What I Learnded This Week

While I don’t want to divulge all the secrets that I learned this week in the SEP classes, I will share some insights on things that made me go “wow” in the next couple of days. These will include time management and goal setting and keeping.


First thing that really made me take a second look was when they said that when you are marketting something, be it a product or service, you don’t market that. So if I am say, a contract programmer looking for work (hint hint) I don’t sell that, or anything about that. I don’t try to sell what I do, what languages I know, what price I am, how good a programmer I am…. none of that.


You sell the benifit.


Don’t say “I am cheaper than a full time programmer”, say “I save you money.”

Don’t say “I create interactive web pages in perl and php”, say “I make your customers more interested in you.”

and so on.


That was a big thing. Even when I threw an email with some details of what I do to a lead a couple of days after we talked about all this I still told him what I did, not what benifit I would be to him. That’s something that I never really knew anyway, and I guess being exposed to very little of the selling world helped that (well, hating commercialism and salespeople helped as well, but as that is a negative attitude I won’t say anything).


Today it’s back to ASP-land, with more wonderful information tomorrow (or later today)!

Posted by

Category: Uncategorized

One Comment on “What I Learnded This Week”

  1. I am proud of you Alan. You are learning. Don’t fear sales people, or loath them. Try to understand them. In essence, you ARE one of them. Everyone is. Show the customer the value proposition… whats in it for them… what they gain from the experience. If they are not interested move on. Others will get it. I wish more people would learn this lesson.
    9 times outta 10 they don’t have a clue what you talk about when you use big acroymns like PHP, ASP, or four letter words like PERL and UNIX. But they do understand the value of money. That in saved time, productivity gains or loss prevention.
    Good luck my friend. I am always here for ya if you need any help.