Not only is Patrick Pissang a sales engineering trainer, the CEO/Founder of Sales Hero GmbH, and the author of "The Social Engineer", he is a possessor of tons of "out of the box" knowledge. He grants us with the many ways that salespeople can differentiate themselves and their companies on this week's episode of The Convenience Economy Podcast.
Patrick bestows us with some "out of the box" advice in addition to opening our eyes to a new perspective of sales. The 3 pieces of advice that he assures will differentiate a salesperson are:
To begin with number one, Patrick explains how it is no longer efficient enough for sales leaders to say, "yes, we do a demo training and my team is equipped and they are good salesmen". You must craft your niche and evangelize your company's category. Patrick believes in finding out and building the company's internal pillars, or values before going into the market. Questions he suggests asking internally are: How do we treat our clients? How do we treat our Account Executive's? How do we create a niche?
The next piece of advice is to make sure you are continuously trying to improve each day. One way to do this is by using LinkedIn and other social media platforms in order to break the ice between the salesperson and the potential customer. He suggests going online and answering questions you ask yourself such as, "What do you think? What're your problems? What're your customer's problems? What are you solving? What is your domain expertise? What are stories of different trends or things you've seen fail?". These questions will help you build thought leadership because every client that researches you can then look through and find your gems of good ideas. You can then actually have the potential customer read what you are thinking by posts on LinkedIn before the meeting takes place, which ultimately builds a familiarity upfront. This gives you a deal cycle that that's highly flexible, which is vital since the sales cycle is no longer linear.
Lastly, creativity, boldness, and the unexpected are far better client experiences than a filled request for proposal document or lengthy custom demo. Also, if you understand your company's positioning, your client's business, your product's vision, and your mind – you won't face competition. Patrick advises you to be bold and just trying everything possible, he says, "if you fail, you fail, nobody will actually see it, but the upside is unlimited. So I would recommend just try it, do it".
Patrick's bottom line is, your job is not just to show up and present software, your job is an integral role in the sales cycle. You must think and act out of the box in order to differentiate yourself and sway away from being "just the norm".
Greg Dickinson: So good morning, everybody, Greg Dickinson with with the convenience factor podcast and with me today I have an esteemed colleague here, Patrick in the in the solution engineering space. And I'm gonna let Patrick introduce himself. And tell us a lot about what he's been up to what he's doing, Patrick, tell the audience about yourself, introduce yourself.
Patrick Pissang: Hi, Greg. Great to be here. My name is Patrick Pissang. I'm a German sales engineering trainer. So I have a company that actually trains organizations, presales organizations. My background is I will say essentially, in the field for several years, I worked with Mulesoft, most prominently, and we got acquired by Salesforce years back. And yet, this was then my point to get out of the role and get into training all this falls into training, inventing new novel kind of methodologies, how to work in the field, right? This was always something that inspired me when doing it already. Right? So training different methodologies on how to approach sales as a technical person, right? I'm very creative, I think, at least have some writing books. I'm writing novels in German. So I'm very big into storytelling. And I use the skill also to write I would say, creative nonfiction for sales engineers. And this is, you can read this in a book called The social sales engineer or I'm on medium, right? You can find me there. Where? Yeah, I tried to write at least once or twice a week about and give the whole thing a different spin right now. Not just listen facts, but really, like, yeah, something entertaining with some emotion that you have actually to feeling well. I'm going for this pain. Okay.
Greg Dickinson: I think I think from the artists perspective, right. LinkedIn, Patrick, yeah, he does a lot of activity. I think he's right here, I find his let's just say oftentimes, people that are his skill set, have written books, right, only talk about themselves and how they are doing right. And I find Patrick's content is often about engaging conversations. In fact, I just read something the other day about, he was talking about someone else's book and someone else's habits of partnering, etc. So, you know, he'll he's willing to take on topics and do that. So I think it's a great resource. And by itself, the book, social engineer, and I think also the activity. So So Patrick, you know, that has to keep you busy, but at the same time, your training? What, like, like my perspective, right is pretty straightforward. I'll put it right out there. I think that, you know, I was a pre sales engineer for a long time, but I started in the mid 90s and early 2000s. And I think fundamentally, today, the job is a little bit different, right? It's, I think it's fundamentally different, because I believe that the, that the buyer is doing much more of a work on their own, they used to have to get from sales. And so now the product has become very, very more important. And the product experience more important, and therefore the pre sales role, right? I could name 13 different jobs that a pre sales solution engineer has to do. But talk to me about your experience, right? You do training, you talk to people all the time, it's really good to get kind of your perspective of, of the fundamentals. Are you seeing that the're different? than then how are you helping? Right, the solution engineer today be be successful?
