Disaster Recovery

It is inevitable, call it Murphy's Law, what can go wrong, will go wrong. One of the hallmarks of a great Sales Engineer is being able to handle disasters during your presentation and demonstration with ease. There is an age old debate among Presales Professionals whether it is a profession that with skills that one is born with or is it more science; I believe it is a little of both. In this post, let's talk about the science of handling disasters, so that whether it comes natural or not, you will be ready to handle them. At the end of the day, it really follows the scouts motto, "Be Prepared". So what are some examples of disasters, let me pull from my experience:

1. Technical Issues - Something goes wrong with the projector (maybe there isn't one), your hard drive crashes, your internet goes down, your power goes out, you name it, it can happen.
   

2. Content Misalignment - You find yourself in a situation where the message is not resonating, you came prepared with some good jokes that nobody gets, you have a list of use cases that are not at all what the majority of folks want to see.
   

3. Audience Sabotage - There is always that one guy, the guy in the back known as "The Heckler". They have their own agenda and it is the opposite of yours, handling them with care without derailing your presentation is critical.

We all have been there, how do we minimize these natural disasters?

Non-Technical Tech - This approach may take extra time in the beginning but it is very well worth it for several reasons. Create screenshots and descriptions of what you are going to show and present. This serves two purposes, if you technology fails you, you will be prepared with a printed/digital version of your presentation and demonstration. Secondly, you may think that this is a waste, however, you should also leave the paper/digital version of the presentation behind as a leave-behind for your audience so that they have a physical way of tying your presentation back to your solution once you are gone and they have sat through 5 other demonstrations.

Content Realignment - As stated above, you show up and your content is not hitting the mark. The best prep for this is having a bank of engaging questions to pull from during your presentation, this will turn the tables and make the content extremely relevant. Check out my previous LOST blog post.

Audience Control - There are many types of characters that can end up in your audience and we will cover a list of those in a future blog post but for now, here is a tip for controlling someone trying to sabotage your agenda. First, repeat to them that you understand their concern and then mention that based on available time, you would like to schedule a dedicated time to address their concerns. Do not address their concerns on the call and definitely do not try to minimize their concern. Validate that it is important for you to address, in fact, so important that you want to spend some one-on-one time with them to make sure you understand and appropriately address their concern.