There are two important tasks every technical sales engineer need to do each day:
- Identify a business challenge or a pain point — Describe it precisely and completely for technical as well as non-technical stakeholders.
- Design a technology solution solving the business challenge — Describe key components and key benefits of the solution
Especially when you are working with complex solutions such as AI and machine learning, It is not an easy task to describe technical details of an AI model or a data platform in simple and accessible language. You will mostly be dealing with business leaders. They want to understand the full scope of the solution, the problem it will solve without any technical jorgans and know-how of ML or software Engineering concepts.
One tool that has been a great help for me in thinking clearly and intuitively and in preparing technical proposals for business stakeholders is MECE. I was introduced to this concept by the book — The Mckinsey Way
This is how the author describes MECE:
MECE (pronounced “me-see”) stands for “mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive”
MECE structured my thinking with clarity (hence minimum confusion) and completeness.
MECE starts from the very beginning of solution design — the list of issues making up the problem or business challenge you have to solve. After spending some time thinking about it, when you think you have determined the key issues, take a hard look at them.
Is each issue is a separate and distinct? If so, then your issue list is mutually exclusive. Does every aspect of the challenge come under one (and only one) of these issues — that is, have you described the problem completely without leaving any aspect of it? If so, then your issues are collectively exhaustive.
A good MECE list contains neither fewer than two nor more than five top-line issues.
Let’s say you have identified more than 5 issues. what to do then?
There is a solution to this dilemma — the magical category“Other Issues.” If you can’t figure out where to put those two or three brilliant ideas, there are always Other Issues. There is a caveat, however. Avoid using Other Issues in your top-line list — it looks out of place. It’s fine lumped in among a bunch of sub-issues, but on the first slide of a big presentation, it sticks out. So try a little harder to fit those brilliant ideas into your top-line issues. Chances are you can. Still, if all else fails, Other Issues will help you stay MECE.
To better organize your thinking when solving business problems, you must be complete while avoiding confusion and overlap.
This has been a very useful tool for me in preparing hundreds of technical solution pitches. Hope it helps you as well.
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