What is your Marketing Plan?

My team gets tired, I am sure, of hearing me urge them to get out in front of Sales. Sales needs to have something to sell; engineers need sales to sell them. But, there is no process to follow to tell the local sales types what is available. After all, my skill set does not map directly to some nifty SKU in a catalog.

I am reasonably certain that is true for almost all humans. If that is true, and there is no process or guidebook on how to “get in front of sales”, how can you expect the sales team to sell something they don’t know about?

The answer, of course, is found in your personal marketing plan. Let’s pause here while you do some light reading here, here, and here. What do I get out of that reading? That the definition is going to change from group to group. So, here is my take on this.

Marketing is educating the consumer about why they need/want you or what you offer. In this case the consumer is the sales team. The sales team needs to know why their customer needs/wants you.

How do I do that?

Here is the rub: The answer to that question is going to change for each person. I can give you general guidance, but my personality (or lack thereof according to the SO) will make what I do work for me, but not necessarily for you. But, let’s give this a swing anyway, ok?

Preparation

Another thing my team is tired of hearing is goals, objectives, planning, focus, and accomplishing those goals and objectives. So, start there. Make yourself a backwards planning shell and pick a date in the future and set a goal of being able to approach the FSM in your market with the offer of at least one presentation to the local weekly sales huddle. You might need to make sure that this presentation also appears in PPT format so that you can contact your neighboring branch FSM’s also.

What is the content of this presentation?

A better question is: what is the delivery? The content of the presentation is your willingness to help with pre-sales. Delivery of the message/presentation will take many forms and need constant reinforcement. One FSM might not want to have a “presentation” but is totally willing to do email and other options. Your delivery in that case is more electronic and you’ll have to make a point to get face time with the branch staff. And a solid point here is: nothing replaces face time. I don’t care how good your video conference solution is, it is not face time.

You need to have an elevator pitch tailored to the sales team. Delivery of that pitch does require face time. But you need to be doing that anyway. Sales won’t sell what they don’t know. They need to know you.

Your resume needs attention at least once a quarter. Maybe all you do is read it aloud and decide it is still valid. But maybe you might want to update a significant achievement. Maybe you achieved another goal and passed a test or two. Added some more Mic, Key to your signature block. But, at least it is up to date. And have it in PDF format so that you can drop it into email on demand. Perhaps, if you are ultra-inventive, you will create a one-page marketing slick.

Send the resume and/or slick to the various sales, presales, delivery, business development managers, practitioners, et cetera. You will also want to get together with that same set of folks and flat out ask them what they need/want. Make an appointment with them and be prepared to discuss the following question:

“What can I be doing to help sales be successful?”

Notice that I approached this not as “what do *I* get” but rather what does the sales person get. Appeal to their personal interests and structure. I market myself to the sales teams. I educate them on what I offer to their success.

Remember that you have a story to tell; but you need to keep it out of the techie weeds and relate your skills and accomplishments in business terms. Technical details should stay in the 150-175 level.

On actual pre-sales calls you may need to drive past the 300 stuff, but for this purpose, something less detailed is much better. Your friendly sales executive needs to be able to spin the story to their customers. You need to give the sales team the data needed to create the story, but the data needs to be in an understandable form for the receiver, not the sender.

Time Time Time

But all this takes time. Building a reputation and instilling confidence in both your abilities and the idea of approaching the sales team is not going to happen overnight. It will take a bit. Take the time to create the goal and then figure out how to achieve that goal within the next quarter. Be prepared to adjust your plan based on input from the previously noted acronyms. Then take that plan to your SDM. You need an IDP outline anyway, right? It might as well be something useful!

In the end…

Being a consultant is much more than successful project delivery. A consultant should be helping with the entire sales process. A consultant recognizes the need to market themselves to the sales team and takes appropriate actions to achieve that goal.

Do you want to expand your career but are struggling with getting started? I am here to help.

Personal Development Plan Redux

 

I harp on goals and plans with my team. Without them, on a project basis, we are toast. Without them, on a personal basis, we might be okay, but perhaps coasting along without an objective. With them, we can suddenly frame success, determine present and desired states, and develop action plans for achieving the stated success criteria.

As a recap of previous rants on this subject, I recommend planning your future, obtaining coaching where needed, and getting a mentor (or three). As a follow-up comment to the mentoring, you don’t have to have a formal mentor relationship. Someone might be successful in what you want to be doing, and just listening to them or perhaps emulating them (no blatant weirdness please) is the mentoring you needed.

Sometimes a mentor can be a formal top-down thing; but in general, a somewhat less rigid arrangement works better. For the last six months or so, I have had a very-less-formal mentor. There has never been anything in writing or verbal that would have established a mentor relationship. But she is.

She has the unique ability to synthesize information into a coherent conclusion and then present verbally off the top of her head. Or so it seems. Maybe she is practicing late at night for those random occasions.

At any rate, just getting to listen to her is a learning experience. She demonstrates skills that I have never mastered. Maybe one day. But there’s more! Sort of like the infomercial – BUT WAIT!

For my edification, for the same price of admission as before, we also get other pearls of wisdom that make you sit back and think. Sometimes that is good, sometimes it is a catalyst that you have been searching for and never realized it. Other times it points out something that maybe you should consider revisiting. The other day, here came this one.

Mindtools dot com. An interesting site to say the least. The specific item that brought me here was informative, instructive, and timely. But in poking around this resource, I found this little slice of goodness that ties in nicely to your needs to plan your future: Personal Development Plan - Mind Tools.

The current problem with this recommendation is that now Mindtools.com would like you to pay for what was once free – but I get it. OTOH, 20 pieces of government coinage is not that big of an investment in your future.

While I am waiting for you to breeze through 27 pages that can predict your future, allow me to observe that we are getting close to the midpoint of year – a perfect time to be looking at a goals and objectives review; work and personal must be in balance and if you follow my mantra, people should have to really know you to tell the difference.

OK, hopefully you have taken a few moments to peruse that planning guide. Furthermore, I hope that you realize that you can use the same techniques with your customer’s projects. Benjamin Franklin, is credited with: “Failing to plan is planning to fail” and that is certainly true in my experience. This tool could be the one thing that creates a tipping point and helps you achieve your goals.

YMMV