Don't Talk Like Charlie Brown's Teacher

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Socialtext launched a great new product recently, Socialtext Connect. I'll save the details for another post, but needless to say, our customers are pumped up about it and it is a great thing to sell.

As with any technology, I have a tendency to over complicate things.

I was on a call, talking about Connect a couple of days ago and of course I was excited. I went into the explanation of the platform. What it does, how it does it and why customers like it. Then I asked - "So how does this resonate with your plans?"

My customer was funny and I appreciate her honesty, but she told me that she didn't understand what I just said and that I sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher. Wha wha, wha wha wha wha.

It was a great lesson, one that I knew, but needed to be reminded of. Since then, I've taken a couple of corrective actions that I think will help you too.
1.) I ask now - how technical are you and how technical do you want me to go?
2.) I've written a couple of descriptions of Connect. A simple, very high level version, a medium version and a deep complex version

I've discovered that most people are pretty technical and get this stuff, but the ones that aren't really appreciate when I give the simple version.

Tell me, do you talk like Charlie Brown's teacher? How did you teach yourself not to do that? Leave a comment and let me know.

Tagged Sales Technology charlie brown information technology presentations selling speaking engagement

Get People To The Starting Line

I heard the other day, that for religious evangelists, it takes just over 4-years to get someone to convert religions. This was from 'This American Life' the episode entitled Bait & Switch - Act 2 Raw Sex (how's that for SEO). I've been thinking about it ever since. As a sales guy, I spend a ton of time evangelizing my products & services.  If you spend your time cold calling people, you need to convince people that what they are doing is inefficient or basically backasswards.  When selling technology, this doesn't happen in a 10-minute phone call. This happens over months of relationship building and calls and site visits and more calls and more relationship building.  You're preaching your version of religion and trying to make converts. It doesn't come easy and it is easy to focus on how many people finish the race, but we lose track of how we got people to show up at the race in the first place. We spend a lot of time talking about metrics. How many deals closed, how many leads from one point to another. How many suspects to prospects; prospects to opportunities.  All of those metrics are great for potential customers who are already in the race. But let me ask, how are you getting people to show up at your race?
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