Super Chameleons

Super Chameleons

In an earlier blog, I suggested that Sales Engineers are the champions of the sales force; http://jeffgoldstein.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/we-are-the-champions.  Now I want to suggest that we are the Super Chameleons of the sales team as well.

I think this video demonstrates beautifully how a Chameleon can continue to change it’s colors to camouflage itself from trouble.  I think great sales teams demonstrate this trait in adopting to their customers culture in order to fit in during the sales cycle.  This puts the prospects at ease and lets them feel that the vendors culture and goals are similar to their own.  Going beyond that, sales teams quickly adapt to the different personalities in the room.  If a person is analytical, a Sales Representation or Sales Engineer will address that persons questions differently than when they are talking to someone who is more artistic or amiable.  Understanding how your customer will best receive information is key to creating a strong relationship in the sales process.

Sales Engineer hiding from Sales Rep

It’s my belief that the Sales Engineer needs to follow the same practice when working with Sales Representatives.  Since the Sales Reps are the primary owners of the campaign with the ultimate responsibility; their personality tends to be the dominant one in the sales team.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that the Sales Engineer should understand the Sales Representative and work with them in a way that will make them the most comfortable so the deal can close.  The last thing anyone wants is for the Sales Rep to spin cycles trying to figure out how to best work with the SE.  In the end, the Sales Rep may stop working with a difficult SE which will cause great concern to the Sales and SE management.

This is NOT meant to suggest that SE’s should be subservient to Sales Reps in any way, I just think this is part of our job just like working with the customers personality is part of our job.  Both members have crucial roles in the sales cycle where the Sales Rep typically owns all the processes around the business side of the deal and the SE is responsible for the technical side; without that partnership the deal has little chance of closing; so nobody is subservient in the relationship.  I feel that it’s my job to do everything to make the sales cycle as smooth as possible, and taking this approach seems to work.  Leveraging a sports analogy, I treat the Sales Rep as the Quarterback of a football team, then become the player they need the most to get work done.  Some Quarterbacks want Fullbacks, others Cornerbacks and yet others Wide Receivers.  In the end, does it matter which one I am?  No.  I just need to be there in the manner the Quarterback needs at that time to close the deal.

My bet is that I just upset a lot of people by writing this; mainly SE’s; so please bring your opinion to the table……

The debate over ‘No’

No, 否, nee, wala, nie, いいえ, לא, нет, لا, non and as Colonel Klink would say, nein.  It’s a simple word that is used all over the world.  But if a Sales Engineer say’s this to a customer during a presentation………….that Sales Engineer better duck faster than a speeding Prius.

So my question is, “Does the word ‘no’ belong in the sales cycle when answering questions about functionality of a product and should it be avoided at all costs?”  While phrases like, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t discount any farther’, ‘My management won’t let me take that route’,  are often used during negotiations, Sales Representatives have great difficulty allowing the Sales Engineer to say ‘no’ when asked if a product can perform a given functionality.  Right or wrong, for many years I was suspicious of anyone that said yes to every functionality question.  What product can do everything?  So over the years I took the approach of seeking out a way to say ‘no’ to something I thought was fairly insignificant and wouldn’t derail the sale.  I have sold many fantastic products that can do far more than any customer could ask from it.  In fact, I have been lucky enough to sell products that have always been one of the leaders in their space so functionality was rarely a problem and lack of functionality usually wasn’t an issue because the competitors couldn’t do it either.  But with that said, I didn’t want to come across as disingenuous, so I would look for a way to use that little magic word, ‘no.’  Remember, I would use “the word” only on something that I felt comfortable was of little value, but if it was something of significance my approach was very different.  This is when a seasoned SE is worth every penny you pay them.  A great SE will now ask as many questions as possible to find out:

1. Do they (the SE) really understand the question/requirement?
2. Is this a real requirement or is it an approach the customer wishes to take masked as a requirement and the real requirement is hiding under the approach?
3. How important is this requirement compared to other functionality?
4. Who is requesting this functionality and how important are they to this customer?
5. When will they need this functionality?

With this information, I can now answer the question in a more informed fashion.  Maybe we have a different approach that will work, or it’s on our roadmap and we are looking for development partner around the specs, or maybe the need for this functionality is years away and only needed by a small subset of their customers. If a ‘no’ is necessary I can put the ‘no’ in the proper perspective, but without the above questions answered I can’t address the potential functionality gap correctly.

