
Sales engineers are always in demand and they are paid more than technicians with comparable experience and qualifications. The work can be very interesting because over time a technical representative acquires a large body of knowledge of his specialization. When a client has a requirement the sales engineer discusses the application and suggests technical products and methods to achieve a solution.
The technology sector is fast-moving; new materials and processes are invented and introduced continually. Markets change too and people in engineering sales have the opportunity to travel and live in all parts of the globe.
As a technical sales rep, you meet a lot of people and will have many interesting conversations. If your job covers a large territory, as time goes by you will develop friendly contacts throughout the area you cover.
Starting salaries are around £25,000 GBP or $50,000US and sales commission can double those amounts. There is good opportunity to progress your career by taking on larger and more important territories and later to move into sales management, and potentially senior management.
To succeed as a technical sales professional requires, potentially conflicting, personal qualities. One is the ability to understand and knowledgeably discuss the technology that you are involved with. Familiarity with the industry that you sell into is important too. The other is to have good people and sales skills. This is where there may be a challenge; the type of personality which makes for a good engineer is very different from that which you find in good sales people.
It’s this which explains, in part, why there is always demand for the right person in technical sales jobs. Many companies will recruit graduates with a science degree and what appear to be suitable personal characteristics. The selection process will have several stages of interviews and may include a psychometric test. Once recruited the new person may receive sales training which can help, but it is essential that the appropriate underlying traits be present to a substantial degree.
So far, so good, but now the drawbacks; it is common that sales reps experience levels of stress, coming from many sources. At work, if you fail to achieve the sales results that your company wants, they will urge you to try harder. And it's inevitable that some dealings with customers are frustrating. It can be difficult to make appointments and when you do, sometimes they are canceled at short notice. In overseas locations it isn't unusual for the client to simply not show up. In all sales work, you have to anticipate that some potential orders will fail to materialize. This can be very disappointing when the client postpones the job or gives the order to your competitor. This can happen after you have invested a great deal of effort in progressing the sale through all the stages which are involved.
Your domestic life may be difficult too. In most sales engineer positions, you will spend many nights away from home. If you have a partner this may not suit them well. It’s even worse if you have children, you’ll most likely be forced to miss school events and be unable to help them with homework.
The novelty of air travel and staying in hotels wears off quickly. You’ll find yourself rushing to airports, often only to learn that the flight is delayed, then on arrival, lining up to get a taxi or a hire car. And from time to time, an airline will probably lose your baggage.
Hotels get things wrong too and may not have held a room for you, or they can only give you a smoking room even if you told them in advance you don’t want that. Getting an internet connection can be hard sometimes. Staying in hotels, your evenings are likely to be spent with a combination of eating and drinking, television and internet, and writing up business reports. After a while this isn't much fun. When you get home after a trip, the first hours are likely to spent recovering from the strain. Weekends go fast like this and sometimes you will need to depart on Sunday afternoon in order to be in the right location for a Monday morning meeting.
That’s quite a long list of disadvantages and explains why people typically follow the sales engineer career for a limited number of years before settling into a work niche involving less travel. But if you are unattached, want to see the world, make a lot of friends and earn good money doing a technically interesting job, take a serious look at becoming a sales engineer.
The technology sector is fast-moving; new materials and processes are invented and introduced continually. Markets change too and people in engineering sales have the opportunity to travel and live in all parts of the globe.
As a technical sales rep, you meet a lot of people and will have many interesting conversations. If your job covers a large territory, as time goes by you will develop friendly contacts throughout the area you cover.
Starting salaries are around £25,000 GBP or $50,000US and sales commission can double those amounts. There is good opportunity to progress your career by taking on larger and more important territories and later to move into sales management, and potentially senior management.
To succeed as a technical sales professional requires, potentially conflicting, personal qualities. One is the ability to understand and knowledgeably discuss the technology that you are involved with. Familiarity with the industry that you sell into is important too. The other is to have good people and sales skills. This is where there may be a challenge; the type of personality which makes for a good engineer is very different from that which you find in good sales people.
