Rew Dickinson Companies

I speak about my experiences in Enterprise Sales, Solutions Engineering, Consulting, and Sales Training and how I use Behavioral Science and Psychology to sell faster. 

Are you looking for a trainer / speaker for your next SKO, QBR, or virtual team event? 

Learn more by scheduling a call here 👉 https://go.oncehub.com/RewDickinsonCompanies




---TESTIMONIALS / AWARDS---

🗣️ "This was the most engaging session we have ever had." - Sales Rep
🗣️ "You are the most effective remote trainer I have ever seen." - VP of Sales Engineering
🗣️ "The storytelling and empathy training should be required for our entire French sales team." - Solutions Architect, France
🗣️ "I learned more from your 2 minutes than I did in 16 hours of sales training." - Sales Engineer, California
🥇 #1 rated content - Demofest
🥇 #1 rated speaker - Demofest
🥇 #1 most attended session - Demofest
🥇 #1 most attended session - Xpert Community

---ABOUT REW DICKINSON COMPANIES---

Rew Dickinson Companies offers corporate training and professional development under the following brands:

✅ Alpha Presales
✅ Alpha Tech Sales
✅ Alpha Storytelling
✅ InfluEar

CEO + Speaker (SKOs, QBRs, Team Events)

Alpha Presales

Alpha Presales is training for Solutions Engineers who are:
✅ extremely good problem solvers
✅ extremely intelligent
✅ extremely thoughtful and detail-oriented

But struggle with: 
❌ asking the right questions
❌ finding business pain
❌ mapping pain to business outcomes
❌ communicating value
❌ building technical champions
❌ and getting to the point because their brains are so darn big

Alpha Presales will be the best training they ever receive and they'll be better sellers and leaders because of it:

🗣️ "Our SEs were extremely skilled, but they weren’t leading the sale. After Alpha Presales training, there was an obvious increase in their confidence and now the team leads the sale and they aren’t being salesy.”👨‍💼 Lee, VP of Sales Engineering

---Want to take your team to the next level?---

If you're a presales or sales leader, book a call and we'll design a custom training for your team. We have a training program for every budget and if you don't have money, we can show you a process for asking for it. 

👉 www.AlphaPresales.com

Presales Trainer

Alpha Tech Sales

Most sales teams have been through sales training and don't need another one. Alpha Tech Sales isn't sales training. It's leadership training that is designed for individual contributors in sales roles (AEs, SEs, CS, etc.). This training helps you sell faster and it is deeply rooted in psychology and human behavioral science. 

When I was a sales rep, I used this science to close 6 and 7 figure deals and hit quota every year. I still use it when I’m selling training to sales leaders. You can use this science to sell to people the way THEY want to be sold to. The reason you do that is because they feel comfortable -> then they trust you more -> then they make decisions faster -> then your deal gets closed faster. Win->Win->Win->Win!

---Want to take your team from being "sellers" to being client leaders?---

If you're a sales leader, book a call and we'll design a custom training for your team or event. We have a training program for every budget and if you don't have money, we can show you a process for asking for it. 

Book a call here: 
👉 https://go.oncehub.com/AlphaTechSales

Sales Trainer

Creative Sales Academy

I teach storytelling for SALES. 

- Not fluffy marketing storytelling that makes people's eyes glaze over.
- Not storytelling for theatre, or film, or entertainment. 
- Not generic storytelling that makes you look like you have no idea what you're talking about. 

I teach storytelling that closes 6-figure sales deals. 

Learn it from someone who has actually sold before. 

Not a marketer or an entertainer.

Storytelling Instructor

PreSales Collective

"Rew facilitates workshops for the PreSales Academy and his approach is truly unique. Rather than teaching sales engineers to be subject matter experts and salespeople, he teaches them to be leaders. This allows them to guide their prospects toward making decisions faster and more easily, which saves time and advances the sale." 
- Yuji Higashi, Co-Founder, Presales Collective

"When I started my journey into presales, I was super anxious. I was worried that I wasn’t going to ask the right questions in discovery and I wasn’t going to have the skills I needed to give compelling presentations. When I met Rew, he provided me with the right framework to help me ask the right questions, and give effective presentations. The best part however is that in every session with him, my confidence grew immensely and now I’m a much more confident sales engineer."
-Shanelle, Sales Engineer

Sales Instructor

Appian Corporation

I did Presales, Direct Sales, and Partner Sales and loved each. 