Recently I had a conversation where my psychotic need to say ‘no’ came up and I was given a good argument against taking this strategic approach.  I won’t go through the self awareness process that I went through (a lesson learned though; tell them about any metal rods you have in your body before the flow of electricity), but it was clear by the end of the conversation that if during the meeting I am coming across as a trusted advisor, composed, grounded and honest, I don’t need to find a reason to say no?  The customer or prospect is putting their faith in me because of how I am conducting myself with valuable information on how they, like others can solve their problem leveraging our product(s).

So while I’m still not afraid of saying no, I have changed my way of thinking on this topic.  I will save those “no’s” for the times that I really need them instead of looking for one to throw in there.  I think this will make many Sales Reps happy, and allow me to stop worrying about a shoe being thrown at me during a sales presentation.

I’m sure this has been a hot topic for many; so please chime in and tell us your thoughts.

But Our Solutions Are Different By Tom Spalthoff

But Our Solutions Are Different

I’ve heard this countless times.  “We can’t adopt all those normal sales techniques because our stuff is different.”  “Don’t make me stop and ask questions – I know what they want.”  “Our buyers are technical – they don’t want to talk about business goals or value; they just want technology.”

Nonsense.

All buys, especially software and technology, are rooted in value.  And value comes from solving a business problem.  I don’t care how deep in the infrastructure your technology lives.  I don’t care if it’s something the other guys should have built into their products.  If someone is going to buy it, it has value.  And you’re not going to sell it unless they see the value.

So you have two choices, really.  You can keep showing them stuff – features, functions, cool buttons and slick GUIs – until you’re blue in the face.  And if you’re good, and you have a niche play in a particular vertical with fairly well defined needs, you’ll probably win an account here and there.

But – what if you were to ask them what they cared about?  What if you asked them in such a way that it led them towards a solution that you sell?  Wouldn’t they love that?  You don’t sell them anything, you just help them buy the right thing.  And by asking them directed questions that lead them towards your solution, your thing is the right thing.  Wouldn’t that be great?

So why don’t more people do it?

I think it’s because they’re lazy.  The easy thing is to talk about what you know.  And you don’t know anything about them (except what you assume).  So you talk about you.  You talk about how long your company has been in business.  Who your customers are.  How wonderful you are.  How you built your product.  And then you introduce your SE, who will go into painstaking detail on how you’ve built your solutions.  And hopefully, they’ll see some stuff that applies to them and they’ll actually tell you what it is.  And you’ll send them some pricing, then call them every 3 days until they tell you they went with the other guy, for reasons you’ll probably never really know.

Meanwhile, the other guys who simply can’t have anything as great as you keep winning deals you would have won just a year ago.  What could they be doing differently?  Their products can’t be as great, can they?  How did they catch up?  It’s clearly an issue with features missing in your product.

The answer is, they aren’t as great.  But it doesn’t matter.  Because they’re appealing to the customers by showing them some love.  They’re letting them buy instead of selling to them.  Sometimes, it’s an emotional, gut-feel decision, and not an objective one where each vendor is scored across 129 evaluation criteria.  The truth is, people love to buy, but hate being sold.  The smart guys understand this and work it to their advantage.

But keep focusing on getting your pitch into that PowerPoint deck – I’m sure you’ll get it right before the funding runs out.

spalthof@hotmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomspalthoff

Should you befriend your customers/prospects?

An interesting question came up recently about how close a Sales Engineer should get to their prospects and customers. I have always been the type of person who gets close to my prospects and customers and treat them no different than a neighbor or someone else I meet in my life. But is this smart? As a Sales Engineer we have to constantly decide how much information we deliver to the customer and balance the ethics of not talking about certain subjects that might not be relavent but still damaging to the sales process if exposed. At times we have the same types of dances with our family and friends, but the Sales Team and Customer releationship is often more planned out and scrutinized by others which isn’t as condusive to an open honest relationship we have with our friends.

So I ask, is it OK to befriend your customers and prospects? I hope we come up with Yes!

One favor to ask, please place comments on the Blog, not the LinkedIn Discussion board so it’s easier for people to see your comments over time.

