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

I’m on LinkedIn to share stories and lessons from corporate sales training I do and sales kickoffs (SKOs) I speak at.

If you’re in Leadership, Sales, Pre-Sales, or Sales Enablement, you can follow me and get free value.

If you want to train your team to be better at Storytelling, check out Alpha GTM or Alpha Presales training.


--- HAPPY CUSTOMERS ---

✅ MongoDB (app dev)
✅ Optiv (cybersecurity)
✅ Exiger (supply chain / compliance)
✅ Paylocity (HR)
✅ Planful (finance)
✅ NICE (CcaaS)
✅ Eightfold (AI)
✅ OutSystems (dev tools)
✅ Keysight (manufacturing)
✅ Flexential (infrastructure)

--- RESULTS ---

“My sales rep doubled his number the quarter after you did training.”
— Ben, CEO, Iris

“I’m seeing more Alpha behavior happening. The SCs are stepping up in a bolder and more professional manner.”
— Jeff, Director of Solutions Consulting, Paylocity


--- HOW I CAN HELP YOU ---

• Sales Enablement - companies partner with us to supplement their in-house sales enablement. Storytelling is our most common training. We also have SKO workshops and are consistently ranked both #1 content and #1 speaker.

• Presales Leaders - SEs love Alpha Presales training because it’s specifically made for SEs. But most SE leaders don’t buy training for their SE team because they don’t have budget and are too proud to ask for help. If budget is your problem, just reach out. 90% of my clients don’t have budget and I help them get it. Your SEs deserve to feel appreciated and they don’t feel appreciated when your voice is the only one they hear from. 

• Sales Leaders - your sales reps don’t need another sales methodology. They just need to take control of the sale and stop doing whatever the client wants. Note: This doesn’t mean sales reps should be assholes. It means they should be leaders. That starts with the right process and right skills. 


P.S. I take all intro calls myself.  No sales pitch. We'll talk about what you want for your team, I'll tell you what we offer, and then if you think there's a fit, I’ll give you a quote or help you get budget for next year. 

Sales Engineers have to do everyone else’s job. They’re heroes. The joke is that SE stands for Sales Engineer and Sales Enablement.

But it’s way more than that.

This video is primarily for presales leaders who are having difficulty justifying headcount.

If that’s you, let me know because I have a 10 minute YouTube lesson about that problem and why the ratio model is a dumb way to plan headcount. 
 
P.S. Join my newsletter for more lessons on this sort of stuff: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr

P.S. what other jobs do SEs have?

Rew Dickinson

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Talks about #sales, #ventas, #presales, and #storytelling

CEO @ Alpha

What to do when a sales rep asks a solutions consultant to demo a feature that the customer doesn’t need (and how to handle it gracefully).

I was asked: “How do you approach discovery calls before you have to give a demo?” Here’s a 5-part framework you can use for any discovery.

Where most sales reps and SEs mess up is they only ask questions about what the client is currently doing.

There’s not enough value in that.

This framework will help you go deeper. 

Time permitting, I dive deep into each one of the categories mentioned.

I may also ask:
- Was this your initiative or did it come down from above?
- What have you tried doing to fix it before?
- Is it already funded or do we need to help you get the budget and build a business case? 

There are many others that I go into in my Relentless Discovery workshops, but if you start here, you’ll be in good shape. 

If you like these videos you’ll like my newsletter more (read bio).

P.S. What other questions are you asking?

We just finished up a week of virtual training with Exiger, and I have never seen anything like this before...normally, in a large group, there are 1 or 2 people who dominate the conversation, but in this group, every single person was actively involved and helping each other. 

I knew this group was special because I watched their sales calls beforehand and they had already been through demo training, so we focused on advanced SE skills and covered the Alpha Storytelling and Alpha Discovery Methodologies. 

This is all about developing the Alpha mindset of being of service to our customers, but not being subservient to our customers. There's a difference. Our customers need a leader/guide, not a servant, and these SEs are trusted leaders!

It's no surprise that Exiger is the undisputed leader in Supply Chain Risk Management and Compliance (Number 1 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant). 

P.S. They're hiring!

One of my clients just closed a $112,000 deal at a company with only 256 employees. Here's how. And no, it wasn't because of a slick demo by the SC. It was because of great discovery. 

Here's the full story...

The SC and AE were working an opportunity that you see all the time in complex sales: 

1. The prospect has a lot of problems, so they create a laundry list of features they need in their new solution. 

2. Then, the prospect gets so caught up in all the things they're trying to solve that they lose sight of what actually matters most to their business.

