The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers – Discussion with Chris White

Guest Speaker

About the Podcast

Chris White joins Vik Arya for a discussion. Chris is an author of book “The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers” and managing director of DemoDoctor.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to podcast for sales engineers, Proof is in the Pudding. This podcast is brought to you by smart POC platform, Pudding.app. And I’m your host Vik Arya.

[00:00:13] Vik: We have, Chris White in our show today. Chris is a Managing Director of demodoctor.com and he’s also an author of a book, The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers.

[00:00:24] Chris, welcome to the show.

[00:00:26] Chris White: Thank you so much, Vik. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:00:29] Vik: Chris, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

[00:00:32] Chris White: Of course, I graduated from college in the early nineties as a sales engineer. I’m sorry. As a software engineer. So, I was a technical guy coming out of college. Um, and my first job was with a company called Freddie Mac, a company that at the time, very few people had ever heard of.

[00:00:49] And now, most people know for all the wrong reasons, but I was a technology guy and I got into consulting and I was an enterprise architect. But Vik, it’s interesting I honestly thought there was something wrong with me because I had a hard time, being happy in my role and I would get onto a project.

[00:01:07] And after a couple of months, I feel like I sort of figured things out and I’d get bored and I’d want to move on to another project. I ended up going through a professional kind of career counseling program discovered that technical sales would be a good role for me and got my first job about 15 years ago, got my first job as a sales engineer.

[00:01:27] And frankly, I thought it was going to be great because I could move the mouse and talk at the same time. Um, and what I discovered is that there’s a lot more to being a sales engineer than just being good in front of an audience. And admittedly, I took a few lumps early on, um, but I figured it out and, and did very, very well.

[00:01:49] And I, I ended up taking over a team of sales engineers and discovered that they were making many of the same mistakes that I had made. And, um, I had to create some training. So that was about 10 years ago. And then that training has sort of evolved over a period of 10 years into what’s now a framework that I refer to as “The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers”.

[00:02:13] And, um, now I’ve built a business around that.

[00:02:16] Vik: I can totally relate to the sales, you know, why sales engineering career is, so, um, it’s so great. I think sales engineer is, is the only job which needs to wear multiple hats. For example, there are some jobs in the company which are very business specific. There are some jobs, very technical specific.

[00:02:36] There’s some jobs for more management specific, but I think sales engineering job is the, is the one of the, those jobs. If not the only job where you need to be technical, you need to know the project management or how to manage the whole, uh, the process, and you also need to be very business focused as well because you are customer facing and you’re always talking to customer.

[00:03:00] Your goal is to convert proof of concepts and bring the deals. So, it’s, it’s a very, it’s a combination of multiple different roles that happen typically in part of the company.

[00:03:10] Chris White: Vik, I could not agree with you more. I mean, I think it’s the most interesting and challenging role. In, in frankly, maybe the industry, but certainly software.

[00:03:22] And, and I think those that are particularly good at it. Um, we can’t imagine doing anything else. So, I agree. I think it’s fabulous.

[00:03:29] Vik: Absolutely. So now I want to talk about your book. Uh, I find the title very interesting, The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers and you describe these six habits as Partner, Probe, Prepare, Practice, Perform, and Perfect. All start with P and so I want to talk to you about these habits. So, so can you talk a little bit about what was the Genesis of the book? And if you can, uh, talk about, let’s say why partnering is important for the SEs, what are the challenges that SEs see when they go out in the field and, uh, how this partnering can help them?

[00:04:05] Chris White: Yeah. Yeah, of course. Um, and by the way, and you rattled those habits off beautifully. So, um, I’m, I’m flattered that, you know, it’s already part of your language, I think. Um, but you know, let me preface it by saying frankly, Vik, that, that the habits really, each one of the habits were really born out of frankly, mistakes that I might, I made myself or lessons that I learned along the way.

[00:04:31] Um, and, or, and, or mistakes, you know, that I saw other sales engineers or sales teams make and, and it’s interesting as I, as I went through, as my, as my content evolved over the years, I struggled to put a word on what each of these items was. Is it, is it a behavior? Is it an activity, right? Is it a mindset? And then, and habit is its finally what sort of evolve, you know, evolve, and, and you asked about partner and it’s interesting.