It’s this which explains, in part, why there is always demand for the right person in technical sales jobs. Many companies will recruit graduates with a science degree and what appear to be suitable personal characteristics. The selection process will have several stages of interviews and may include a psychometric test. Once recruited the new person may receive sales training which can help, but it is essential that the appropriate underlying traits be present to a substantial degree.
So far, so good, but now the drawbacks; it is common that sales reps experience levels of stress, coming from many sources. At work, if you fail to achieve the sales results that your company wants, they will urge you to try harder. And it's inevitable that some dealings with customers are frustrating. It can be difficult to make appointments and when you do, sometimes they are canceled at short notice. In overseas locations it isn't unusual for the client to simply not show up. In all sales work, you have to anticipate that some potential orders will fail to materialize. This can be very disappointing when the client postpones the job or gives the order to your competitor. This can happen after you have invested a great deal of effort in progressing the sale through all the stages which are involved.
Your domestic life may be difficult too. In most sales engineer positions, you will spend many nights away from home. If you have a partner this may not suit them well. It’s even worse if you have children, you’ll most likely be forced to miss school events and be unable to help them with homework.
The novelty of air travel and staying in hotels wears off quickly. You’ll find yourself rushing to airports, often only to learn that the flight is delayed, then on arrival, lining up to get a taxi or a hire car. And from time to time, an airline will probably lose your baggage.
Hotels get things wrong too and may not have held a room for you, or they can only give you a smoking room even if you told them in advance you don’t want that. Getting an internet connection can be hard sometimes. Staying in hotels, your evenings are likely to be spent with a combination of eating and drinking, television and internet, and writing up business reports. After a while this isn't much fun. When you get home after a trip, the first hours are likely to spent recovering from the strain. Weekends go fast like this and sometimes you will need to depart on Sunday afternoon in order to be in the right location for a Monday morning meeting.
That’s quite a long list of disadvantages and explains why people typically follow the sales engineer career for a limited number of years before settling into a work niche involving less travel. But if you are unattached, want to see the world, make a lot of friends and earn good money doing a technically interesting job, take a serious look at becoming a sales engineer.
Technical Sales Agency
There are many technical sales recruitment agencies that help in the sector of providing jobs to the jobless and employees to employers. They are known to be very good and personalized in their services. These recruitment agencies are spread all over due to a very high demand of jobs. They have many base line jobs in different fields and their main motto is putting the right people in the right job. There are agencies that can be trusted. They get reviews for their services from various people including students who have been benefited by the services offered.There are students and people from different sectors of work who face a lot of failure when they approach companies and offices themselves, but there is great help from recruitment agencies who take responsibility in putting the individuals at the right place. The agencies take care of further guidance and counseling for getting jobs, they assist in giving their time sitting with the individual and helping them with the various jobs availability.They have a very good rapport with reputed industries, and HR departments. This rapport helps them to place individuals who walk into their office. Hence, there are varieties of options available with them for every one who needs their help. Along with it, there are other recruitment services that are provided like registration and selection; job offer management, interview management, paper checks and vacancy promotion. There is also more of in depth analysis that includes onsite services, candidate profiling, competency based interviewing, reference checks and skills testing.There are some disadvantages along with the advantages, there are some people who have certain expectations, and those expectations are not met because of qualification, experience, or other points of effect, which can be a hindrance for recruitment consultancies providing their services. At times, there are also downfalls, when the job that has been offered to a client has been turned down. The reasons could be the company, or people or various other factors. Technical recruitment consultancies up to some extent do take responsibility of the necessary factors that they can take care of. When a recruitment consultancy links someone up to a company or an office, the office directly communicates with them, the payments are also made to the clients.Candidate forms are given to those who cannot find a vacancy matching to what they are looking for. Therefore, clients can then fill the candidates form and get their details registered at the recruitment agency. The company then follows up with them on a regular basis. These companies are best suited for specialized sectors where jobs are hard to find. It offers the job seeker a plethora of options to choose from. As companies have a better reach when compared to individuals, this works well for all.