Regards,

Jeff

The Geek with a Personality

The Art of a Balanced Sales Engineer

Are you technical? Are you business oriented? Hopefully if you are a Sales Engineer/Consultant, you’re both. Often I hear just the opposite from Sales Engineers, and honestly that scares me. The technical oriented sales engineer, simply wants to talk about features and functions hoping to wow the prospect with what the product can do, and of course their knowledge of the product. But when the prospect needs to understand how this product can help them win against their competitors or gain market share, the Technical Sales Engineer goes silent. This is unfortunate because by tackling the business side of the solution, the value of the solution will typically go up, helping the Sales Representative against discounting pressures during negotiations. If the prospect see’s that this solution solves an Executives stated initiative, they are much less likely to push back on price and kill the deal than if the discussion was only around features and functions. For proof, just think of the approach purchasing managers take, they validate your product against a list of features and functions and keep the business side of the equation out of the picture so they can minimize the value of your solution. A personal example of mine from a couple of years ago, I was talking to a prospect about a capability that one of my products could do in helping limit the number of CPU’s that their application was running within depending on how many units of their software was purchased. This was fine but not earth shattering to them because all of their competitors could do that. But once I started to shift the discussion around how we could show them how the solution could dynamically add CPU’s to the mix as needed, but keep the applications within set limits and track those amounts for later sales discussions, they saw the competitive advantage their competitors couldn’t match. The tone of the meeting changed very quickly.

On the other side of the fence, the Sales Engineer needs to be technical enough to gain credibility with the prospect. I believe customers and prospects have a loose hierarchy of product credibility. Of course they believe the Sales Representative the least; sorry Reps, but fair or not you know that to be true. Next, they believe the Sales Engineer, Professional Services then Product Management in that order. Given the competency of the Sales Engineer they can move up or down that slide, a great Sales Engineer can even challenge Product Management at times given their intimate knowledge of past deployments and solutions. The danger comes when the prospect doesn’t see much difference between the Sales Representative and the Sales Engineer. This causes the prospect to question the information they are hearing and often demand an audience with Product Management more often than should happen with a a strong technical Sales Engineer. Keep in mind, the Sales Engineer is responsible for both the technical and functional buy-in for the prospect, and if they can’t understand their own products and the customers environment for high level deployment discussions, the value of the Sales Engineer tends towards zero for both the prospect and the company where they work. The sales process is expensive enough without having to bring in extra people to the sale every time. I am NOT saying that bringing in Product Management, Professional Services or Executives isn’t important at times for a sales campaign to close, but they should be strategic decisions, not necessities with every campaign.

So if you are a Sales Engineer and you find yourself leaning a lot one way or the other, take a look at how this is working for yourself, and evaluate if there is room to balance yourself out. I have found this balanced approach to be very successful over the last 15 years, and when I’m lacking information on one side or the other, everyone from Product Management, Development, Support, Consulting, Sales and even Sales Engineers are more than happy to help me fill in any blank spots.

Happy selling.

We Are the Champions

I’m sitting in my family room contemplating what my next blog should be and over the ringing in my ears my brain keeps playing Queen’s classic, “We are the Champions.”  The more I think about it, the more I believe that Sales Engineers are the champions of the sales teams.  Don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for Account Executives, they bring many skills to the table that your typical SE doesn’t have, but as the song gets louder in my head, the more I believe that ‘We are the Champions’!

I’ve paid my dues -
Time after time -
I’ve done my sentence
But committed no crime -
And bad mistakes
I’ve made a few
I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face -
But I’ve come through

We are the champions – my friends
And we’ll keep on fighting – till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
‘Cause we are the champions – of the world -

I’ve taken my bows
And my curtain calls -
You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it
-
I thank you all -

But it’s been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise -
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race -
And I ain’t gonna lose -

We are the champions – my friends
And we’ll keep on fighting – till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
‘Cause we are the champions – of the world –