[00:05:05] I got that one, honestly, as much from some of the sales, the sales people that I’ve worked with over the years as anything else. And really it started when, when I first got into the role. It didn’t, it wasn’t obvious to me. In fact, I didn’t even think of myself as being in sales, right. I didn’t necessarily think of myself as being part of the sales team.

[00:05:32] I just thought of myself as the technical resource who sort of showed up, and what’s the smart person, right? I don’t know if that relates to, if you can relate to that, Vik or not. But what I discovered is that not only am I part of the sales team, but sales is a team sport. And, and to me, it, we are wired very differently.

[00:05:55] Sales engineers and our sales counterparts are fundamentally wired differently. And we think differently, which means the stage is set for a potentially difficult relationship. And yet we have to work together to effectively, you know, execute on a sales deal and to effectively work with our customers.

[00:06:20] And I think we need to develop the mindset of, it’s a partnership and we’re not always going to agree with our sales counterparts and they’re not always going to agree with us. And I think we need to establish that mindset that looks sometimes this is going to take hard work, but we’re in this together and, and, and all the other habits really are based on the foundation of an effective partnership.

[00:06:45] So, let, let me pause there. Does that, does that sort of give you some good context for that?

[00:06:48] Vik: It does, it does. And, and, uh, like you said, the partnership is definitely important, I mean, sales is exciting, but it’s hard. And, uh, without the partnership, it can be even more difficult. So, the more, uh, the lesser friction we have within the team, uh, the sales team, the better we can work together, lot easier is to achieve the goals.

[00:07:10] So I can’t agree with you more.

[00:07:12] Chris White: Yeah.

[00:07:12] Vik: So now, uh, I want to talk to you about the habit, the next habit, which is Probe. What do you mean by this habit? What is the, what do you, can you explain a bit more about this habit?

[00:07:23] Chris White: Of course. Yeah. Yeah, of course. And by the way, I mean, this is probably the one habit. That’s by the least,

[00:07:30] um, intuitive and, and you, you, you called it out. The goal was to, you know, have, have alliteration, right. Use the same letter for all the terms. So, this is the best I could come up with. But you know, this is really, this is really the habit of discover and, and it’s, and it’s getting sales engineers involved in discovery.

[00:07:50] And, and if, if I may, Vik, the sort of this, this was born out of, frankly the mistake that I made when I, when I, I mentioned that when I first got into the role, I made a few mistakes, but frankly, I very quickly started to understand the sales process. And once I really started to get up to see, one of the mistakes that I made was, was that I would agree to virtually any demo requests from one of my sales counterparts.

[00:08:18] Vik: Right.

[00:08:19] Chris White: Without, without almost any, you know, inquiry in the least be. And frankly, it was partially because I to a certain, it was my ego getting in the way, right. My ego was saying, Hey, I’m the smart guy and I can handle it. You just throw it on my calendar and I’m good. But guess what? I found myself going into some customer conversations, some, some demonstrations, presentations unprepared. And I found myself sort of painted into a corner. I was embarrassed, my sales counterpart was embarrassing. What I discovered was that I need to be the one who’s, who’s asking the customer certain questions before I go in to do a demonstration because I’m going to ask different questions than my sales counterpart.

[00:09:12] Vik: Right.

[00:09:12] Chris White: I’m the one who’s giving the demo. Does that make sense?

[00:09:15] Vik: It does and how do you recommend somebody who’s at the stage where they want to go and do the technical discovery. What are the, what are the best practices that you would recommend for them so that they can get the best out of it?

[00:09:30] Chris White: Yeah, great questioning. And let me preface that by, you know, I, I understand that sometimes the sales, the, our sales counterparts are uncomfortable with this at times.

[00:09:39] Right. Because I think, I think number one, they’re afraid that our customers or our prospects are gonna feel like they’re being badgered. Like, well, you know, I’ve already done discovery. I’ve already asked all the questions. Right. So, you know, why are you going to come in and ask questions? Right. So, one of the things.

[00:09:55] That I tell the sales engineers that I work with is make sure you do your due diligence, right? If your sales counterpart has already done discovery, make sure you understand what questions have been asked, what answers have been given so that you’re not asking the same questions, right. And the best way to do it is once you do get the chance to do a discovery, say, you know, let’s say my, my sales counterpart is Matt.