Technical Sales
MANY products and services, especially those purchased by large companies and institutions, are highly complex. Sales engineers, also known as manufacturer's agents, sales representatives, or technical sales support executives, work with the production, engineering, or research and development departments
Selling is an important part of the job. Sales engineers use their technical skills to demonstrate to potential customers how and why the products would suit the customer better than a competitor's products. In some instances, there may not be a direct competitive product. In such cases, the sales engineer's job is to demonstrate the usefulness of the product or service, for example, how much money a new production machinery would save.
Sales engineers require at least a diploma in a related discipline. Most hold a bachelor's degree in engineering and some experience in a related industry is a prerequisite. This experience is crucial as engineers apply the theories and principles of science and mathematics to solve technical problems. Their work is the link between scientific discoveries and commercial applications. Many sales engineers specialise in an area related to an engineering specialty. For example, sales engineers selling chemical products may have chemical engineering backgrounds, while those selling business software or information systems have qualifications in computer engineering.
Selling is an important part of the job. Sales engineers use their technical skills to demonstrate to potential customers how and why the products would suit the customer better than a competitor's products. In some instances, there may not be a direct competitive product. In such cases, the sales engineer's job is to demonstrate the usefulness of the product or service, for example, how much money a new production machinery would save.
Sales engineers require at least a diploma in a related discipline. Most hold a bachelor's degree in engineering and some experience in a related industry is a prerequisite. This experience is crucial as engineers apply the theories and principles of science and mathematics to solve technical problems. Their work is the link between scientific discoveries and commercial applications. Many sales engineers specialise in an area related to an engineering specialty. For example, sales engineers selling chemical products may have chemical engineering backgrounds, while those selling business software or information systems have qualifications in computer engineering.
Successful Selling in todays Economy
Everyone is searching for answers on how to sell in a down economy. Many feel that the sales game has changed, but in reality the economic challenge has forced sales people to improve their skills and refine their approach. When I present to sales organizations searching for the Holy Grail to sell in this economy, I start with a very basic question. "What is your job as a sales person?" Usually, that question is met with silence for a moment; and then I'm peppered by a plethora of descriptions. "Sell something to someone!" "Generate revenue!" "Hit quota!" I'm always amazed at the description variance for the same role. Often times, I hear these differences among the members of a single sales team. How can a sales person be successful if they can't clearly define their role?This exercise is followed by another question. "Would it be worth the price of admission if I could provide you with a one-word job description that provides you with a level of focus that you have never had before? You will wake up every morning and say, "I know exactly what my job is!" As you can imagine, this offer is always met with a warm reception. To help paint this picture, I ask the group to picture the two sides of Velcro…the cotton side and the hook side. Imagine each side represents a business entity…buyers and suppliers. Think about it. There is no other part to the sales equation. Thus, the fundamental job of the sales person is to put these two entities together. The one-word job description is to be the matchmaker. Right away, a sales person will say, "But, my company pays me. I have to be focused on generating sales." Fair point, or is it? The company may actually write the check, but from where do the dollars come? It's from the revenue generated from the clients. Thus, while the supplier writes the check, the buyer is funding the transaction. The matchmaker sales person works with these two entities with the goal of bringing them together. To successfully do this, the matchmaker needs to master both sides of the equation. For the supplier side of the equation, the sales person needs to understand:
The supplier's offerings
The important features and functions of each one
The problems each offering solves for a client
The attributes of the ideal client for each offering
What buyer needs/circumstances affect the scope of the offeringThe buyer side of the equation is more complex, but critical for the matchmaker to be successful in formulating these relationships. The key is to recognize that there are a number of "buying players" who affect/influence the sale and a comprehensive understanding is needed of each one. Once you have identified each of the buying players, ask yourself
What business challenges keep them up at night?
What information can you learn from them to help facilitate the sale?
What is their language? (It is most effective if you can use their vernacular when communicating with them.)
What is the SYNERGY between the supplier's capabilities and the buyer's challenges?