Which one of us can’t say that we haven’t paid our dues or felt like we kept on fighting till the end?  God knows that it’s ‘no bed of roses or pleasure cruise’.  While it’s the best job I’ve ever had besides Husband, Father, Friend, Coach and Beach Bum, it is a challenge when you have so many bosses above you.  Your manager, each Account Executive you work with and Product Management all have strings that pull us this way and that.  Sometimes I feel like a cross between Gumby and Pinocchio (for the strings attached to the puppet, not the lying); just call me Gumocchio!  How many times have we had ‘sand kicked in our faces’ from angry customers?  Usually it’s for things that we didn’t do, but from problems caused by our predecessors or the product, and we end up being the clean up crew to smooth things out.  But in the end when the customer is happy, I know that I’ve done a good job, and again have shown that the SE’s are the champions of the sales cycle!  I’m not sure how often I can say that I’ve achieved ‘Fame and fortune’ or even ‘taken my bows’, but I will quietly continue to fight until the customer understands that my solution is the best solution for them!

We are the Champions my friends……………….

Are you a Trusted Advisor

The Trusted Advisor

The term ‘Trusted Advisor’ has as many definitions as does the job title Sales Engineer or Sales Consultant but the big difference is that there is no job called ‘Trusted Advisor’. Yet when it comes down to it, every Sales Engineer is told that they need to be the ‘Trusted Advisor’ to the customer. So just what does that mean and how do you get to become the ‘Trusted Advisor’ for a customer? Because I’m writing this blog I’m going to take a stab at a definition; please don’t stop reading the article because you disagree with the definition, but definitely add a comment to the blog. OK, the definition:

An expert in a given subject that works with a customer/prospect to understand their problems and to help them understand how they can solve their problems, typically within the bounds of the Trusted Advisor’s subject expertise and products.

So now that we have a definition to go by, what are the steps for a Sales Engineer to become a Trusted Advisor. I will start out with a short list of bullets then move to a deeper description of each; I have kept this list short only because I doubt anyone want’s to read a 5 page blog and hopefully comments from other experts and opinionated folks will fill in where needed.

1. Listen before talking
2. Understand your customers challenges
3. Understand your customers competition
4. Be two or three steps ahead of your customers

 Listen before talking:

To me, this could be the first, second and third bullets in my list. When people seek out advice from their friends, the one common theme is that the friend listens to the problem before they try to solve the problem. How can anyone help a customer solve a problem if they don’t even know what those issues are? OK, you may be the expert and already know the issues, but that doesn’t matter. Unless the customer has no idea what their problems are you must let the customers tell you what the problems are that they are facing. Listen to all of them, gently help them quantify how these issues are affecting the team or company. When they get stuck, pull out a few common industry issues out of your pocket and validate them with a good story from another customer that they will connect with. If they agree with these issues you will start to move from being part of a sales team member to someone on their team as an advisor. Please keep in mind that when pulling out issues that are common to a company like the one you are presenting to, that the customer may not connect with that issue or may not be willing to discuss it out in the open. If they disagree; drop that specific issue and move the discussion forward quickly to keep the discussion from going sour.

Understand your customers challenges:

To help someone solve an issue, you need to understand that issue. As a Sales Engineer, this is typically done by learning from previous jobs, other Sales Engineers, or the repetition of helping other customers with the same issue. No matter how you get there, this allows you to be empathetic with the customer and to help them envision a path to a solution. If you don’t understand the problems, a Sales Engineer ends up being just that, a Sales Engineer; someone on the sales team that is simply spewing out features and functions that typically solve a business problem. Customers can quickly notice the difference and will be weary of that person on the sales team verses the Trusted Advisor who is thought of as someone on their team. So if you lack good understanding of your customers problems, spend as much time as possible, with Product Management, Development, Customers, Support, Consulting and other Sales Engineers to get a grasp on the issues and solutions. This foundation will then help you have a better understanding of what your product is doing to solve those customer challenges.

 Understand your customers competition:

To take the next step as a Trusted Advisor you need to think like your customer. What capabilities does their competition have that keeps them up at night, what has stopped them from gaining market share, how did their competitors overcome these challenges, and how can YOU help this customer solve these issues. The best Success Stories are the ones about the competition; almost every company has a competitor that has solved a problem your prospect is facing and if your company helped them solve that problem you increased the value of your product in their minds. One of the most powerful drives in business is that of not being left behind. Use your industry and customer knowledge to your advantage to create that fear of being left behind, then show them the solution using your product(s).