Patrick Pissang: Yeah, great question. So I want to start with a story can so I read a book about sales engineering, that was from 1949. So it was actually written before the Second World War. It's called sales engineer. And, and is a Book Handbook for sales engineers, like we could use today so I read it, and it was astonishing, right? Like, and in there are things that some leaders might think are novel today, like, don't lead with the solution, right? It's not important how how often you demo or how good you demo, it's important that you lead with results. And this is something that I would say go forward in my training. It's not like demo training, right. So which is a technique a skill, that that also changes the market? Right. You know, there are tools out there that want to take or take the demo burden or chores off the sales engineers, right. So the I believe that there'll be niches in a team where there will be those, those perfect storytellers, right that craft like demo stories and bring them into the tool, automate them. And that can be used to play it out to clients to prospects, right? So I think this will, this will happen, but then the general notion of leaders to say, yes, we do a demo training, and then my team is equipped and they are good salesmen, right. This is kind of flawed. And this is where I work. So because I believe in your your pillars, your internal pillars, or values or principles that you need to build before you go into the market. And this is around how do I treat my clients? How do I treat my AE's, for example, that's understanding the market wants a category, right? If you're in a startup you want, you're creating a niche, like this is typically the typical strategy. How do you perform this? And this is where I teach and consult. And yeah, also speak with the leaders. What's their plan? How do they treat their the individual contributors? How do we make them successful? Yeah. That's that's a whole range of things.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, no, but I mean, I think I think that's the novel, right? Because I think we hit on is the fact that people say this all the time. Anyone can demo right? I think that's a falsehood, right? Because I think it does take a special set of skills, right? The AE has to know the prospect inside and out, you got to be very kind of astute and understanding of the product, right? Because you're, you're an actor, if you will, as people ask questions, you need to react to that. But I think I think that I think that what you're you're angling on is, is those those values of teaching have have taken care of And not, you know, not doing necessarily demo training because I think the demo, the demo is something but it's also, you know, the skills that go along with that, that make the you know, the good, the good solution engineer. Good. Right. So that's what you're honing in on I think, the way you treat, right, I think you have to admit that there has been some change in the role, right. And I think it's the solution engineer has now become more important. And their their roles become more prominent, right? And therefore you that how you treat that that group as a whole is changed. Yeah?
Patrick Pissang: Yeah, absolutely. Right. So there. So there are different fields, some companies don't see the value of sales engineers, still, those who do might just seen them, see them as demo resources. So they would call them in for demo. And this is where the demo training is then assumed to be a sales engineering training, right. And then there are the other companies where sales engineers, and their leaders have a seat at the table of the company, right? So they influence the culture, the go to market, right? So they, they really hone in, in the skills, of maybe evangelization of storytelling. And when you have those basics, like how to treat my client, right, always exceed expectations, for example, right? To play to win or to, to not play like a supplier, but like a partner, right? If you at this stage, you don't need demo training, because you have the basics. Right? So you understand how to treat clients, and to only show the best results, or, or the piece of the software, where you did discovery for and you know, it hits home, right? I think it starts with that basics, right? Yes, it's absolutely useful to do and demo training. But it has a side effect if you do only this. And this means you're fostering this position of the demo resource, right? So if you do demo training, every half a year, you tell the sales engine culture is based on demo, right? If you do training, that builds confidence that build sales skills that build storytelling, creativity, if you've gone that realm, like the culture will, will will be well there are very experienced domain experts that are highly creative and will bring the deal like forward in in a differentiating or unexpected way.