Things to know about an SE
Developers build the product. Salespeople sell the product. Sales engineers bridge the gap.
To be a great sales engineer, you must understand, accept, and be fluent in both technology and business. I often say that the Sales Engineering Team is the metaphorical-roundabout of any company.
Sales engineering, also known as technical sales or solutions consulting, serves as the foundation of technical knowledge for a sales organization. To excel in the role, a sales engineer (SE) needs a deeper level of knowledge into many aspects of the business than a salesperson. This information often changes rapidly, comes from many departments within an organization, and requires technical chops to absorb, synthesize and communicate externally in a polished, confident manner.
Sales Engineers need to have an intuitive ability to recognize, develop, evangelize, and present proposed technical solutions to customers. The value a sales engineer add to a deal can be defined in both higher success rates than a singular sales effort alone (win rates), higher success rates of technical implementations, and a more efficient way of doing business by understanding/preplanning and removing technical obstacles early.
The best sales engineers understand that exceptional business and technical acumen are both important ingredients to a successful customer experience.
Some examples of this information include:
- Buyer and user personas
- Key use cases and product workflow
- Product positioning and differentiators
- Product functionality and limitations
- APIs and integrations
- Product infrastructure and security
- Product roadmap
- Competing products and industry trends
- Onboarding and customer success
- Customer case studies and whitepapers
Often this knowledge is undocumented, unorganized, and locked in the brains of a handful of people, which poses a significant risk to the organization. Investing in a sales learning platform improves the flow of this information, organizes it, and presents it in a way that is conducive to quick learning and reinforcement
Know Your Biz!
A great platform, product, and/or service will have virtually no value unless the requirements of the customer’s needs are appropriately met. Wise delineation of what is achievable versus what is a “must-have” is often a great attribute of successful sales engineering and implementation teams.
I firmly believe this lesson applies to a multitude of professional services and customer support teams such as implementation specialists, technical account managers, enterprise technical support teams, and customer support engineers.
Know Your Tech!
With technology and market expectations increasing at a higher velocity, various applications and cloud-based solutions launching at the speed-of-now, maintaining an appropriate level of technical knowledge becomes harder and harder. It is extremely important for sales engineers and implementation specialists to speak simply and logically about solutions, features, and benefits without convoluted powerpoint presentation and leave-behinds.
To stay “in the know”, sales engineers have continuous access to product training, subject matter expert sessions, Confluence and documentation releases, New Software releases, CRM enhancements, product marketing, branding awareness, SLA improvements, BCP and security training, compliance audits, sales training, new business development initiatives, etc, etc, etc (#brainmelting).
While most sales organizations focus their enablement efforts on frontline salespeople, the SE role tends to attract people with quite an appetite for learning, so it’s important to provide them with the tools to test, trial, and implement their ideas. Additionally, they can be a great resource to champion a sales learning platform internally and help increase adoption among the broader sales organization.