3. That's where most vendors mess things up. Most SCs would jump into demo mode. Show them everything. Click through every feature. Hope something sticks. 

Not this SC. 

Instead, he slowed down. Asked simple but powerful questions. Helped the prospect see what was REALLY important. 

Not just what they thought they needed, but what would actually move the needle for their business.

Afterward, the SC and AE devised a plan to meet the prospect's most pressing needs and FOCUS the conversations on those needs rather than on all the other "nice-to-haves." 

The result? 

A $112K win that one of the sales leaders called "flawless from start to finish."

Here's the lesson for AEs and SCs: 

You don't want your SCs to be demo jockeys. You want them to be strategic business partners who help prospects think clearly about their own business. To do that, you have to give them time to ask questions. 

The best discovery isn't about asking 47 MEDDPICC questions. It's about asking the FEW questions that help prospects figure out what's actually important.

When you do that, deals close themselves.

Most people have no idea how they actually come off in front of a prospect. That's a problem since body language is more than 50% of communication, and yet most of us obsess about our words, not our body language. 

This is an exercise I do in my consultative selling workshops to help people understand how they come off. If you have a Sales Kickoff (SKO) breakout or team event coming up, you should do this exercise with your team. 

Game: "Awkward 30 Seconds"

How to Play:

1. Give everyone 2 minutes to prepare a 30-second elevator pitch on any topic they're comfortable with.

2. Have them stand up to present, but before they speak, they must just... stand there. In silence. For 30 seconds. (Yes, it's painfully awkward.)

3. After those 30 seconds, the group gives feedback about their presence and how it made them feel.

Some people stand stiff as a board. Some smile nervously. Some rock back and forth. Some do bizarre things with their hands.

The feedback is gold:
- "You look confident."
- "You seemed nervous."
- "I trusted you immediately, and you hadn't even spoken."
- "You came across too intense, smile a bit."
- "Your smile is infectious. I wanted to hug you."

I've had AEs and SEs tell me this was the most valuable exercise they've ever done. It revealed superpowers they didn't know they had.

Use those superpowers.

"Today you are you. That's truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you."
- Dr. Seuss

P.S. I give out more tips like this here: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr

The Head of Sales at one of my clients told me this: 

"The only people on our team who tell stories are the people who have been at the company long enough to tell their own stories."

Yikes. 

It's 2025. 

Your people and your stories — not your products — are your differentiator. 

And don't even get me started on Sales Engineers, because most of us never tell stories, we just talk about the product. 


P.S. More content on storytelling coming: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr. 
P.P.S. SKO workshops available for both Sales and SE Teams.

A sales leader just told me that her team does a good job of upfront discovery, but doesn't do rediscovery throughout the sales process. Here's why that's a problem and what to do about it...

Imagine you're on a first date. 

Are you going to tell the person all of your dirty secrets? 

Probably not. 

But on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, date you would reveal more and more info because you trust the person more. 

The same principle applies to B2B sales. 

As you build trust, people will tell you more information. 

That's good because you can solve their problem better and faster. 

Hence why rediscovery is a good idea. 

It's okay to ask the same questions. 

You'll get different answers. 

Discovery never ends.

I didn't have a Black Friday deal, so I decided to make one up. $500 to whoever does this...

---
The Problem: 

There is someone at your company who is planning your SKO. It's brutal. Think wedding planning. But worse. Tons of product updates, strategic initiatives, and speakers who will be drinking the night before. Rough. 

The Solution: 

I'm speaking at 4 SKOs in January. There are 2 ways I help companies with this: 

1. Interactive Keynote Sessions - I give you a 45-90 minute banger of a session where the sales team is learning a new skill like storytelling, working together, and competing. It's a nice alternative to lectures and fireside chats from people who have never done sales before. 

2. Team Sales Workshops - you work together as a team and learn Storytelling, Storytelling for Discovery, Presales, or Client Leadership skills that help you take control of the sale and win. 

How You Can Help: 

If you send this to your SKO planning team and book me for SKO, I will give you one of those big fat checks for $500.00 to thank you for making the intro. I'm here to help. 

P.S. What do you think of ChatGPT's rendition of me holding a $500 check? It doesn't seem to listen very well, does it?

Most of the demos I watch look like a training exercise being done by a customer success rep who is onboarding a customer. That's not sales. It's training. 

Tomorrow Justin McDonald and I are going to break down common mistakes and how to go from educating to influencing. 

Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/e3XEyPBN

Co-founder & CEO at Saleo | Incredible Live Demos

300,000 vs 3.

