How an energy drink made me a better sales engineer

I know what you’re thinking, caffeine solves all of your problems — this is no news to you. Well, I’m not here to talk about the wonders of caffeine. I’m here to talk about the experience I had SELLING an energy drink and how that made me a better sales engineer.

Never heard of sales engineering? I suggest checking out my article: “Ever wonder, what is a sales engineer?”

Don’t sales engineers sell technology?

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. You might be wondering why a sales engineer would ever sell an energy drink. Well.. you’re right. Sales engineers do not sell energy drinks — sales engineers sell highly technical products. But you will be surprised at some of the foundational techniques you can learn with such a simple product.

The sale

It was Thursday evening and the members of the Society of Sales Engineers at the University of Central Florida were filing into our weekly general body meeting. This was my first semester with the club and I still had no clue what a sales engineer was.

The club officers walked in with a handful of random energy drinks, and the President kicks off the meeting saying, “Today, you are going to sell these.”

The rules were simple. We were assigned an energy drink and a buyer. The buyer was a retailer looking for a new energy drink brand to stock near the checkout registers at all of their current locations and new locations as they expanded. This particular retailer cared more about status than offering the lowest price, so the drink had to carry a strong brand behind it.

After the introduction we received our drinks to sell and had five minutes to prepare our pitch to the retailer’s corporate buyer. The game was on!

I fell into a trap

As I started preparing for my pitch, I immediately began looking for talking points in the features of the drink — calories, caffeine, color of the can, any little thing. This was a mistake.

I was feature selling from the start. Feature selling is when a salesperson tries to capture the attention of the customer and sell them on the bells and whistles of a product instead of the value the product will bring through those features. For example, “this computer has the newest processor all the cool kids are buying.” If the customer is looking for storage, you just lost.

I was not thinking about the outcomes my customer wanted. Worst of all, I was finding ways to talk when I should have been finding ways to listen and discover opportunities.

I call this a trap because feature selling is natural for a product so simple. How much can you really solve with a can of flavored water?

My lucky break

My five minutes were up and my plan was to feature blast the customer. You already know this was not going to go well for me.

We started talking and before I had a chance to make my mistake, the customer asks, “why is the can shaped different from the others?” I think back to the main goal of the customer — a strong brand. I told him that we recognized the success of the aluminum cans developed by other major beverage brands and we wanted our cans to invoke that same feeling for our customers.

This is when everything changed. The customer immediately realized this is what they were seeking. I wasn’t selling the energy drink to some random person who would drink it once and leave, I was solving a long-term problem — a problem where caffeine content was irrelevant. Fortunately for me, I had an awesome buyer that helped me realize this because it was not part of my plan at all.

Here’s what I learned

1. Sell value over features — features can assist you in your quest to convey value, but they are not the hero of the story. In my experience, the shape of the can was only a conversation starter. If I said the shape of the can was to minimize the production cost, the customer wouldn’t care. Price was not their problem. The value tied to the feature was the hero.
2. Practice the basics — an energy drink might sound pretty boring compared to the cool software or hardware you are training to sell, but in complex products, there is so much going on that it’s hard to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. If you were weight-lifting, this energy drink sale would be all about your form.. not strength. You master form at lower weights before strength to protect yourself from getting hurt.
3. Ask questions — in my scenario, the customer asked a question that got me on-track. However, this is not sustainable. You cannot rely on your customer asking a lucky question. Turn the table and plan your meetings with strong questions to help discover your customer’s needs.

Thank you for following my story. I hope this experience will help you become a better sales engineer too!