How do you track your progress as a sales engineer?

SMART is a very good tool to track your progress as a sales engineer. Progress is not only measured by the number of deals being closed but also by the percentage of prospects you are able to convert into leads. SMART allows you to follow a realistic approach that is aligned with your company's objectives to measure or track your progress as a sales engineer.

My current employer has simplified the goals to the extreme. I'm judged on the number and rate of technical yes. This criterion is integrated into the business opportunity and is evaluated under each Presales Service Request made by Sales. I find it a very meaningful metric for our specific activity and to assess the quality of our service, whether the deal is won or lost.

Current way i track my progress is with Dashboards. It simply defines our Business and where we are by these 2 Key Points we can arrive methodologies or Ways to reach our assignment or Business Goal

SMART criteria for tracking sales engineer success involve setting specific, measurable goals (e.g., demo success rate, deal closures), ensuring they are achievable and relevant, and establishing a time-bound framework for assessment. Metrics like revenue, customer satisfaction, and solution implementation can quantifiably measure success.

I think it's important to distinguish what the company you work for tracks related to SE's and what YOU track for yourself. If you don't keep track of anything for yourself, why not? Self-improvement will be different for each SE and keeping track of your own KPI's will let you know where you can improve.

Feedback is the most important element. I regularly ask for feedback from different sources following a series of demos/presentations. Continuously learn and improve in small increments. Feedback tells you what are your crutch words/phrases, where you are spending too much/not enough time, where you should solicit more attendee engagement, and so on.

When I receive a request from a Sales person, I schedule a briefing to discuss the opportunity, but above all I schedule a 25-minute Feedback session, just after or the day after the customer appointment. I always ask for feedback on my performance (form and content), as it's the only way of finding out what worked and what didn't, and what I can do better. I then offer my feedback to the other people involved (Sales, CSM, etc.). I offer it because I don't want to force them to give my feedback. Sometimes people don't want to, or it's not the right time. With my favorite salesman, we often give hot feedback (in the minutes following the meeting) and then cold, rested feedback. This is essential for continuous improvement.

In my opinion preparation is everything and making the presentation your own so you can deliver it naturally . However after every demo I present I always pick up on improvements and where I went wrong . It’s never perfect but try and deliver it the best I can with some light humour.

The demo should in most cases just the opening door to what you do. Show one use case in detail and leave the rest for later discussion.

John Care outlines this in his "Mastering Technical Sales" book. Gauging understanding and remaining focused on the features, advantages, and benefits (FAB) and the idea of "what this means for you" helps me in conversations with clients and prospects where I find myself going into too much detail too quickly. Highly recommend the read!

2 Most Effective Tools to Sharpen My Sales Engineering Skills 1 - Game Tape Reviews - Its very hard to watch myself present... but you can always learn from calls that don't go as planned. Its also a confidence booster when you can review your calls that go well!! 2 - Watching Other Great Presenters - I learn best simply watching others do great work. Someone will say something in an amazing and clear way I could have never thought of. OR I see someone use the PERFECT slide I've been looking for. Love these moments!! They remind me why working on a diverse team is so awesome.

Reviewing your own craft with peers and mentors may be uncomfortable at first, but helps immensely in perfecting your craft as an SE/SC. Ensuring that you are towing the line of business/technical talk-tracks and appealing to the correct audiences sometimes requires and objective review from someone else.

I use the consultative selling approach. Learn more about your product than anyone else and become the go to person in the industry. Most designers need to know something about everything . I want to know everything about my offering, as well as general knowledge.

For technology professionals, leverage the free resources available to you to better understand adjacent technologies or common tech stack methodologies. For example, if you work in ERP, learn about CRM. If you work in EDI, learn about API. Big data, learn about HTTPS/API. YouTube and LinkedIn Learning are great places to start.