One of the greatest fears most new SE’s face is having to present in front of an audience. It can be quite nerve-wracking if you have zero experience or aren’t used to speaking with customers. You don’t want to mess it up so you prepare as best as you can and come the day of the presentation, you rattle off every feature and benefit of your product without your customer saying a single word throughout the whole thing. It can be hard to believe now, but our guest today also made that mistake at the beginning of his career. Now, he has mastered the art of giving great presentations by simply mastering one skill, the ability to listen. Learn more about Mike Orth and gain some insights on what it takes to be a great presenter and Sales Engineer.
Mike Orth is a Data Center Architect of Software-Defined Solutions and a presenter for Dell Technologies. He helps salespeople, customers, and partners with HCI and IT infrastructure and is currently based in Limerick, Ireland.
Key Takeaways:
Tune in to our conversation and learn about:
- Mike’s unusual career path from graduating with a degree in Philosophy to getting into presales in Ireland
- How his degree in Philosophy has played a role in his career
- What made him want to pursue a career in presales
- His journey from having zero experience being in front of an audience to his role now as a presenter
- Some rookie mistakes he made when presenting for the very first time and what he’s learned since then
- How he prepared for presentations and interacting with customers
- What you should be working with your salespeople on during scoping calls
- How it’s like working for a big company and handling lots of products
- The difference between working with customers and prospects
Quotes:
How philosophy has played a role in Mike’s career:
10:15 “That whole ability to listen, and not going into any sales engagement already with the answer, you’re really on a winner to be able to help your customer with that attitude.”
10:55 “If you’re 15 minutes into your sales presentation and the customer hasn’t spoken, or even less than 15, maybe even 5 minutes, you may be wasting everyone’s time.”
What to keep in mind when selling a lot of products:
31:25: “You need to be aware of the competitive environment that’s out there, you need to know what your customers are hearing from other solutions and be realistic. If your product is never gonna do that thing and the other customer loves that thing that the other product does, you’re on the road to nowhere.”
32:08 “I try and keep one foot on a current product, and another on something that maybe I’m rooting for or hoping will take off, so that I can either do both or shift over to the new one if it does absolutely take off.”
Why we should work together with salespeople and customers:
36:10 “I have no idea what their problem is, I have no idea necessarily what the solution might be, and not just the customers as well, also the sales team, I have huge respect for what the sales teams do, and how they structure their organization to assist customers. You’re trying to be helpful to both sides of that and in no way ever be in conflict with the 2, even though potentially, the customer’s side has one goal in mind and the sales side might not necessarily align. Our role is to make sure those two come together nicely when we try and help. The Sales Engineer’s job is to bring the 2 sides together.”
On additional resources you would recommend to Sales Engineers:
48:41 “If you can go to any event that’s run by the community or your company, attend those events, and look out for who are the best presenters. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a presenter in the technology that you cover and get advice from the people in that event. Who did you see that was good? Seek out that person and watch them. If you can see other people doing it well, it will pay off and you can maybe find something and copy it and use it for your own interactions with salespeople and customers.”
Not So Fire Round
- What do you love about training salespeople and sales engineers to do demos?
I love interacting with the customer. I love just meeting different people, meeting different customers, and being able to find out their problems and needed solutions. I love that engagement with customers
- What’s one thing you would change about the sales and pre-sales profession?
That’s a tough one now, especially in our current environment. We don’t travel much. It’s always difficult to tell the customer, “We’ll help you, but you gotta bring them to us”. I would like to go back to travel. I would love to push in that direction. I love being in a small room, cracking the first joke that breaks the mood, and then going from there, that part I really love, and if I can continue to do that, and get back to doing that in a face-to-face way, that would be great.
- What resources would you recommend for sales engineers and salespeople?
We the Sales Engineers Episode 140: Having the Need to Get Better
The Brutal Truth about Sales and Selling
- What differentiates the great Sales Engineers and Salespeople from the not so great or ordinary ones?
Listening. It’s having an ear, that’s my only answer there. The salespeople who engage with me who already know what they want me to do are never really the best. We have our scoping call, it’s before we meet a customer. We try and figure out how we’re going to assist, and we challenge the account team, why are you trying to solve the problem this way, does this really make the most sense? And if we don’t have that conversation before we actually engage with the customer, that never goes well.
Follow Mike Orth on Twitter
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or review and get a chance to win a copy of The Essential Guide to Navigate Your Proof of Concept written by one of our guests on the show, Tony Matos.