It takes about 300,000 minutes of doing enterprise sales to get halfway decent at enterprise sales. At that point, you might actually feel comfortable managing an enterprise sales cycle. 

It takes less than 3 minutes to make your prospect feel seen, heard, and understood. 

If you skip the 3 minutes, you wasted the 300,000.

Want to master sales skills? Don't buy one of my Sales Kickoff (SKO) workshops. It's a waste of $15,000 -> $50,000. Do this instead...

If you want to master a skill, you can't do it by sitting through one SKO session. 

You need a SYSTEM. 

For example, this is the system I use with most of my B2B sales clients, like Sitecore, Paylocity, and Flexential, when they want to master a skill like storytelling: 

-1- BEFORE SKO: We train the managers to use the Alpha Storytelling Methodology
-2- AT SKO: We train the individual contributors
-3- AFTER SKO: We give managers the support materials they need, and we do follow-up training with the team to build the storytelling muscle

The truth is, if you're losing deals, it's rarely because your product isn't good enough. 

It's usually because you got outsold and your story isn't good enough. 


What do you think? Do you talk about your product too much? 


P.S. Forward this to your enablement/planning team. Even if Alpha isn't the right fit, the before/during/after system is worth considering for any skill you want your team to actually adopt.

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Every person in sales has done it... the prospect is talking, and we're thinking about what we're going to say next. But did you know that only 7% of our communication is the words we say? The other 93% is non-verbal. This post will help you with the other 93% so you can be a more effective communicator. 

---

In my sales training courses, we talk a lot about non-verbal communication and confidence. 

I use this game to demonstrate the value of confidence. Save this post and play the game in your weekly team meeting or SKO breakout. 

---

The game is called "Expert Panel." 

It will help you with the 93% of communication that isn't your words. 

How to Play:

1. Pick 3 volunteers to be experts. One expert will give "good" advice, one will give "bad" advice, and one will give "REALLY BAD" advice. 

2. Give the experts a topic to talk about (e.g., “The best way to get rich quick", "How to get through airport security the fastest", "Tips for losing 15 pounds in 15 days", etc.)

3. One at a time, each expert delivers a 60-second monologue with total and complete confidence. It doesn't matter if you are telling the truth or lies, you must speak CONFIDENTLY. 

4. Each expert can build on or contradict what came before.

5. Keep the tone serious, even when the content is absurd.

6. Afterwards, the team votes on which expert appeared most credible based on tone and body language (not words). 

The game is valuable for salespeople because most of us focus so much on our words that we forget what we're saying with our tone and presence.

Have fun with it.

People buy confidence.

Sales: "What do you do if you don't have enough time to cover everything in a meeting/demo?" 

This is a tough situation to be in, but the solution is to ask questions and listen. Here are the 3 questions I would ask, and why. 

---

1. What would make this meeting/demo a success for you? 

-> Why: Because if you don't ask this, you don't know what your client is looking for. You're merely guessing.

---

2. I'm confident that we can deliver everything you're looking for, but if you could only get ONE thing, what would it be and why? 

-> Why: Because if you don't ask this, you waste time talking about things that aren't that important to your client. 

---

3. How are you going to decide between the different options that are available to you?

-> Why: Because if you don't ask this, you have no idea how the client is going to evaluate you. It's like taking a graduate course and not knowing which is most important: the homework, attendance, or the final exam. 

---

When I'm short on time in a sales meeting/demo, I start here. 

Usually, the best thing you can do in sales is listen. 

What would you do?

Most Sales Kickoff content is horrible. 3 hours of corporate lectures. 4 hours of product sessions. 150+ people staring at their phones. Utter failure. It should have been a webinar. Not an SKO...

I'm on a mission to help you make the most of the 1 time of year when you have your whole sales team together at SKO. Try this game during your SKO breakout session to help your team have fun and get better at Discovery. 


---


The game is called "Discovery Speed Dating." 

The problem it solves is this: 

Most AEs and SEs go through the same discovery questions for every meeting and make zero attempt to personalize their discovery to the audience. That's why your prospects hate doing discovery. They feel like the discovery is for the seller, not for them. 

This game helps you tailor your discovery to your audience so they feel seen, heard, and understood.

How to Play:

1. Choose the top two roles that your team sees in sales meetings (e.g. VP of Supply Chain, IT Manager, Controller, etc.)

