Here's how you can master the advanced problem solving methodologies used by experienced Sales Engineers.

There’s a reason it’s called technical discovery! You won’t find success solving problems the prospect doesn’t have or doesn’t care about. Figure out what is important to them and how you are best positioned to solve it.

A great example of this happened just today! A prospect insisted they needed a rate limit increase to process their workload. Through some probing questions we identified the issue was the developers internet upload speed was the bottle neck not the rate limits. It would have been very hard to know what the root cause of the issue was without asking things like, "Tell me what your doing today and what the issue is" before offering solutions to the stated problem "We need a rate limit increase". This is just one of many examples when it is about an issue or an ask. When meeting with a prospect for the first time I always like to understand how our solution fits into their business and what sort of impact our solution will make.

Your customer will be juggling multiple objectives and timelines. Make sure in your conversations with them that you uncover what they find valuable about your solution, help them use it, and identify any catalyzing events that would increase their urgency.

Creativity in solving a prospects needs without ever touching product and engineering is key to success for any Sales Engineer. The ability to share workarounds goes a long way to checking boxes that otherwise may end up blocking a deal. Having a suite of examples at your disposal is crucial to saving time and winning deals. Getting creative and tweaking an existing sample on a new branch is a great way to send prospects examples without duplicating work. You need to have a "We can do anything" mindset when it comes to Sales but only if it can be done with the existing product and some guidance.

Low effort and high value solutions to problems tend to work out the best. Keeping a prospect on the happy path pre-sales is also crucial. Difficult implementation details can be discussed post sale as part of the paid plan. Do not boil the ocean pre-sales when it comes to testing complex enterprise setups. Prove the product solves their business need and adds value first in the easiest possible way for the prospect. When the time comes to do a more complex setup make sure you get the right people involved from both sides and manage it in conjunction with Customer Success to ensure it is successful.

A great Sales Engineer knows how to manage their time, Deal size should be the main driver for this. A $10k deal might be just as needy as a $100k deal Set yourself up for success with both by setting expectations with your AEs when your workload is consumed by larger deals and push out deals for the next quarter and focus on the one's closing in the current quarter. A lot of Sales Engineers suffer from over supporting smaller deals at the expense of larger deals. You can do both but time box those smaller deals proportionally to the larger ones. If I have a $1m deal that is taking all my time up I block off my calendar and let my AEs know to find a slot the following week. Closing a $1m deal is like closing 100 x $10k deals...