 Be two or three steps ahead of your customers:

Once you have proven that you understand your customers challenges, it’s time to demonstrate that you understand the challenges they have yet to encounter. As a Trusted Advisor you are aiming for a long term relationship with your customers. By talking about challenges that they may likely face in the future, you set up the type of relationship where you are brought in when they start to see those issues crop up. In my experience, most companies don’t want to address these issues to early on, they have more pressing issues dealing with the problems they are talking to you about in the first bullet. But, if they chose you as a vendor and your implementation goes well, they will likely remember your insight and bring you in early which allows you to be column A and to set the requirement.

In summary becoming a Trusted Advisor takes time and patience. Think like the customer, think how you would act if you worked for that company and you will start to see a difference in how customers treat you and in my opinion you will increase closure rates.

Stories

A short comment on why you shouldn’t forget the stories

“And in this module you will see 15 features; let’s examine each one in detail.” Doesn’t this sounds like a lot of fun for the audience? Now let’s compare this to, “A similar company in your industry had a problem with increasing their renewals rate and used this module to increase renewal rates from 73% to 87% in one year; let’s walk through this module as a renewals manager searching for lost opportunities from the last 90 days.” While both approaches may show the same capabilities by the end of the demo, the second approach gives the user a way to connect with the demonstration that the first approach misses.

What is it that attracts and holds the attention of your audience? The possibility of success. The reason people purchase software is to become more successful in one way or another than they are today. When prospects hear how others have solved their issue, they become more interested and will examine if this software/hardware will help them in the same way.

So go connect with your customers and weave stories throughout your customer interactions, otherwise bring a large pot of coffee and a case of Mountain Dew!

Please put down the PowerPoint and step away from the projector!

We all know a ‘Home Run Presentation’ can take many different forms, but I’m going to focus on one indication of a Home Run Presentation that I believe has more weight than almost any other proof point. In my last blog, Cris Wendt gave the following comment and I agree 100%, “..the measure of success [for a presentation]? The customer takes a picture of the board”. What Cris is talking about, is when a prospect or customer takes a picture of the whiteboard after the two of you have been working on a common solution together. PowerPoint is a great tool to keep ideas flowing and making sure that you are covering all the bases, but it is rarely as personalized as a collaborated solution written on the whiteboard. When your prospect is standing at the board with you working out a solution, they are taking ownership of the solution which goes a lot farther than agreeing on features and product values presented in PowerPoint. I am NOT knocking PowerPoint, it has it’s place and needs to be taken seriously with targeted messaging specific to that prospect, but customers energy, creative juices, and ownership of a solution are not generally a byproduct of a PowerPoint presentation, but they are from a collaborated whiteboard session.

So if your goal is to have the prospect take a picture of the whiteboard, you should keep a few things in mind:

• Write legibly so everyone who sees the solution later can understand what they are looking at. It’s worth the extra time to do this; work with your sales representative to keep the meeting moving if you have a lot of writing at one time. But if you can, build the solution slowly piece by piece so you can talk about it with the prospect as you build the solution out.

• Write the business values of the solution and match them with the appropriate pieces of the architecture.

• If the customer gives you any numbers or proof points get them on the board for all to see.

• Use colors to help clarify the picture.

• Put boxes and squares around systems and label appropriately.

• Most importantly, let the customer give as much input as possible, you want them working on the board along side you to create the collaborated solution. 

By taking these steps you are creating a personalized solution with the customer which is invaluable, and when you are done you have something that you can use for later discussions and presentations with the Executives for final review.

I understand that many people are scared of the dynamics of a whiteboard and I understand that. So what I have told people to do is to practice on paper first. Come up with an easy diagram that you feel comfortable with, then practice putting it on a whiteboard by yourself. Practice that drawing until you feel that you can do it in your sleep. The next step is to role play the drawing with someone knowledgeable about your product and interested in you succeeding; someone like a product manager. After that, use a friendly customer to practice with or just go for it with a prospect. It isn’t as hard as you imagine, most prospects welcome a chance to turn off the PowerPoint and to discuss their issues in real time. To save time on a complicated architecture I will combine the PowerPoint presentation with live drawings; I simply project onto a whiteboard and we will collaborate on that.

One last tip. Often a conference room will not have a whiteboard large enough for me, so I may turn to a window. Yes, window. Window’s make great whiteboards and clean off easier than most whiteboards that I have used. So don’t let the lack of a whiteboard throw you off.

