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4/1/1: 4 Random Thoughts from me, 1 tools to help Sales Engineers, 1 quote for motivation

4/1/1 Adapting to New Environments to Make an Huge Impact

By Bini Kanungo

4/1/1 Weekly

 

4 Random Thoughts, 1 Tool, and 1 Quote

 

Welcome to another week! Bringing on new guests to share their experiences is always a joy but bringing on past guests to share their refreshed perspective and experiences is sometimes even more fun, as we can sometimes better appreciate their journey given that we’ve spoken to them before.  This week’s guest fits this profile.  The Sales Engineer Guy himself, Greg Holmes, also VP Pre-Sales at Apptio, has appeared on Shows 31 and 100 and came back again to talk about his career developments and observations as an international pre-sales leader.

Listen to our show with Greg here.

After such an informative show, it’s hard not to come up with a variety of thoughts to fill up this week’s 4/1/1, and as a result, here we go:

4 Random Thoughts From Me:

 
1- The impact one can have at different sized organizations.  Whether you’re coming from a big org to a small one, or vice versa, it’s interesting to think about how one’s experiences on the job can shape one to make a substantial impact at a new job.
 
2- Greg talked about the cultural differences between organizations in Europe and North America.  As someone that went to school on the topic, the nuanced differences in business and culture between regions is fascinating.  There’s a reason McDonalds has regionalized menus, and it’s a big reason why they’re so prolific.
 
3- Importance of adaptation.  Whether you’re an IC, a manager or a leader, it’s important to be adaptive in what you do.  Whether it be to adapt to changing market conditions, customer demands, organizational need, or other factor(s), being adaptive is critical in order to stay ahead of the curve, or at the very least keep up with it.
 
4- The value in core competencies.  Over the past year(s), you likely have noticed some common themes among effective pre-sales professionals.  If we were to tabulate the responses of our last “Not So Fire Round” questions, we would definitely see some repeated traits among those that are considered “great” SEs.  It was cool to hear Greg talk about hiring for competency over experience, as it really speaks to getting a team that can be led rather than managed.
 

 

1 Tool:

This week doesn’t actually have a tool to recommend to you, but rather have you recommend tools to us!  Well not to us per se, but rather to Greg, this week’s guest, to get a sense of what tools are in use in the Pre-Sales community.

Check out the survey!

 

1 Quote:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

— Charles Darwin

 

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