Why should the supplier's offering be a PRIORITY for this buying player right now?The last two questions are the most important aspects to formulating relationships (a.k.a. generating sales.) Synergy is the process of comparing and contrasting what you know about the problems that the supplier's offerings solve and the specific problems that each buying player faces. If a buying player is heavily influential in the decision-making process, but you cannot identify synergies between their challenges and the supplier's solutions, it will be nearly impossible to engage them. No sale!Priority answers the fundamental question of, "Why now?" One of the common sales excuses for not getting a response from a voicemail or email is that the decision-maker is busy. "You can imagine why they aren't responding. They're busy. They have a full plate." Great news! The government just announced that they are issuing everyone a second plate. Problem solved! Humor aside, the real issue is that if you cannot align the solution with the buying player's most problematic areas, you will find that opportunities languish in the pipeline. Just like the old Roach Motel, "they go in, but they don't come out!"The next time you want to use the "they're busy" excuse, consider this. As you're reading this article, you receive a call from your CEO who wants to meet with you tomorrow at 9:30am to discuss tripling your salary. Will you be at the meeting? I'll bet you will. You never even checked your calendar before committing, did you? Why? The answer is that money is a priority for you. Everything else gets cast aside to have a meeting about tripling your income. The exact same results are achieved if you can identify synergy and priority with your buying players. They will be responsive. They will have meetings and re-organize their day to meet with you if the supplier solution solves a problem that is keeping the decision-making, buying player up at night.
The supplier's offerings
The important features and functions of each one
The problems each offering solves for a client
The attributes of the ideal client for each offering
What buyer needs/circumstances affect the scope of the offeringThe buyer side of the equation is more complex, but critical for the matchmaker to be successful in formulating these relationships. The key is to recognize that there are a number of "buying players" who affect/influence the sale and a comprehensive understanding is needed of each one. Once you have identified each of the buying players, ask yourself
What business challenges keep them up at night?
What information can you learn from them to help facilitate the sale?
What is their language? (It is most effective if you can use their vernacular when communicating with them.)
What is the SYNERGY between the supplier's capabilities and the buyer's challenges?
Why should the supplier's offering be a PRIORITY for this buying player right now?The last two questions are the most important aspects to formulating relationships (a.k.a. generating sales.) Synergy is the process of comparing and contrasting what you know about the problems that the supplier's offerings solve and the specific problems that each buying player faces. If a buying player is heavily influential in the decision-making process, but you cannot identify synergies between their challenges and the supplier's solutions, it will be nearly impossible to engage them. No sale!Priority answers the fundamental question of, "Why now?" One of the common sales excuses for not getting a response from a voicemail or email is that the decision-maker is busy. "You can imagine why they aren't responding. They're busy. They have a full plate." Great news! The government just announced that they are issuing everyone a second plate. Problem solved! Humor aside, the real issue is that if you cannot align the solution with the buying player's most problematic areas, you will find that opportunities languish in the pipeline. Just like the old Roach Motel, "they go in, but they don't come out!"The next time you want to use the "they're busy" excuse, consider this. As you're reading this article, you receive a call from your CEO who wants to meet with you tomorrow at 9:30am to discuss tripling your salary. Will you be at the meeting? I'll bet you will. You never even checked your calendar before committing, did you? Why? The answer is that money is a priority for you. Everything else gets cast aside to have a meeting about tripling your income. The exact same results are achieved if you can identify synergy and priority with your buying players. They will be responsive. They will have meetings and re-organize their day to meet with you if the supplier solution solves a problem that is keeping the decision-making, buying player up at night.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Technical Sales Jobs
When it comes to a career in HVAC, New York is the place to be. Working as a technician in NY your can expect higher than average wages (right from the start), high demand for you services, and an ever-growing career outlook with no end in sight to this growth.
The climate of New York lends itself to those working in this career. In the winter months temperatures drop below freezing, and heating units have to work to keep up. When summer comes it isn't uncommon for extreme highs where A/C units are pushed to their limits. It isn't just the climate that lends itself to this field; it is also the buildings themselves.
Most cities in New York State include many larger complexes: high-rise building, apartment buildings, and large shopping centre's are all examples. All of these commercial buildings require proper heating, ventilation, and often A/C systems.
