September 10, 2005

Play to Your Strengths

When all those business books recommend that you should go with your strengths, they’re right. Yes, we should work on our weaknesses so we’re not incompetent. But it’s those strengths will be your trademark or calling card to future employers. It’s your value proposition on why they should hire you. Companies hire us for those strengths expecting results and high performance just like Tom hired me to create his marketing department. Coming into my job, I’ve never doubted my abilities, demonstrating and exuding confidence as I achieve little wins along the way. Tom’s beginning to trust that I’ll do what I say I will do, and exceed his expectations.

VAR Sales Training Preparation

After only five weeks on the job, I created an entire inventory of sales tools for our direct sales effort that can be repurposed for our Value-added Reseller (VAR) channels. Today we finally had our first VAR sales training. The goal of training was to:

• Industry & Company Overview: educate the VAR sales team on our industry and our company
• VAR Sales Process: inform the VAR of the sales process in how they would work with our sales and technical sales engineers for demos, proposals, RFP, pricing, and contracts
• Product Training: give the non-Internet sales team product training on our Web application
• Sales Tools: roll-out all the sales tools by target audience with an emphasis on the ROI Financial Dashboard
• Competition: educate them on the competitive landscape
• Client Service Program & Support: inform them our stellar Client Services department
• Sales & Marketing Programs: roll-out the sale and marketing effort that will support their efforts

In addition to creating the sales tools, I also created all the slides in the PowerPoint deck for each portion of the agenda. By Wednesday evening, I had sent all the sales tools to the VAR. By Thursday afternoon, our team went through a dry run of my presentation as we changed and updated it together. Working with Tom, Amanda, VP of Engineering, and Jamie, this was the first time all of us worked on one task together. Thursday night, Tom and his partner hosted a dinner party at their house, as we all got to know each other in a different environment. After coming home and napping until 4:00 am, I turned around and went back to work, so I could prepare for my portion of the presentation, set up the conference room, work out the kinks, and be ready for the 8:00 am Web conference.

Training is a Success

I once told Tom, “Consider me your celebrity handler, making sure you get there on time, look good when you perform, make all the work invisible to the public.” At 7:55 am, all Tom had to do for our sales training presentation was to have me brief him on the logistics, so he’d be reminded of the flow of the presentation. I prompted him on which facts to highlight to the VAR sales team, as well as when to transition to the VP of Engineering and Amanda as part of the agenda. I sat him down at the head of the conference table, and then he started his performance. We almost had a technical issue, but I avoided it by adapting with an alternate approach. It always pays to know your technology inside and out so you can find alternate solutions when problems occur. WebEx allows you upload your PowerPoint to their site so you can share with your meeting attendees, but if you have flash graphics in the PowerPoint, WebEx doesn’t have plugins installed for Flash, so you have to use the old-school approach by sharing the application. This was barely noticeable as the training went off without a hitch and was successful.

Be a “Celebrity Handler”

The training went exactly as expected. We smoothly demonstrated our professionalism and expertise, giving our VAR the confidence that we’ll support their efforts to make them successful. When the training ended, Tom thanked me in front of the group adding, “I can’t believe that I can walk into this presentation, with all my slides complete, and all I have to do is just show up with my handler telling me what to expect. I love the fact that our VAR is a public company. They’re huge. And here we are with only fifteen employees and we look more professional than they do because of you.”

All the work and crazy hours were worth it. While I’ve been consistently hitting singles, doubles, and some triples, by day 42 of my first 100 days, I hit it out of the park. I played to my strengths while making my CEO look good.

The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company. For previous entries in this series, click here.

Similar Posts:

• Smart Lemming Diary: Preparing for My First Sales Training
• Smart Lemming Diary: Sales Training Preparation
• 18 Reasons Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work and How to Fix It
• Smart Lemming Diary: Managing Workload is like Bailing Out a Leaky Boat
• Smart Lemming Diary: Weekly Management Meeting and ROI Sales Tool