Presales Sensei » Selling is War; Don't Just Compete. Win.

Coaching Teardown

There are always conversations about being a leader vs being a manager. Companies don’t seem to be as good at creating leaders, as they are at creating managers.

Leadership takes time, and one of the places you see real leadership is in sports. The best athletes in the world all have coaches. And, while the coaches may not be as “expert” as their protege’s at the sport, a good coach creates great athletes.

With that in mind, this video of LeBron coaching his son’s basketball performance was heading around twitter the other day. I thought it would be interesting to point out what I’m seeing as a coach in the way LeBron “coaches values into his son” on the side of the court.

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Using a Customer Experience Posture to Drive B2B Sales Pipeline

Drive Pipeline Creatively

Ask people what they mean by customer experience, and you’ll get at least one answer per person you ask.

Like with digital transformation, I have spent a lot of time thinking about using “a customer experience perspective” as a way to drive sales pipeline.

I have recently written a post about Credit Card Fraud and it is exactly the sort of sales motion that can be used to drive pipeline because it tells a customer story (rather than a vendor-product story). I wrote that post with this meta-post in mind.

A story about a post

Connect Authentically

A lot of people who I suggest would benefit from blogging ask a common question:

How should I write a post?

They’re not wondering about the “ass-in-the-chair part” but rather, the post structure. Often it’s accompanied by a “what should I write about?” feeling, implied in which is why would anyone really care about what I have to say?

The truth is, we all communicate all the time. Sometimes repetitively so (especially in presales). Not every post has to be earth shatteringly insightful. Or brilliantly written.

I haven’t been writing much, though I have been drafting a lot. This morning I published a post about authentication security after sitting on it for about three weeks. This is pretty typical. Let me share my own thought process about the post so that maybe you have another vector into getting a post from brain to bits.

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Let the process be your teacher

Sensei Point of View

I had two interesting things happen this week in my role as ‘leader.’ I believe they’re related.

Making one small change to a technique forces the practitioner to examine the whole process which results in a much higher level of output than one simple change would imply.

One small change

I was working with two of the other senior students at my dojo (individually, as at this point in our practice, a lot of our work is done individually).

Let me describe my process.

An Idea Worth Sharing

Connect Authentically

I was on vacation, a few weeks after starting a new role leading a team of smart, creative presales. I had an idea that couldn’t wait… it couldn’t be this obvious, could it?

While I inhaled my morning coffee, I sent out a quick email to marketing. The response was concise.

“Great idea, let me see what we can do.”

Manifesting Reality

Sensei Point of View

There’s never enough time. Or so it seems.

I’d like to have more time to prepare for my next exam, my next competition, my next thing. But often we don’t control the timing; we can only control how we respond to the challenge in front of us.

I’ve been leading the CA Agile Central (formerly Rally Software) presales team in North America for about six months. Shortly after I started, Broadcom announced their acquisition of CA.

I don’t have a spot at Broadcom.

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WIN BETTER

One small change