For someone with HVAC training, New York really is the place to work. If you live in the area, and are considering a career in one of the trades, the career of an HVAC technician is a great place to look.
What Does The New York HVAC Tech Do?
As has already been suggested, HVAC stands for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning. As a technician in this growing field you will work to install and repair all of these types of units.
The largest amount of work in New York is for the repair technician. Given the areas climate and buildings you will find that even if you specialized in just one area of HVAC you would never be out of work. If you chose to specialize in heating, for example, you'd be kept busy all winter repairing commercial and residential heating units. Throughout the other three seasons you could keep busy installing new units, and helping to get installed units ready for the next cold season.
The same ideas hold true for any specialized area of HVAC training. With your qualifications in place you can look forward to a busy and diverse career.
Where Does An HVAC Technician Work?
There are actually many specialized areas that you may work as a technician in this field. Four areas where you can easily find work in New York include:
1. Commercial Businesses - Many large buildings include complicated HVAC systems, and the largest of them employ full-time technicians to keep these systems in good repair.
2. Commercial Contractors - Large buildings, means large building projects, and many commercial contractors employ entire teams of HVAC technicians to help in this area of their work.
3. Residential Plumbing Contractors - With the increase in technology in all kinds of HVAC units, many plumbers also employ HVAC technicians.
4. HVAC Sales - If you prefer working with people rather than machines you can also find work in sales outlets for commercials and residential HVAC units.
Whether you choose to specialize, work for an employer, or start your own business as an HVAC technician, one thing is certain. New York is the place to work if you follow this career path.
The climate of New York lends itself to those working in this career. In the winter months temperatures drop below freezing, and heating units have to work to keep up. When summer comes it isn't uncommon for extreme highs where A/C units are pushed to their limits. It isn't just the climate that lends itself to this field; it is also the buildings themselves.
Most cities in New York State include many larger complexes: high-rise building, apartment buildings, and large shopping centre's are all examples. All of these commercial buildings require proper heating, ventilation, and often A/C systems.
For someone with HVAC training, New York really is the place to work. If you live in the area, and are considering a career in one of the trades, the career of an HVAC technician is a great place to look.
What Does The New York HVAC Tech Do?
As has already been suggested, HVAC stands for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning. As a technician in this growing field you will work to install and repair all of these types of units.
The largest amount of work in New York is for the repair technician. Given the areas climate and buildings you will find that even if you specialized in just one area of HVAC you would never be out of work. If you chose to specialize in heating, for example, you'd be kept busy all winter repairing commercial and residential heating units. Throughout the other three seasons you could keep busy installing new units, and helping to get installed units ready for the next cold season.
The same ideas hold true for any specialized area of HVAC training. With your qualifications in place you can look forward to a busy and diverse career.
Where Does An HVAC Technician Work?
There are actually many specialized areas that you may work as a technician in this field. Four areas where you can easily find work in New York include:
1. Commercial Businesses - Many large buildings include complicated HVAC systems, and the largest of them employ full-time technicians to keep these systems in good repair.
2. Commercial Contractors - Large buildings, means large building projects, and many commercial contractors employ entire teams of HVAC technicians to help in this area of their work.
3. Residential Plumbing Contractors - With the increase in technology in all kinds of HVAC units, many plumbers also employ HVAC technicians.
4. HVAC Sales - If you prefer working with people rather than machines you can also find work in sales outlets for commercials and residential HVAC units.
Whether you choose to specialize, work for an employer, or start your own business as an HVAC technician, one thing is certain. New York is the place to work if you follow this career path.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Technical Sales Jobs
An IT technical sales specialist is involved in selling hardware and software products produced by IT companies and software houses. They act as the technical experts when their company is trying to sell a product or service. In some smaller IT companies or software houses they may also identify and secure new business opportunities.
Their role is to determine what a client's business requirements are and if the product or service on offer is suitable. This can include finding out if it is necessary to adapt their software or hardware to meet the client's needs. Once any necessary refinements are made, the technical sales specialist presents the finalised product or service to the client.
