Phredd's Journal: 130+ Do's and Dont's for System Engineers (PreSales)

Fred's Top 130+ Do's and Don'ts for Presales Business Developers

Compiled by Fred Nix

These are some of the rules I follow in my role as a Presales Business Developer.

I have compiled, not authored these rules.

Please feel free to use these rules in your daily sales activities.

Some of these rules may sound strange out of context, so e-mail me with questions.

If you do use them, I ask that you send me an e-mail letting me know how they were used, and if they were helpful.

Best Regards, Fred Nix

1. The Presales role is the hardest job in business development.

2. What you do is never easy. You should never say, "Oh, that's easy" in response to a prospect's problem.

3. Presales engineers never discuss, hint or joke about products and services pricing.

4. When meeting with a prospect talk 10% of the time.

5. Shut up and listen. When you do talk it should be a question.

6. Never disagree with the prospect, even when they are clearly wrong.

7. Stick to the predetermined meeting plan that you and the rep agreed on before the meeting.

8. Remember and also use your hand signals, especially: "You are talking too much".

9. Use customer success stories naturally in conversations with prospects.

10. Ask questions and follow them up with drill-down follow-up questions.

11. Never prescribe your products solution to the prospects problem before the diagnosis is made - Prospects don't believe the headache they have is cancer.

12. Never bring up your product's names until the prospect asks about them.

13. Be ready to articulate the prospect's solution at the right time.

14. Be able to justify the solution at the right time.

15. Never interrupt anybody (rep or prospect). The prospect can interrupt you at any time.

16. Don't prematurely solve the prospect's business problem.

17. Don't prematurely make the prospect feel better about their business problem.

18. Never train a prospect during a sales effort.

19. "It" is never about us - "it" is always about the prospect.

20. Reply to personal questions briefly and return with a similar personal question. Let them talk.

21. Your solution is never overkill for the prospect's business problem.

22. Dress in professional attire and look the part.

23. Be ready to give the technical and executive whiteboards at a moments notice. Practice adapting your whiteboard to the prospect's environment.

24. Know three ways your solution can provide ROI for a prospect.

25. "Sync to Sales" daily and always be "Account Smart".

26. Listen for new prospect requirements and report the opportunities back to product development.

27. Know the "People, Process, Platform / Plan, Build, Run" Matrix.

28. Know how you differentiate yourself from your competitors.

29. Get these three questions answered to close a deal:
  a. Why should the prospect do something?
  b. Why should the prospect do something now?
  c. Why should the prospect choose you?

30. Aspirin gets funded, Vitamins do not.

31. People make rational decisions based on emotions.

32. Get the prospect to pick you and let them reinforce their decision.

33. Always align your solutions to the prospect's problem, not the other way around.

34. Ask, "Why is that important to you?" often - even if you already know why it is important.

35. The Presales role never send prospects contract agreements and rarely, if ever, signs documents.

36. You are the person primarily responsible for your own safety.

37. When you innovate people will resist you.

38. Prospects are tired of educating vendors. Get smart on your own time.

39. Making progress doesn't matter if you still came in second place.

40. Figuring out what hill to climb is more important than the hill in front of you.

41. Is your prospect a "Market Leader", "Client Intimate" or "Low Cost Provider" business model?

42. Do what you say and say what you do.

43. There are no rules, win at all costs.

44. Never assume.

45. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings".

46. Do not confuse your career with your life.

47. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

48. To spot an expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

49. New systems generate new problems.

50. Prospects don't always know what they want, but they do know for certain what they do not want.

51. A goal without a plan is just a wish.

52. When you are asked a question by a prospect pause first. The prospect's colleague may answer the question for you. The colleague's opinion matters more than yours.

53. Pioneers get the arrows, and the Settlers get the corn.

54. Learn to love change.

55. Be a technology pragmatist.

56. Upgrade your own brain.

57. Prospects will pay a premium for your solution if you solve their problem and you are easy to do business with.

58. Response time to important customers must be fast. You have to be fast with important customers because you can't be fast with everyone.