[00:10:18] You know, Mr. Or Mrs. Customer, I’ve spoken to Matt. I understand the conversations you’ve already had. I understand you’re trying to do this, but I’m going to be the individual who’s actually going to come in to demonstrate the solution for you. And I’d just love to hear in your own words, some of the, some of the more specifics.

[00:10:34] Right? Um, and, and that’s the way I approach it. The other thing, and, and, and Vik, frankly, you might give them a 45-minute podcast just talking about discovery. Um, but the other thing I encourage people to do. Yes. I’ll say two things. Number one, ask open-ended questions. Right? You want to ask if you, if you ask questions that are just can be answered with yes or no, it can, it can fall very flat.

[00:10:59] And the other thing is make it, make it conversational. Right. Show, be curious, be interested. Those are the things that make a discovery call.

[00:11:11] Vik: Right. And I think one keyword that you said, I found it very interesting and I agree to that is, you know, let customer. Uh, speak about their own pain points, let them say what is their, why they’re sitting at the table and talking to you and let them give their perspective.

[00:11:28] So, then we can find the better or the best way, how our product can address those problems or how we can do the demos too. Be more customized to the needs of our customer.

[00:11:39] Chris White: Indeed. And if I’m sorry, I’m sorry, go ahead.

[00:11:43] Vik: No, I’m saying that that’s that, and then it basically, you can get the best out of it when you’re going into the meeting.

[00:11:49] Yeah. But, go ahead. Go ahead, Chris.

[00:11:51] Chris White: Well, what I was going to say is, um, the biggest mistake that I see people make, and frankly, I’m, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m, I still make this mistake from time to time, is that when we get on to a discovery call and yet we’re very quick to solve or we’re very quick to sell.

[00:12:07] We hear one thing and we know that aligns with one of the capabilities of our solution and we, and we want to start talking about the solution, right? And the mistake is that this is discovery and this is, this is our customer’s turn to talk. Right. In a week or the next day, or whenever we’ll have our chance to tell them all about the solution, right.

[00:12:31] We need to resist the urge to tell them all about the solution before they finished telling their story. So, so your point about letting them talk is so spot on. Well, very good.

[00:12:44] Vik: So, let’s, uh, let’s talk about the next habit, which is Prepare. So why, why do we need to prepare, what are the challenges and, uh, how does it help?

[00:12:53] Chris White: Yeah, you know, I’m glad you, I’m glad you phrased the question that way. Um, because they think. This is at the surface. This probably seems obvious to some people, of course I would prepare, but again, it goes back frankly, to the mistake that I made was that once frankly, once I started doing discovery and I, I was now equipped with more information and I better understood what the customer’s looking for.

[00:13:23] I would spend hours, if not days preparing for demos right. Long nights, and frankly, Vik, I would, I would prepare more content that I could possibly present or deliver in a 30 or 45 or even 60-minute demo. Right. So, so what’s the mistake there. First of all, I’m, I’m burning myself out. Um, I’m, I’m not necessarily making the best use of my time and I’m building so much stuff.

[00:13:56] Right. Um, that, that might, the focus is all on me. And by the way, when, when we build something that whether it’s slides or some sort of customized demo, what do we want to do? We want to show it. Right. Right. Even if, you know, whether we have enough time to do it or not. And so that that’s so, so that, so this habit is really around understanding, first of all, this notion of being both effective and efficient with our time, it’s really a return on.

[00:14:31] The time that we spend in preparing. The other thing is I like to call out the difference between demo content and the demo story. To me, you know, we’re engineers by trade. We’d like to build, we’d like to tinker, right? The problem is, is that that’s, that’s for us. But what the, what the customer is interested in is how is this going to help them?

[00:14:56] Right. Tell me a story. Tell it, tell me the story that makes me the customer, the hero that puts me the customer at the, at the center of the stage. Right. And help me understand how your solution is going to help me. And so that’s, that’s what I like to say to people is focus on the story, not the content. Does that make sense, Vik?

[00:15:19] Vik: It does. And I like the way you have put in the right sequence, because we just talked about, uh, in the, Probe that we ask customers to explain what they think about the problem and tell us what the pain point is, why they are talking to us. Now with that content we have to prepare.