2. Put people into groups of two. Each person will play the seller twice and the buyer twice.

3. Do four rounds of mock discovery, practicing tailoring to the buyer roles you identified in Step 1. 

Rd 1: PersonA interviews BuyerRole1
Rd 2: PersonB interviews BuyerRole2
Rd 3: PersonA interviews BuyerRole2
Rd 4: PersonB interviews BuyerRole1

Before you start, ask yourself, "What is something unique about this person's role that I can acknowledge to get them to know that I understand them?" 

Then say that thing that makes their role unique and watch them let their guard down and tell you their problems. 

Remember, you're not doing discovery for you, you're doing it for THEM. You're the doctor. THEY are the ones with the problem. 

---

In B2B sales, your product isn't your differentiator, your sales team is.

We had Bob Ross join us for sales training last week. Can you spot him (her)?

The hardest part about being a virtual (high velocity) Solutions Consulting team is that you usually don’t get to sit in on discovery calls.

That’s why most SCs in this situation would just talk about their product the whole time. 

Not this team!

They’re pros- they did such a great job of setting the table before jumping into the demo, getting the prospect to open up about their needs, telling stories, doing discovery on the fly, and closing things out with clear value to the customer. 

In fact, after our training the SC leader got a note from one of the sales reps telling her how amazing Bob Ross’s demo was! 

Keep up the great work team!

We play this game in my sales training workshops because most people are too busy thinking about what THEY'RE going to say instead of LISTENING to the CLIENT. 

This game trains you to listen. It's great for Sales Reps, SEs, and Managers to play. Save this and play it as an icebreaker in your weekly team meeting or SKO breakout. 

---

The game is called "1 word story." (Clever, I know)

How to Play:

1. Create teams of 3-5 players.

2. Someone will start telling a story by saying ONE word only.

3. The next person adds ONE word to the story. 

4. Each player continues the story, adding only ONE word. 

NOTE: Only add words that make sense for the story!

The game is hard because you can't think about what you want to say next, you have to just listen. It's also hard because you will get the urge to add more than one word and control the story. You can't do that either. 

This game teaches us to do what all great salespeople do– listen.

We play this game in my sales training courses. The problem it solves is that most salespeople are too busy thinking about what they're going to say next that they don't listen. You can't do that in this game, you have to listen. Save this and play it in your weekly team meeting or SKO breakout. 

---

The game is called "Alphabet Story" (Clever, I know)

How to Play:

1. Create groups of 3-8 people.

2. Tell a story, but each new line must start with the next letter of the alphabet. 

Example: 

Person 1: “A dragon appeared in the break room.”
Person 2: “But nobody seemed surprised.”
Person 3: “Clearly, this happens every Monday.”
...

Keep going through the alphabet — if someone gets stuck, the group helps out.

The game is helpful because it teaches you to do what all great salespeople do– listen.

All of my clients want to know how my other clients are using AI. Here's one way. Steal this How To so you can personalize your solution to your audience and stand out in a sea of vendors who all sound the same. 

P.S. I'm heading to NYC today to listen to a panel discussion by Austin Meyer at OpenAI, Ryan Lempa at Figma, Jeff Black at Gong, and the Sales Engineers of New York (SENY). I'll do another post on what I learn from them.

---

How to use AI to personalize your solution to your audience and stand out: 

Let's say you're selling a Financial Planning software platform. You likely sell to multiple industries, including Retailers, Manufacturers, Insurance companies and others.

So even though you're selling the same solution, how it is used by your customers is completely different. 

For example, a Retailer like Starbucks operates 30,000+ stores and has to do financial planning around leases, real estate, and everything else. 

But an Insurance company like Progressive doesn't have to do any of that. They have to worry about actuaries, risk, and pricing policies. 

So you could be selling/demoing the exact same Financial Planning solution to them, but how you personalize the value to them should be completely different (but most people don't do this). 

Most sales reps and sales engineers don't think about this because they're experts in their product, not experts in their customer's industry. 

That's where you can use AI to help you. 

Go to your favorite AI and ask this question: 

"I'm selling [Product] to [Industry], what is unique about how they do [What Your Product Helps With] that other industries don't have to deal with?"

Here's a real example I put into ChatGPT: 
"I'm selling Oracle to an Insurance company, what is unique about how they do Financial Planning that other industries don't have to deal with?"

Then you turn that response into a question to learn more about the customer's business in your meeting with them: 

Here's an example question for selling to an insurance company:
"The financial planning process is different for insurance than it is for most companies because you have to integrate actuarial forecasts and other things, so can you help me understand a little more about the nuances of how your team brings all of that together today?”

Then listen. Learn. Figure out how you can help, because that's what sales is all about. 

How are you using AI?

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