🥇 Presales - Top performer, Pillar Award winner

"5 years after our POC (proof of concept) people on the evaluation team still remember Rew. He impressed us with his ability to understand our business problem and the impact that problem had on our operations. His style for asking questions and recapping gave us confidence that we were working side-by-side to solve our challenges. Rew understood his audiences and would seamlessly toggle his translations between the business and technical teams. He was able to anticipate needs that would drive additional business value too. When we were ready to move to implementation, we wanted Rew to do it because we were so confident in his value – too bad Sales Engineers don’t do delivery too." 
-Kathy, Client, Top 5 global staffing firm, #1 in US


🥇 Sales - Top performer, quota attainment 10%, 147%, 171%, 186%, 150%, Average deal size $250,913 ACV.

"Many salespeople are only focused on making the sale, but know very little about their actual product. I would much rather work with a salesperson who comes from the technology side. Rew struck a great balance between the two. It created a sense of authenticity."
-Greg, Client, #1 global truck manufacturer


🥇 Partner Sales - Top performer

"If Rew has ever sold you anything, you probably don’t know it and you likely still think it was your idea. If you appreciate knowledge, passion, and stunning good looks, Rew is your man for two of the three.”
-Jeff, Client, #1 management consulting firm by revenue



"Rew is one of the few people I've ever met who not only excels at his own craft, but just inherently makes everyone around him better, regardless of their role. Most impressive is how Rew can adjust and adapt to situations in real-time to make a colleague shine. Simply put, everyone wants to work with Rew, because he makes everyone better."
-Shaun, Presales Director

Sales Engineering + Sales

Deloitte Consulting

Deloitte is where I learned what good client-service looks like.

It's also where I developed my over-explaining problem that I had get rid of once I got into sales 😁.

I was a Software Developer -> turned Consultant -> turned Project Manager.

Consulting + Software Engineering

New York Life Investment Management

I was primarily responsible for financial analysis of New York Life Investment Management's MainStay Mutual Fund family.

Financial Analyst

CEO @ Alpha Presales | Teaching smart people to talk less and sell more. The smarter your sales engineers are, the more they need this.

Follow this LinkedIn account to get: 
- Content from C-Suite Leaders and Sales Leaders that I’ve had on my podcast
- Content from Alpha Tech Sales and Alpha Presales Training
- Content and research on Psychology, Behavioral Science, and Sales

---MORE INFO---

My background is Sales, Pre-Sales, and Consulting. 

I advise, train, and do research for enterprise software companies. In 2023, the ratio of Sales Reps to Pre-Sales Reps dropped by 24%. That means that buyers are relying LESS on Sales Reps and MORE on “technical people.” 

The problem is that most technical people are just like I was:
- Really good at problem solving
- Not so good at sales 

Are your technical people good at sales? Or do they take 10 minutes to answer a simple question because they're so smart? Do they ask enough questions or do they jump to solutions? Can they map pain to business outcomes? Can they get to the point or do they overcommunicate? Do they slow down the deal for their AEs? 

How about your sales reps? Are they the confident client leaders that you know they can be? 

I've been a sales engineer and a sales rep. 
- If you want me to train your team or speak at your SKO, QBR, or virtual team events, book a call here:  https://go.oncehub.com/RewDickinsonCompanies
- If you just want to learn stuff for free, follow me
- If you want to take your team to the elite level, check out Alpha Presales' or Alpha Tech Sales' elite training programs

"Sales Engineers are the true CRM to the Sales team."
- Scott Reeder, Sales Engineering Leader

Most people think that CRM is the best resource for sales teams. But I've been in sales, and in my experience, the best resource was not my CRM but rather my Sales Engineers (SEs). 

SEs always know what's going on in an account, who's a friend, who's a foe, and whether we have a chance. 

Cheers to SEs being way more valuable than any software tool. 

Just please don't call SEs "tools" and "technical resources." Thanks.

Rew Dickinson

Here’s how I applied 20 years of giving presentations to MCing a wedding and how you can do it, too.

Background:

One of my best friends got married at a ski resort in Canada this past weekend and after the wedding, I heard:
-“You’re the best MC we’ve ever had.” -Kurt the DJ
-“You’re hired.” -Karen the Wedding Planner
-“I could never do what you just did up there.” -Random person

The truth is, you can do it. You just need a few systems.