So in closing, go change the energy in your meeting and turn off the PowerPoint presentation.

You’re Killing Your Audience

Think back to the last presentation that put you to sleep. How long did it take them to do it? My guess is less than 10 minutes. I hate to say this, but this has happened at too many presentations and lectures that I’ve attended over the years so I thought I would write down a few notes on what I believe you shouldn’t do during a presentation. I will admit that some of these will be very controversial, but I want to start the discussion because I feel great presentations are one of the most important talents a Sales Engineer brings to the table. Deals can easily be killed by a presentation (it’s rare to make a deal via a presentation, but you can make huge strides with a home run presentation) so it’s important not only know know what to do, but also what will cause your audience to loose interest in your presentation and either zone out or flat out fall asleep.

The Killers:

1. Monotone voice:  A monotone voice will put me to sleep every time and it doesn’t matter how interesting the subject is if I get bored listening to you. When reviewing something great or unique about your product animate your voice to make this point stand out. If you are going over your prospects pains with the same enthusiasm as you do when reading an article on drying cement, guess how important those pain points will be to your prospect when you review them? Put some inflection in your voice to bring out the pain; at this point of the presentation I like to use supporting stories on how much that pain may be costing them in time, opportunity or money and you really want them awake. To practice creating fluctuation in your voice, practice a couple minutes of your presentation in front of a toddler. Those little ones are great mirrors into how you will be perceived by your audience so if you can keep their attention you should be OK in front of our intended audience; but don’t just raise your voice, yelling isn’t how you want to achieve attention. After you have mastered keeping a toddlers attention you can tone it down a notch for the meeting and probably be okay.

2. Too much text on the slides:  We have all heard this before, but it just doesn’t seem to sink in. So here we go again. Think of a slide as you do your resume, ‘lots of white space’. But unlike a resume, find a picture that matches the point you are trying to make on the slide, and if you’re really good, have the pictures from the slides follow a common theme. Also keep the fonts large, this will not only help your audience see the information, but also force you to keep brief. If you find yourself cheating and moving the font size down often, that is your hint that you are getting to wordy. I will admit there are times for detailed slides but they are usually for detailed training which isn’t the main focus of this topic.

3. Don’t read the slide!  Slides are there to keep you on course, and possibly be a good handout, but you are there to fill in all the blanks. So refer to the slide, but don’t read it. Hopefully you have more to say than what is on the slide; if not, your audience catches that and you just lost a boat load of credibility. If you like to use your presentations as a handout, great, but use either slide notes or appendices to add the detailed information.

4. Not interacting with the audience:  I know they are scary, but the audience is your number one tool to having an interesting presentation and you just might learn something along the way. If you’re lucky, you can even turn the presentation into a conversation which will be a home run. I like to put questions within my presentation that really gets the audience thinking. Often, that will be my first slide, and it won’t be something like, ‘Are you having fun yet?’ Put something controversial out there. Start the presentation with a BANG. Interactive presentations also tend to be more consultative in nature, which helps build trust with the prospect and move you toward the trusted adviser role.

5. Speak clearly:  I live in Silicon Valley, and I love the diversity it brings, but I do admit that if I can’t understand the speaker, I loose interest faster than a Ferrari going 0-60. This issue can take many different forms from not being comfortable with the language to simply speaking to softly. I know this is a touchy subject, but you need to address this issue if you do presentations on a frequent basis. My suggestion is to practice with an audience that is sitting at the other end of a large conference room and make sure they do NOT know the material. Don’t cover your own company materials during these practice presentations because your audience will automatically fill in areas that you may of left out. Branch out into something different that you are interested in and speak about that subject. I recommend that you build a few slides to simulate the presentation environment as much as possible. Just keep in mind to speak loud and clear enough for your audience, and ask for honest feedback. If you are doing this because of your strong accent, try to find people you don’t interact with every day. Friends understand your accent easier and are not really a good audience for this exercise. When you feel comfortable with this exercise move to the phone. If you can be understood over the phone, a live audience should be fairly easy.

So those are the top five sleepers. I hope I did not offend anyone or put them to sleep while reading, but a great presenter is worth their weight in gold and the world needs more great spekers. Go knock them dead!