[00:15:38] There is no other way. So, it fits actually in the sequence. It fits really well. I really like the way you put it here, that we go and talk to the customer, do the discovery, probe the customer about what they need, and then we come back, take that content, come back and use that in the demo to prepare and deliver the best demo possible.

[00:15:58] Chris White: Exactly.

[00:15:59] Vik: It totally makes sense.

[00:16:00] Chris White: Very well said. Yep.

[00:16:01] Vik: Yeah. So, uh, now the next habit that you talk about in your book is, Practice. And, uh, and I can, I can understand, uh, you know, how practice can help, but can you, uh, give more details about, you know, what are the some situations, people, you know, where this can definitely, uh, be very productive and, uh, how they can do the practice better, even how they can get better at the craft of doing the demos?

[00:16:28] Chris White: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and similar, similar to, Prepare this one at the surface is probably, it probably seems the most obvious. Right. And, and I would submit. That it’s, it’s the easiest of the habits in principle but and, and sincerely, no pun intended, but it’s the hardest thing practice. And here’s, here’s what I discovered.

[00:16:52] And here’s, here’s really, again, learning from my own mistakes along the way I would, I would be in a demonstration and something would happen and that I didn’t expect. And it’s telling one of the things that I, that I like to say. I think I’ve put this in the book. And I like to say in my workshops, workshops, what’s the one thing we don’t want after a clip.

[00:17:16] A surprise. Right? So, I would be in a demo. I click and I’d get a surprise. And now, you know, we, we get flushed in the face. We’re embarrassed, and particularly if it’s one of those key moments, right. We never want that. Right. And here’s what, what was the hardest thing for me to accept was that in many cases, I’d go back after the facts and try to figure out why the software or the platform didn’t behave the way I expected it to.

[00:17:49] And it was a five second fix. Right. I just forgot to, you know, include one file or, you know, I forgot to make one configuration change or something. Right. And, and it, and, and it’s all because I didn’t take a few minutes. The night before, or that morning to just what I say, click every click, just click through and spot check and make sure particularly those key moments and adaptable.

[00:18:17] Are all working. Right? So that’s, and by the way, we talked about prepare again, we’d love to, we’d love to tinker and build and, and fuss, right. And, and, and, you know, create, and, and we tend not to, you know focus on the story and the last thing we were working on before is, Practice. And so that’s really what this is, is it’s just, you know, like let’s, let’s get in the habit of budgeting time to practice and let’s make sure everything’s working.

[00:18:47] Vik: Right.

[00:18:48] Chris White: Does that make sense?

[00:18:48] Vik: It does. And I think it also covers the scenario of a curious customer when you’re going for a demo. And the customer say, Hey, can you click on that icon in the bottom right corner? What does that do? And sometime, you know, uh, and so it’s, it’s always good to cover all the parts of the demo, especially when the products are complex to know what each part of it.

[00:19:11] And because we don’t want to get surprised in the demo and we come up with, you know, that we don’t know what you’re talking about.

[00:19:17] Chris White: Exactly. Exactly. And by the way, that scenario that you just talked about, when the customer says, Hey, can you, can you show me this? I’m not going to take the time now to answer to share.

[00:19:28] I have a very specific sort of checkdown model that I have for that, but I’ll, I’ll just put that out there as something that’s in the books. So, if anybody wants to hear my thoughts on that, they can get the copy of the book.

[00:19:39] Vik: Absolutely. Absolutely.  So, the next habit, now that we have, you know, we have

[00:19:48] probed the customer, we have prepared for it, we have practiced and we are ready for the demo. Now, the next habit, which is, Perform, it’s very obvious, I really like the sequence of habits that are here and which tells the great content that this book is. Uh, how, how do you, uh, in fact, I see the, you have two different actual chapters on perform itself.

[00:20:11] So, can you talk more about what Perform is all about, I think that’s actually the, that’s the, that’s a real part of the show that we put in front of the customer where we actually perform. So, can you talk about what you mean and what is the best prep? What are some of the best practices for performing and getting the best out of the demo?