59. Have fun. If your not having fun, you are doing something wrong.

60. Prospects don't want to know what is wrong with "it", they just want "it" fixed.

61. Activity is not accomplishment.

62. Never waste another person's time or money.

63. To the prospect, the problem is always you.

64. You will work harder on your own goals than anyone else's. Set goals for yourself.

65. There are only two motivators: Fear and the lack of Fear.

66. You get paid to go to therapy every day in business development.

67. There are no unreasonable goals, only unreasonable time frames.

68. Defend your limitations and sure enough, they are yours.

69. Business development is all about politics. So is the second grade.

70. If you don't have a plan, you are a part of someone else's plan.

71. Always work the right end of the problem.

72. Don't practice mistakes.

73. Your meter is always running.

74. You can't listen yourself out of business.

75. Be professionally involved and emotionally detached.

76. Everyday you do business with someone you are one day closer to ending it.

77. It is more important to know why Prospects buy than how people sell.

78. When people feel 'not ok' and want to feel 'ok', they will get somebody else to feel 'not ok'.

79. Leave your child at home with your mother.

80. You can't get mad at someone for doing to you what you didn't tell them they couldn't do.

81. Companies don't purchase, people purchase from people.

82. The problem the prospect tells you about is never the real problem.

83. The person asking the questions is in control. Don't you agree?

84. People love to talk about themselves - let them. Don't waste time telling them about you - they don't care anyway.

85. Just because you have it doesn't mean the Prospect needs it.

86. People with the most intellectual interest in your product are not the decision makers.

87. Don't ever put your future in someone else's hands.

88. Pain is the great motivator.

89. No one will get mad at you for doing something you asked permission to do.

90. People do things for their reasons, never for yours.

91. Lead people. Manage situations.

92. People perform their roles in life consistently with how they see themselves as an individual.

93. You can't unlearn that which has been learned incorrectly.

94. Listen for, follow, and agree with the prospect's biases.

95. Money, just like water, finds its way through the cracks.

96. It is better to have a motivated buyer than a motivated seller.

97. Only mediocre people are at their best every single day.

98. Prospects spend money in direct proportion to the amount of pain they are in.

99. You are in the problem solving, money-making business.

100. Business development is the process of leading people to make decisions.

101. Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real.

102. There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

103. Most technology innovations go no where.

104. The only verbal agreements that are worth anything are the ones backed up on paper.

105. People only remember the parts of the conversation that matter to them.

106. The best Leaders inspire people by example.

107. What separates humans from animals is our ability to justify our actions, even the selfish actions.

108. You will spend 2½ hours each day just looking for information.

109. In a contest between perception and reality, reality doesn't stand a chance.

110. Prospects buy the wrong solution every day.

111. The worst thing about computers is that they do exactly what you tell them to do.

112. Don't ask someone if they like paintings, show them a painting and then ask them if they like it.

113. It is OK not to have all the answers. Sometimes it is best if you "don't know" everything.

114. Set and manage expectations with everyone that you come in contact with.

115. Doing a great "dog and pony show" only wins you the right to show the "dog and pony show" to someone else.

116. Don't fix your vulnerability with your vulnerability.

117. Everything you do raises or lowers your R.O.E. (Return On Energy)

118. There is no phase two. Sell everything in phase one.

119. Get more baskets.

120. Don't make the easy things hard and the hard things easy.

121. Prospects are not asking which solution is the latest and greatest, but asking what minimum solution is necessary to meet their commitments.

122. Your instincts about people are usually right.

123. You only get one first impression when meeting someone - don't blow it.

124. The more of an expert someone tries to convince you they are, the less likely they are an expert.

125. Interested is interesting. Demonstrate that interest by listening intently to what the prospect has to say.

126. Hearing is not Listening.

127. Negative selling downgrades your own stock.

128. Have a goal for the day, every day.

129. Never laugh at a prospect's problem, no matter how funny their situation may be.

130. Cut the problem in half every time you take action.

131. Most people within an organization only have the ability to say "No" to your solution.

132. Prospects will only buy from you when you show them results they would rather have than their money.

133. If a Prospect contacts you to fill out an RFP, the Prospect already knows who he is going to buy, he just needs you to fill it out so he can say he did a full investigation.