I’ll share the first system and if more than 100 people like this post, I'll do a video breakdown of this and another system I used.

-

First, let’s relate this to your world. If you’re giving a sales presentation, you’re often using someone else’s content, which is hard because you have to memorize something you didn’t write. That’s where System 1 helps.

System 1: “The ONE Thing.” 

There is always ONE thing that is more important than everything else in your presentation. That’s your ONE thing. The ONE thing is super valuable for a presenter because the opening and closing of a presentation are the parts that people struggle with the most. You can use your ONE thing as both your opening (hook) and closing (summary). 

How I used the ONE thing: 

When you take a look at the “MC Details” document, there were 7 things that I had to address. But we were on top of a mountain in the Canadian Rockies and the only way to get home was to take the gondola down. So the ONE thing that I needed people to remember is that the last gondola leaves at 12:45am.

Now, I could have started my speech by saying, “The ONE thing that I need you to remember is that the last gondola leaves at 12:45am.” 

But that’s boring. 

Instead, I began by having everyone say “12:45” out loud. They didn’t know why they were doing this, but I had the microphone, and most people will do what the MC tells them to do. Then I had them say “12:45” again, louder. Then I had them say it one more time, even louder. At that point, I saw a lot of confused looks in the crowd because they didn’t know where I was going and why they were repeating meaningless numbers. But that’s the point, I got their attention. 

Only after I had their attention did I deliver the ONE thing. I did it like this…

I said, 
“Thank you all for repeating 12:45! Now I need your help..."
...<pause>…<suspense>…<silenceGetsEveryonesAttention>…
"At what time do you think the last gondola leaves?” 

That’s when they all yelled, “12:45!”

Once I connected the dots, everyone was smiling and they all remembered "12:45!" for the rest of the night. In fact, the next time I got up to speak, someone yelled, "12:45!" before I even started speaking.

Summary: 

I’ve found that preparing for a presentation can be overwhelming when you have lots of content. It's at those times that I come back to the ONE thing. Once you nail the ONE thing, your nerves calm, and so do the audience’s nerves. Nail it and everything else is easier.

Do you use the ONE thing? 

What other presentation tips do you use?

People in sales are notorious over-explainers. Here are my 5 best remedies for over-explaining:  
 
1. Stop using adjectives. 
Everyone uses them and they sound like nothing (e.g. cloud-native, scalable, enterprise-grade, purpose-built). 
 
2. Stop talking about HOW.  
Only talk about WHAT your solution does. If you find yourself over-explaining, it's probably because you're talking about HOW it works. Save the HOW for later. If they want to know, they'll ask.  
 
3. Stop talking about the solution.  
Talk about the problem the solution solves.  
 
4. Pick one thing.  
Stop saying that your solution 1) increases deal size, 2) decreases sales cycle duration, and 3) increases win rate. It's hard to remember and it's even harder to believe. Just pick the most important thing.  
 
5. Tell a customer story.  
 
What other tips do you have for getting to the point?

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Things I sucked at as a sales engineer: 
1. Sales
2. Talking about Value
3. GETTING TO THE POINT (i.e. brevity)
4. Business Value Discovery
5. Telling stories

SEs are the secret weapon to enterprise sales, but there is a lack of SE-specific training to help us go from good to GREAT. 

If you think your SEs could be better at sales, either send this to your leadership or sales enablement team, or send me a note. I have a training program for every budget, and I'd love to help. 

Sales Engineers Rule!

What if Engineers didn't suck at sales? 

I made this mistake for years because I'm a good presenter: 
 
1. Prepare for my presentation by choosing the best features and benefits of my product 
2. String everything together into a nice story 
3. Tell the story and sprinkle in questions/interactions throughout 
 
It was engaging and entertaining. People even applauded me. But the client would leave the meeting with, "a lot to think about."  
 
If you're in sales, you don't want the client to have to think. You want them to get to the end of the meeting and know: 
1. This is exactly what I need 
2. This is not at all what I need 
 
You can avoid this mistake by telling stories. This is what I do:  
 
1. Start by telling the client's story (i.e. talking about the 1 or 2 big problems that clients like them face every day). 
2. Then, read body language and ask them if they are experiencing the same problems or different ones.  
3. Then, walk them through how other clients solved the problems that they have.   
 
Bottom Line:  
Presentations and Sales Presentations are different.  
 
It took me way too long to figure that out.

The easiest way to kill your credibility is to use statistics that are true, but misleading.  
 