[00:20:30] Chris White: Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, I mean, I love, I love that you’re calling attention to the process. Because you’re, you’re absolutely right. You know, if in fact we, we can, we can even start with partner, you know, If, if the, if the partnership is sound, if we’ve done some discovery, we’ve prepared effectively and we practice, and frankly, we should be going into a demonstration with a great deal of confidence and feel, feel very good.

[00:20:58] But in spite of doing all that, right, at some point, the spotlight shines on us. Right. And at some point, we are on stage and again, what, what I had to learn in, in some cases through, you know, sort of the school of hard knocks. Um, and then what I’ve seen, you know, being a manager and being a coach and consultant out in the field is that there are some very specific things that we want to make sure that we do.

[00:21:25] And some very specific things that we want to make sure that we don’t do in order to get what I believe is the primary objective of a presentation or demonstration. And frankly, our primary job, which is to get the technical win. Right. My job as a sales engineer is to convince the customer that our solution, our product, our platform, our company, our people will help them solve their problems and meet their objectives.

[00:21:52] Right. So, what, so to answer your question, what are some of the best practices? Um, and frankly, you’re right. There’s two chapters. And I think I cover about 20 specific best practices. Um, and, and, and there, I’ll talk about how they’re organized. Um, they’re organized around first, the, the very beginning stages.

[00:22:14] Right. And before you actually start your demonstration, one of the things that I like to do is set expectations, right? So, maybe my sales counterpart has given some, you know, maybe shown a few slides when it comes to me. I’m even going to repeat, I’m going to say so, we’ve had a great conversation up until this point.

[00:22:33] What I’m about to demonstrate is not as that, I just want to make sure that that aligns with your expectations, right? I’m kind of setting some boundaries for the conversation. The other thing I tell people is know the players. Right. If you’re doing a demonstration and there’s five, you know, three, five, seven, ten whatever that you may have some decision-makers, you may have some technical principles, right?

[00:22:57] You may have some people who are users. What they’re interested in, the kind of questions that they’re going to ask are all coming from different perspectives. So, know who is who, before you start your demo. Does it, does that make sense?

[00:23:13] Vik: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:23:15] Chris White: Yeah. Um, you go ahead.

[00:23:17] Vik: It does make sense. And I especially liked the point that you made is that the purpose of this whole exercise is to get a technical win.

[00:23:26] The purpose is not to do the demo. The purpose is not to run the POC that are only pieces of that whole process that we’re going through and trying to perfect each and every piece of it. But the end goal is to get the technical win. And that’s where always our, you know, that’s where always we should be looking at that, what we need to do to reach to that point.

[00:23:47] Chris White: Indeed. And, and, and frankly, and again, I have to raise my hand first cause I made this mistake certainly early on. We have to remember that that a, a technical sales presentation or sales demonstration is not training. And that’s not consulting, right. We are not there to teach them how to use the platform.

[00:24:08] Right. We’re, we’re there to convince them that it will do what they needed to do to help them meet their needs. Right.

[00:24:15] Vik: Right. And it also aligns, it also aligns with the, my experience, what I’ve seen. So, sometime when, uh, SEs, you know, we go out and do the demo. It’s very important that we know that, you know, we know, we know the product in and out.

[00:24:31] We see the product every day, but when we are showing it to the customer, they are probably looking at the first time. So, it’s very important how we onboard the customer with the information that we’re providing them. Sometime if we go, if we start with the most complicated problem and we show the most complicated feature, uh, you know, because, because the product does that great, but the customer may not perceive it in that way, because for them consuming that information in, in next 15, 20, 30 minutes can be very complicated.

[00:25:01] So, its, I think. Demo is really, really important part of the whole process. And it’s very important that we present the information in small bite-size pieces in a way that customer gets an eventually we can start with a simple concept and eventually reach to a point where customer can fully understand the length and breadth of the product.

[00:25:19] So, I think this, this goes totally well with the idea that the kind of sequence of steps that you’ve outlined in this book.

[00:25:26] Chris White: Yeah. Vik, you are so spot on. I mean, I, I could not agree with you more and. No to that end. I talk about things like just slowing down, right? So, you’re, so the audience can, can, you know, follow along, um, you know, not assuming that they understand your, you know, understand your terminology.