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that's what you were like when I when I first did it at Arriba 1997. Fundamentally, look, I had a great partner. He was a great salesperson, but I was that demo resource, right? That's what my job was. My job was to he he went and did all his things. And then Greg, two weeks from now 11 o'clock, right? We're gonna go to so and so right and sometimes I got a discovery call right so that's it right? The buyer sometimes you say hey, yeah, just just come in. Right? We know we want we just, you know, excetera but I think you I think would use it on is the fact that with the product being more you know, I call it product centric, if you will, I think right there's a little bit of, of of some buyers, right bought into the SaaS model, if you will early on without a lot of validation in that and then it didn't work out the way they wanted to or didn't meet all the expectations. They were told it would be. And so now they're a little bit gun shy. So they want to really dig in and roll up their sleeves, right? And learn about the product. And that's, you know, that's what's brought about, like, you know, back in 1996, I never would have been a pilot, we just said, No, we're not doing it. Right. And we had controls, we could get away with not doing it today, proof of concepts and trials are, are, you know, are more common? Well, that's a, that's a sale. It's a solution engineering role. That's well beyond the demo. Right? You now have to help right and guide and to your point, right, you know, kind of kind of shepherd that that customer. So I love that concept of of then I think I think you hit on something really cool that two different types of organizations, right, those that are going to give demo training. I never had demo training in the early, mid 90s. Right? It just, there was no such thing, just go do it. Right. I mean, that's your job, you should be good at it. Right. But I think it's Have you found like, you know, kind of on that pure back end and a little bit on that topic of, of, you know, those organizations that want to get more of the skills training that you're offering? That's, you know, yes, the demo is important and skills are where we both agree with that, but these other how to treat the customer and the value and exceeding expectations and storytelling. Do you find, you know, reception to that in the area? And is it the whole team? Or is it certain teams is it you find those to be certain verticals are kind of Let's peel back that a little because I think that's very intriguing. And I think that speaks to this idea that solution engineering has been, you know, promoted within the organization, right more critical role than quote unquote, the demo dollar, right, so to speak, using some bad words.
Patrick Pissang: I don't think there's a pattern right? Of course, I could make up a pattern. It's a bit like this having a seat at the table. If organizations like let's say, tendering, leaders have the seat at the table in the company, and have a say, they will convince the leadership of saying, well, our sales engineering team needs a broader education, right? Or we could use some coaching, or we could use some outside help to ignite some creativity, right? Or maybe how we approach the market. And this is true for I think, for teams who aspire this seat at the table, I think those are my customers, and those who have it. Right. And those are the two things and and often if you just want an outside view on how do we go to the market, what could we improve differentiation is a big, big topic of sales engineers, right? So discovery maybe 10 years ago, it was not a common task for sales engineers. Today, it's, yeah, it's one that you're there at least maybe, I don't know, 60, 70 or 80% of the time, you should. If it's a strategic deal, most likely you should be in the discovery, right. And this is true for every sales engineer, right? Today. They know just so many communities, and so many tools that are educated, right? So that today, it's important that you differentiate, not just do, like the discovery, or even the QC or the demo, but that you do it differently. And that's another point. If you do the demo training, like every, every other sales engineer does demo training, you're just the norm, right? You're not the unexpected anymore. We're not differentiating in front of the client, and it will stick if you differentiate, and this is this is where I see my, my value add to my customers. How do you differentiate it sometimes might might sound awkward what we discuss, and how we discuss which topics we discuss etc. But it's all towards this, how can I differentiate how can I bring the unexpected to my clients so that all the other sensitivities from the other companies look like the norm, right? And I'm the exception.
Greg Dickinson: Phenomenal, that's phenomenal listeners. I'm sure you've seen it. There's a stat that Gartner put out not too long ago that said that they did a poll of 4000 companies, and 64% said, there is no difference in the digital experience, right from brand to brand and they all look the same, they all feel the same. Well, that there's no differentiation there. Right. So your point is, you need to be different, right? And in your approach, and I think that goes to another topic that people forget about with with with solution engineering, and that's thought leadership, right and trusted advisor, right? A lot of times that's what the customer you know, sales has their, their baggage, if you will, and their perception of the customers buyers eyes, but but a solution engineer typically right, they're looking at as a trusted adviser, and that that takes, you know, I'm sure you get hung up on that too. Right. So how do you how do you become a trusted adviser? And how do you how do you do that? Right? It sounds kind of different, right? And I think that comes with differentiation too. If you can be if you're if someone says I trust Patrick, to be honest and forthright and no BS and so forth, and he's my thought leader Well, that's you've earned some credibility there.
