Chapter 4
The Power of the Pen
Let me assure you here and now, that I have been using this new approach to whiteboarding since returning from New Hire Training in the past two weeks—with a 100 percent success rate. As you can imagine, walking into strong competitor incumbent accounts, the clients are very hostile and apprehensive, but every time I have run through the whiteboard, the walls start to crumble and break down, and our organization is seen in a very different light.
—Major Accounts Rep, Asia Pacific Region, large data management firm
Since you've made it to Part 2, there's a good chance you agree there's no better way to torpedo a sales call than to plug in a projector and start presenting a bunch of slides—the proverbial “show up and throw up.” There's no second chance to create a first impression. You only have one opportunity to differentiate yourself, to stand out from the crowd, and be someone who can add value and solve problems. So how can you become a partner with your customers rather than a salesperson to them?
The answer is the power of the pen—the power of a salesperson of any tenure or experience to get up in front of a C-level buyer and deliver a visually rich and interactive presentation with complete confidence and command of the material.
“Power of the pen” isn't a term we created; in fact, it's been around for centuries. It comes from the age-old adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” According to Wikipedia, the saying was coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 for his play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy. The subject of the play was Cardinal Richelieu, whose famous line in Act II, scene II, cemented the term in popular culture:
True, This! —Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand!—itself a nothing!—
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless!—Take away the sword
States can be saved without it!
Let's try a modern-day revision in the context of selling:
If sales management is getting on your case,
The dry erase marker is always better than slides. Let's face it—
A good whiteboarder's marker by itself is nothing
But if you're a powerful visual storyteller
You'll really connect with your buyer, and win the deal
And you'll tee up huge enterprise deals!—Get rid of your slide projector
You'll win plenty of sales without it!
Note: An illustration of Cardinal Richelieu trying in vain to lift a sword, by H. A. Ogden, 1892, from The Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
“I Don't Need a Sword—I Already Whiteboard”
High-dollar salespeople and sales engineers have been whiteboarding for decades. What we advocate is structure, process, and whiteboarding ingredients to turn the pen from a shotgun into a devastating, laser-guided competitive weapon that will leave your slide-addicted competition in the dust.
A couple of years into our business, we worked with a company that had a very heavy whiteboarding culture. Everyone was whiteboarding, and slides were frowned upon. A few weeks after going through our whiteboard training, a sales engineering VP from our customer e-mailed us:
[NAME] was the model for whiteboarding before we discovered your company. I took a couple of photos of some whiteboards he did; something told me they would be useful one day. When he was done with this particular whiteboard attempt it looked like an abstract expressionist painting. I followed him while he was doing it but had no idea what any of it meant when he was done. Fortunately, he has huge shoulders and can take being the anti-role model. Now he and his team are training our Channel Partner SEs on the whiteboards done right and they're furiously eating them up as fast as we can deliver them.
It's not enough to take a marker to a whiteboard. Even if salespeople and other field personnel are big whiteboarders, they probably lack critical whiteboard story design and delivery best practices.
“I Don't Need Slides or a Whiteboard”
Some of the most successful and seasoned sales professionals tend not to be big fans of slides, but they have no inclination to use a whiteboard either. These sellers will sit down in an executive's office and start talking about kids, family, and common interests, then subtly ease into a dialogue around business challenges, opportunities, and consensus on next steps.
Eventually, however, even senior-level buyers will want to know “where's the beef”—they still need to get some sense of what your solution actually looks like in their own environment and how it pertains to their unique business needs and current challenges. This is when selling value with nothing more than a pen and a drawing surface proves so effective.
Following whiteboard training, these strategic salespeople consistently report, “I never thought I would want to do that, let alone be able to do it.”
Be Different!—And Lighten Your Load at the Same Time
The power of the pen can have an impact even before the caps come off and the smell of dry erase ink hits the nose. Think about this scenario: You leave for your sales calls with two things and two things only—a set of brand-new dry erase markers (red, green, black, blue) with a rubber band around them, and your camera phone. That's it. No briefcase, no computer bag, no day planner, no notepad, no nothing. Why? Because with the markers and your camera phone, you have everything you need. Today you'll find a whiteboard in almost every meeting room and office you'll encounter. The whiteboard and your markers enable you to conduct the interactive discussion and to note your customer's current situation, challenges, questions, and next steps. The camera phone allows you to capture the entire discussion for a variety of uses after the sales call (we'll discuss this more in Chapter 27). You don't need to have anything else.
Let's continue the scenario. The first thing you do when you sit down for the meeting is to conspicuously place your pens and your phone on the table. You do this to make a point. Chances are your customers will immediately notice that something is different.
When we go to meetings to talk about our whiteboard selling techniques, our customers chuckle and say, “I get it—just the pens.” And we reply, “That's right. The reason we are here today is to show you how we will enable every single member of your entire sales channel to do what we are about to do—but with your own story.” And they nod. They get it.
By whiteboarding, whether you are the first or last vendor to meet with your prospect, you can smile at the thought of those “slide jockeys” at your competition struggling with laptops, projectors, remotes, and projection screens that won't come down.
When you walk in with just your pens and your smartphone, you are communicating to your customer that you are going to really talk to them and engage in an interactive conversation. They know you are confident in your skills.