Want a great example? Here's one that I just saw... 
 
I was just watching a Good Morning America segment that said that nonalcoholic (NA) beer sales are surging. This got my attention because I've been drinking more NA beer recently. During the segment, they said that the highest-selling beer brand in Whole Foods right now is NOT a regular beer brand!  
 
It's a nonalcoholic craft beer brand called Athletic Brewing.  
 
Is that impressive? Maybe. But I found the statistic misleading. 
 
If you think about Whole Foods shoppers, they're typically more health-conscious, higher-income earners who are willing to pay a premium for taste.  
 
Do you think they are going to Whole Foods to buy their Budweiser, Modela, and Michelob Ultra? I doubt it. This statistic is misleading and doesn't strengthen my opinion of the news.  
 
So, what does this have to do with sales?  
 
News is basically marketing. But sales is different. Salespeople and Sales Engineers must have 1-on-1 conversations with people. If you want to be successful doing this, you need credibility. But if you throw out misleading stats, you're going to lose all of your credibility.  
 
The next time you are tempted to use a marketing stat, first ask if it's true, then ask if it's misleading.

France! Spain! Germany! Brazil! India! Cuba! USA! 
 
Say hello to ESI Group's presales team with people from 7 different countries! 
 
We're 2 days into a 3-day training with presales consultants in 3 different time zones.  
 
Discovery, Executive Messaging, and Empathy Training have been extremely valuable:  
 
"𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙨𝙣'𝙩 𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙗𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙢𝙮 𝙨𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙜𝙪𝙚. 𝙃𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧, 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙚 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙖𝙨𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙛𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙗𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙨 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢." 
 
When's the last time you got training specifically for your SEs?

If you're an Presales/Solutions Leader, you need to register for this...

I met Deirdre 2 years ago when I was interviewing elite SE Leaders and she completely changed my perspective on leadership. 

What stuck with me the most was her ability to teach more junior SEs and SE Leaders (especially women) how to stand up for themselves, push back when necessary, and become trusted partners (not pushovers) to the sales team.

This session will be awesome.

Can't wait! Looking forward to a great discussion with the XC Community and Dominique Darrow!

#solutionsorg #salesperformance #GTM #revenuegrowth

My most popular sales training isn't sales training. It's empathy training. Here are 5 ways to know if International Empathy Training will help your team: 
 
1. You sell to IT 
2. You sell internationally 
3. Your presales team is heavily involved in the sale 
4. There is some friction between some members of your sales team and your presales team (or presales is seen as subservient to sales) 
5. You sell in the cybersecurity industry or a similar industry where clients can't tell you all their problems and you have to guess 
 
Bottom line: the more complicated your sale, the more your team needs this.  
 
Sound like something your team would benefit from?  
 
DM me or schedule a call.  
 
P.S. This is everyone's favorite training. And it's my favorite to teach :)

There’s a difference between advocating and asking.

Not all leaders understand this however. When you’re more junior you may make the mistake of asking for things that you should be advocating for.

Or worse, if you’re managing up, you may ask your boss to ask for something rather than advocating for something on your behalf.

When you ask for something, a lot of people will say “no” or “it’s not a good time.” That’s a problem if what you’re asking for is important. A better approach is to advocate and not ask. When you advocate, you give good reasons, justification, and rationale behind your ask. You explain how not getting a “yes,” doesn’t just hurt you, it hurts the whole team. 

That’s why if you need something badly enough, make sure you advocate, not ask. People often don’t know how important something is to you until you tell them. 

Be bold. Advocate.

What Sales+Pre-Sales alignment model do you prefer?

A) ALIGNED
Sales Engineers are aligned to specific Sales Reps that they work with consistently. 

B) POOLED
Sales Engineers are NOT aligned to individual Sales Reps and are instead allocated to Sales Reps based on who is available. 

C) VERTICALIZED
Sales Engineers are aligned to a specific industry and then support all the Sales Reps in that industry. 

D) OTHER
Explain your setup in the comments. 

P.S. Tag someone who has an opinion on this ;)

What Sales+Pre-Sales Alignment Model Do You Prefer? 

What do you do when your Sales Rep says something that's incorrect in front of a prospect/client? 

A: Correct them immediately (in front of the client)
B: Correct them after the meeting (privately)
C: Something else

If you said "Something else," drop it in the comments.

What do you do when your Sales Rep says something that's incorrect in front of a prospect/client? 

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