Patrick Pissang: That's That's notion around the book, the social sales engineer. So, in there is actually a story that shows you how sales engineer evolved. And I want to deconstruct this, like, this ivory tower of thought leadership, right or trusted advisor, because it's really approachable. It's how you actually think about it and how you see it. And I think the best way to go there is to crystallize your thoughts in writing, right? And this means you could post you could post to LinkedIn regularly, you could be a medium or Quora, or you could have a YouTube channel, right, where you talk about the domain you're actually serving, right? And hopefully, positives means that there's something in them internally that something inspiring, because they work there they work in sales after all right? This is, this is the worst thing you can do when you want to have a calm job. I believe that everybody who is in sales, engineering or pre sales, they know I have to be on fire, right? And one point of this is really crystallized. What do you think? Are your problems? Customers problems, right? What are you solving? What is your domain expertise? What are stories, you've seen things that fail, right, or trends or whatever it is, write it down, crystallize it and go and go online with that as your own brand. And this will help you building the thought leadership. It's a trusted adviser, because every client that researches you comes on your LinkedIn landing page, for example, sees that you write on medium, whatever, or you're on YouTube or email LinkedIn, only then they can look through and then see oh, my gosh, yeah, there are gems in there. Right. Really good ideas. Yeah, you have your first call, and the customer can say, hey, I read your post, I love this provocative idea of XYZ.
Greg Dickinson:Wow, yeah. Gosh, I gotta be transparent here, I really was not thinking of it in that way. I was thinking more about in the in the sales cycle, the solution as you're being a trusted adviser to that buyer, but boy, what you just brought up is, is really a new perspective of, I think a lot of people look to LinkedIn posting, etc, medium as a sales tool, right? I'm going to do it so that I could someone and you've hit on something, I think all social engineers should start to think about. And that is that if you don't have to be a lot of it, but if you do some thought leadership ideas about your market, your vertical, what you serve, etc. When you know, when you're introduced to that, to that buyer, they'll gonna research you right. And then actually, wow, Patrick wrote about this, Rob, and Patrick wrote about that, right. And, you know, for example, I brought up just the beginning, right, I said, I read your activity, and you actually took the time to write about Chris, you know, White's book, right? And what is some of the habits you write that's very, you know, that earn your earn my respect, right? So here's Patrick's not all by himself. He's trying to foster thought leadership within the clinical community. And, you know, he's even willing to talk about other people's work right, in order to continue this. So but that that is a really provoking idea. I never really thought about that way to be to be perfectly honest, I think that's, that's just doing you're part to, to help people that way. You see, you I mean, you you have kind of the help people do that too. In your in your in your training, yet you help people because writing is not Second Nature. You're a writer. I'm not right. So you know, I can talk but I can't, right. So you help people think about that. And it'd be those kind of exercises as well.
