Seminar 'Presenting and Selling (Scientific) Software' (WS 12/13)

Type:

Seminar (2 SWS)

ECTS:

4 (whatever it says in the module description)

Lecturer

Andrea Schafferhans

Rotation:

Monday 10-11 2-3 meetings during the semester (Introduction, Discussion of specific examples)

1. Meeting (19. November): Introduction, Understanding the Customer 

2. Meeting (10. December): Meeting the Customer, Great Demos

3. Meeting (14. January): Getting ready for your demo

Block part: Friday, March 8th and 15th

 

Place:

01.09.034

Language:

English

Organisational

There was a pre-meeting on Tuesday, July 10th, at 1 pm in 09.01.034. 

Please register in TUM Online AND send me a mail.
The seminar will only take place if enough students register (ca. 10).

Since the pre-meeting was too early (before you all know about this seminar), I suggest to have another informal meeting at the beginning of the lecture time. 

Other meetings will be:

  1. lecture/seminar with some background info in November/December,
  2. one discussion session end of January to share experiences, deal with problems in preparation,
  3. final training in a block in February.

The above dates are suggestions.

 

Content

This seminar will give the participants the opportunity to train their presentation skills, focussing especially on skills needed to sell software. They will learn how to

  • identify key features of a product as well as important differences to competitors
  • analyze typical application scenarios and "pains" of their customers
  • create short but compelling presentations.

There will be an introduction explaining the sales process for complex/scientific software, the information customers need, things to remember when preparing a software demo and the key points of compelling software demonstrations. - Since the module description for Proseminars requires work with scientific texts, we will include a discussion about scientific literature on the sales process (in particular solution selling and productisation).

The participants will prepare sales material for a software package of their choice. Ideal would be software they have contributed to, themselves. The material will include:

  • a one or two page fact sheet
  • an "elevator pitch" 
  • a presentation
  • a live demo

The material will be presented and discussed in a block seminar at the end of the semester.

CAVEAT: This seminar is somewhat unsual, since work on scientific texts is not the main focus.