Technical sales specialists usually work between 37 and 40 hours a week, 9am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday. They may be required to work longer hours at busy times. Technical sales specialists are normally based in an office, although some may work from home. Some technical sales specialists look after a geographical sales area, visiting clients and helping to build up business. A driving licence is highly desirable.
Salaries may range from £20,000 to over £50,000 a year.
A technical sales specialist should:
have excellent interpersonal and communication skills
have strong selling skills
have strong IT technical knowledge
be able to use their initiative
enjoy selling.
The IT industry is a rapidly expanding global marketplace, and there are currently over one million staff working in the sector. There are job opportunities with IT companies and software houses throughout the UK, with a higher concentration in the South East.
Applicants for IT technical sales specialist roles are usually educated to degree level, possibly with relevant work experience and vocational skills. Employers consider applicants from degree courses such as computer science, maths and physics, as well graduates with business, arts and humanities degrees with a flair for problem solving in a logical manner.
Training is on the job, and includes in-house and external training courses. As the IT industry continues to develop, it is vital for technical sales specialists to keep up to date with new technologies.
With experience, IT technical sales specialists may move into a more senior role. They may choose to specialise in a technical, hands-on role or move into people, team or sales management. Experienced technical sales specialists may also use their business experience and technical knowledge to work as an IT consultant. It is possible to become self-employed
Their role is to determine what a client's business requirements are and if the product or service on offer is suitable. This can include finding out if it is necessary to adapt their software or hardware to meet the client's needs. Once any necessary refinements are made, the technical sales specialist presents the finalised product or service to the client.
Technical sales specialists usually work between 37 and 40 hours a week, 9am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday. They may be required to work longer hours at busy times. Technical sales specialists are normally based in an office, although some may work from home. Some technical sales specialists look after a geographical sales area, visiting clients and helping to build up business. A driving licence is highly desirable.
Salaries may range from £20,000 to over £50,000 a year.
A technical sales specialist should:
have excellent interpersonal and communication skills
have strong selling skills
have strong IT technical knowledge
be able to use their initiative
enjoy selling.
The IT industry is a rapidly expanding global marketplace, and there are currently over one million staff working in the sector. There are job opportunities with IT companies and software houses throughout the UK, with a higher concentration in the South East.
Applicants for IT technical sales specialist roles are usually educated to degree level, possibly with relevant work experience and vocational skills. Employers consider applicants from degree courses such as computer science, maths and physics, as well graduates with business, arts and humanities degrees with a flair for problem solving in a logical manner.
Training is on the job, and includes in-house and external training courses. As the IT industry continues to develop, it is vital for technical sales specialists to keep up to date with new technologies.
With experience, IT technical sales specialists may move into a more senior role. They may choose to specialise in a technical, hands-on role or move into people, team or sales management. Experienced technical sales specialists may also use their business experience and technical knowledge to work as an IT consultant. It is possible to become self-employed
Electrical/Technical Sales
Job Tasks for: "Sales Representatives, Electrical--Electronic"Analyzes communication needs of customer and consults with staff engineers regarding technical problems.Trains establishment personnel in equipment use, utilizing knowledge of electronics and product sold.Recommends equipment to meet customer requirements, considering salable features, such as flexibility, cost, capacity, and economy of operation.Negotiates terms of sale and services with customer.Sells electrical or electronic equipment, such as computers, data processing and radiographic equipment to businesses and industrial establishments.
Knowledge Requirements for: "Sales Representatives, Electrical--Electronic" Sales and Marketing -- Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.Computers and Electronics -- Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and softwear, including applications and programming.Education and Training -- Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.Mathematics -- Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.Economics and Accounting -- Knowledge of economic and accounting principles and practices, the financial markets, banking and the analysis and reporting of financial data.
Knowledge Requirements for: "Sales Representatives, Electrical--Electronic" Sales and Marketing -- Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.Computers and Electronics -- Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and softwear, including applications and programming.Education and Training -- Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.Mathematics -- Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.Economics and Accounting -- Knowledge of economic and accounting principles and practices, the financial markets, banking and the analysis and reporting of financial data.
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