Patrick Pissang: Yeah, yeah, I have. So I offer trainings where we, it depends on the person, some want to be thought leaders and want to post regularly, others just want to have some diamonds out there. So like, and we will talk about the niche. So what to write about how to write. So what are storytelling frameworks? So really storytelling, not the boss marketing word, right? But how do you structure your your writing? How to use language? What is the right language to use? Maybe what are actually frameworks that build tension or stuff like that. And this is what I do. And this is what also part because it's a huge differentiator. And you said before the deal cycle, this cycle is important once you have this landing page. Yeah, I would recommend LinkedIn no matter where you write, right. But assemble this knowledge on LinkedIn post about it. And once you do that, you can actually tell your account executive, you can bring it into the deal cycle, actually, by saying "dear account executive before we have the first meeting with the client, or if before you bring me in. They have to be on my LinkedIn page, please. They should read what I'm thinking." This builds actually a familiarity upfront. That helps me because maybe I'm introvert as a sales engineer, right? That helps me to have a warm Call because they have seen me they have read about the stuff I think about. And maybe it helps us spawn the conversation in the right way. Especially when I'm in a startup and I want to craft or the market in some way, right? I want to share it. And my message is important. So it's important. Maybe they have seen it before read it. So that is not completely new. And this gives you going back to this point, this gives you a deal cycle that that's highly flexible, because it's not linear today anymore, right? You can enter a deal cycle anytime from from any direction. And if you're on LinkedIn, and you're connected to a prospect, you post something, they will see it right. It's the feed and you haven't called you haven't emailed you avoided all this stuff sales news might not like so much to
Greg Dickinson: But I know I think again, you're hitting on another great point. And that is that today's you know, the buying journey is not linear, right? Buyers do, you know, maybe never was but buyers, you know, buyers come in and go out the team changes, right? People think they understand what you do. And then they learn something else. They want to go back and relearn or they want to, they have different questions. They say, gosh, you know, tell me about, you know, how this solves my problem. And they and you tell them and then later on, they want to know a different way? Right? Because they're, they're educated, they're smart. It's like all of us. Right. But I think that idea of, of continuing that, you know, I think that LinkedIn gives you the credibility to or, you know, who is Greg, I mean, there's nothing better than when I had a call with somebody. And you know, it just so happens, we both went to the same, you know, live in the south, or we lived in the north, or we we our kids are in the same sports, right? I mean, it breaks the ice and all sudden, your friends, right? And you're just you're having a conversation, as opposed to Hi, my name is Greg, I'm here to sell you something. Right. And I think that LinkedIn is another way to kind of, you know, to break that ice. And I think that's, you know, I usually end the podcast with, you know, what is it you could recommend someone take back to the office, but I think you did it for me here by, you know, by, I think the advice you would give on it let you say it, but I think the you know, the idea is, hey, listen, you know, think outside the box a little bit, right? Your job is not just show up at 11 o'clock and present software, right, your job is, is a little larger, you have an integral role in the sales cycle. And I think you've you've hit on some, some key points, Patrick.
Patrick Pissang: And then the job is growing, right. So they're, they're exciting new roles, like, it depends on where we want to go, maybe you want to go to product management, maybe, I don't know. But there are the nice cool roads that you say like like that are seen in the market, like the field CTO, that's what I wanted to go, the field CTO is a great role where you actually that you can achieve from sales engineering role, right? And be in this thought leader, and you wouldn't need this kind of exposition. Exposure, I think it's a record be seen in the market, right? And this is something that I would say, look around you and find out what's possible and aspire them because today everything is possible, right? Social media has only upsides there. There are no, if you fail, you fail, nobody will actually see it right? There are crickets, but the upside is unlimited. So I would recommend just try it, do it.
Greg Dickinson:Good. Good. And do you do in? In closing? Do you aspire your students to kind of work with you? And then come back? I mean, how do you keep how to how does someone keep this? Like I was once told by someone that the best sales pre sales engineers in the world, right? They stopped, they take the time to sharpen their axe, right? Because they're able to cut you know, they're more more effective in their jobs opposed to just keep going do you? Do you kind of help your students say Listen, I need to re-continue refresh, and how often and you have some advice there? Because not everyone's gonna have a budget to go take your training, etc. So I'm sure there's some advice you have around that. But what I call, you know, keeping your your act sharp. How do you how do you feel about that?
Patrick Pissang: Yeah, so my training is no one off. So there's, there's no like two days course. And then I'm done. So typically, it's at least four weeks to 12 weeks of weekly coaching and training. So and then during this time, we also leave routines, we talk about what can you do to stay like in the ex job, right? So this is where I would work on like developmental coaching, so that people actually develop or understand okay, what do I do correctly already? That I should focus on more in the future? Maybe do a daily like, I don't know, reading the news of the industry or talking to executives of prospects or posting or whatever it is right. or writing a diary? I don't know. Yeah, that's, that's the only way I think it works. So I started with one off trainings, but they don't fit. The knowledge doesn't stick. But it does when people start to understand No, right and we build a bond And during full 12 weeks training.
Greg Dickinson: Great, fantastic. Well, Patrick, thank you so much. I mean, that was really some great information today. And as usual, as you will know, I don't ever script these because I just want to hear what comes out. Right. And oftentimes, that's the best conversation. So thank you very much. I'm sure that the audience will enjoy this, and we'll talk again soon. Thank you very much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai