SEs should do MORE and LESS this Year
It’s been a year since I stopped being a full-time solution engineer. The irony is that even though I’m not a full-time SE or SE manager, I feel like I’m way better at leading discovery and demos than I was when I was doing it for 40 hours a week.
The biggest difference for me is that I’m 100% responsible for the sale. I can’t hide behind only getting the technical win. I can’t blame their IT department for wanting to leverage the same technology because they are ‘an Oracle shop’ or ‘an SAP shop.’
I know that in order to win the deal, I need to stand out from other software vendors and other implementation partners.
Here are the two ways that I’m better at solutioning than I was a year ago.
Doing Way More In Discovery:
I remember my first SE manager telling me that “you can win deals in discovery.” I smiled and nodded, but secretly I believed that I won deals in demos. I would leverage my background in public speaking to create great demos that were engaging. I also was incredibly fast and could build demos in around 90 minutes.
Fast forward a year, I’m more committed to discovery than I ever was as an SE. Things like:
Coming up with a hypothesis about their problem before the call.
Asking more questions around pain points and less about technology
Re-watching the discovery meeting for things I might have missed.
Making reverse demos the required next step, so I can do even more discovery.
When I was an SE, my biggest objective was to get to the demo as fast as possible. I wanted to get to what I was good at and treated discovery as a formality. These days, with greater competition of technology and competing partners, I’m trying to do two things in discovery:
Show the prospect that I know more about their problem than they do.
Quickly disqualify if they don’t have the vision/resources/budget to solve the problem.
And after seeing the improved quality of my discovery over the past few weeks, I now 100% agree that deals can be won in discovery.
Doing Way Less In Demos:
When I demoed to Starbucks, I had 20 different user stories to address. I once led a 3-hour demo that had 52 criteria to hit over 4 different user journeys. Those days are long gone. Today, when I demo, I focus really on the three key pain points that we’re solving for. There might be 20 other things they are looking for, but if I can visually show how the software will solve their biggest pain point, that is where I’m focusing most of my time.
I’ve always worked hard on my transitions in demos, but I’m spending twice as much time these days. Working on phrases like:
“I’m about to show you what solves your biggest pain point.”
“On our reverse demo, you showed us how hard it is to do ____. How easy would it be to do it like this?”
“You called your process manual and frustrating. How would you describe what you’re seeing here?”
I’m putting more effort into the setup, the calibrated questions, and getting audience engagement. The past two demos I led have been awesome. Part of that is a result of the deeper discovery, but it is also that I’m focused on the biggest problems that will transform their business.
Whether you’re looking to improve your skills or stand out more as an SE this year, think about ways that you can do MORE in discovery and LESS in demos.