[00:25:45] Um, you know, one of my favorite sayings is a confused mind, always says, no. And if we can fuse our, even if they like what they’re seeing, if they’re, if they’re a little confused by what’s happened, the answer’s no, until that confusion’s gone. So, I completely agree with what you’re saying.

[00:26:05] Vik: So, that brings to our last habit here, the Perfect. And, what do you mean by this habit? Well, what do you mean by this?

[00:26:15] Chris White: Yeah, no. And this is, this is one too, that at times, um, you know, people have frankly challenged me on, um, I’ve done some work with some very well-known companies and, and one of their mantras was perfect can’t be the enemy of good enough.

[00:26:32] And, and, and that’s why I’m very clear to tell people this doesn’t say perfect. This is a verb, which is perfect. And I actually learned this from my first boss, my first boss that I had as a sales engineer, he used to say, if ever, I was in a demo and a customer asked me something about the platform that the platform couldn’t do or that I couldn’t answer either that night or the next day or before the next time I had to give a demo, I would go into my, my demo.

[00:27:03] Right. I go into the platform and I would figure out a workaround, right? I would figure out a satisfactory answer. And that’s really what this habit is, is it’s to consistently and constantly perfect our demos. It’s really about mastering our craft and mastering our trade. And if I may, this and this, I love this because it comes now full circle back to habit.

[00:27:29] Number one, which is the partnership. I would say my favorite part of going to give a demo was the conversation that I had with my sales counterpart after the fact where he and I, or she, and I would talk about, you know, what went right and what went wrong and what could we have done differently and what should we do differently?

[00:27:53] And, and even better. Did you see how they responded when we showed them this? Or did you see how excited they were when we did that? Right. And, and it’s really that it’s that constant feedback loop. And, and consistent, you know, cycle of improvement. That, that’s really what this habit is all about.

[00:28:14] Vik: Right.

[00:28:15] So, now I’m going to put you actually on a spot here. So, if you have to pick one of this habit or let me phrase my question a different way, let’s say you are out for a speaking engagement and you have only three minutes and you want to talk about only one habit out of all these six. That you think would, uh, you know, uh, help the audience the most, which one would you pick and why?

[00:28:42] Chris White: Oh, man. So, so I’m actually, I’m actually gonna take, cause you, you asked two questions there because the answer actually is different depending on the question. So, so the first one you asked was which one do I think is important? I would have to say habit number two. I think, I think, doing, doing discovery.

[00:29:03] Is the most important thing that we can do, because if we don’t understand what the customer is looking for, what they’re trying to accomplish, what their problems are, what their context is. I don’t think the others matter. I really don’t. I, it doesn’t matter how good we are in front of a customer. It doesn’t matter.

[00:29:25] Um, you know, how well we prepare if we don’t understand really what they’re trying to do. So, I think that’s, that’s the most important one. Now, that being said, if, if I have three minutes with an audience, I would say, and I’m talking to a group of sales engineers, I would say first and foremost, please know that you are in sales and sales is a team sport and the most important thing is for you to understand that you’re, you’re a team, you’re a part of the sales team and all the other habits build on that partnership. So, um, so, so that’s, so that, that would be, that would be my answer.

[00:30:07] Vik: Great, great answer, Chris. Great answer. I like it. And, I definitely see your point, uh, for probe because.

[00:30:14] That’s like, uh, you know, when we are building a house or a building, that’s like foundation, if the foundation is not right, the house cannot be built as strong, as beautiful as we want. So, I totally understand the logic. So, with that, uh, I think this was a great conversation uh, really nice talking to you and I, wish you all the best with your book and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

[00:30:38] Chris White: Well, thank you, Vik, so much. Um, best of luck is continued, like I said to you and Pudding and podcasts I know what you guys are doing is fantastic. And, thanks so much for having me. I, as you can tell, I love talking about this stuff. Um, and I’m, you know, I’m, I’m an advocate for our profession, so, and any opportunity I have, I’m grateful for it. So, thank you so much.

[00:31:00] Vik: Awesome. Thank you.

[00:31:03] Outro: Pudding is a smart POC platform that elevates the POC experience for sales teams and their customers. Sales engineering teams use Pudding for tracking, managing, and automating POC activities. Find out more at pudding.app.