The Art of the Sale(s Engineer)

With a new set of college graduates entering the workforce, I would like to share a potential path for those of you who have a good hybrid of technical and business skills.  Not long ago (well ~5 years ago) I was fresh out of college with a Computer Science degree whose ink was still wet from that authentic signature from the Dean of the Engineering College.  I love the logic of programing, but I did NOT want to be a programmer.  I wanted to travel, I wanted to network with multiple organizations, and I wanted to be constantly challenged.

What do you do?

A question that comes up often during first dates or trade showroom floors.  If you have never interacted with the enterprise software sales process, the idea of sales engineer (SE) sounds oxymoron-ish.  There is the sales organization which focuses on acquiring new business and there is engineering department which focuses on building new products and features.  The sales engineer sits in between these two teams and is able to address a potential customers business needs with the capabilities of the software solution.  If the solution currently can meet the requirements, great!  If not, then the sales engineer needs to figure out how much of a "square peg in a round hole" the need is and if it is worth attempting the effort.  The best SEs are able to tip toe around this line of willing to bend the product to meet the requirements or flat out recommending (with account managers blessing of course ;) ) that the customer is looking for a different solution that what the software can do.  The hardest thing to do in a sales cycle is to "fire a customer" especially if a positive relationship is already established.  However, PEOPLE do tend to respect salesmen who know when to walk away when the solution just is not a fit for the requirements list.  In fact, I have had contacts whom I had walked away from previously reach out a few months later with a much more fitting opportunity.

"Well Bob, why can't the customers take the specs directly to the engineers?"

Little did I know when I first saw Office Space as a teenager, that one day I would be working as a bridge between customers and product.  On the surface it seems like a job that anyone can do.  Well, I am too full of myself to believe that anyone can do my job.  I love the fact that as an SE, you become a central spoke in how business gets done.  In a lot of respects, you are the individual that understands your company in multiple facets.  You are on the front lines so you hear what customers want in future releases.  You are the technical resource for the marketing team to help vocalize what the product does to the external world.  You work with the documentation and enablement team to help guide the on boarding practice for people who are not living and breathing your technology every day.  And (my favorite) you get to participate in the hunt of the sale and celebrate significant wins when new customers sign contracts.  In a lot of respects, you get to see and influence a lot of components of the business.  I personally have aspirations of one day starting my own company (which appears to be the norm for Millennials) and this type of exposure helps get an understanding of how each of these organizations work.

A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

What type of person makes the best SE?  Good news is the need for an SE-type position is so vast it is not limited to a certain market or organization.  A good SE is someone who is passionate about SOME things, but willing to learn EVERYTHING.  For me personally, sites like Meetup are a great avenue to be introduced or refine understandings around topics relevant to your industry.  Overtime, you can start to become a specialist if you dedicate enough time to understanding a specific concept or practice.  For example, I was never asked to investigate Docker, it just was an interesting concept to me.  It grew to the point where I was asked to give a talk at a Meetup regarding Docker deployments.  SE is a position where you are expected to be at least one step ahead of your target customers which means constantly willing to learn new and emerging technologies.  I quickly learned that everything I found interesting did not have long term viability at my customers.  Every time this did happen, I was introduced into a peripheral practice or technology that was still useful to understand for other use cases.

 The Customer Knows Their Stack Best

 Rarely do I walk into a meeting with a customer and I am NOT exposed to a new concept, acronym or process.  This means I have to be comfortable admitting when I need clarification.  Just like the average customer is not going to understand what  TCR is, there is no expectation that an outsider would completely understand an organizations architecture.  This is the toughest area to balance.  You need to be a consultant and an expert in your technology and realm, but you also need to ensure you are understanding the intricacies of each customers environment.  One of the items that will help your credibility is name dropping.  If you do not follow a particular customers flow, but you have experience with a competitor of there, do some exploratory questions.  Some things like "I have heard of organizations in your space using X for these deployments, how do you accomplish this?" often help get further clarification.  Another step in the dance is knowing what is kosher to share and what is truly protected information.  It is an SEs duty to not sacrifice a current customers happiness in order to try to impress a prospect.

The First Step

If SE sounds like something you are interested in investigating, there are some ways to get started.  Primarily, I have seen three types of backgrounds getting into SE.  They are Customer Support, Development, or Consulting.  These are not the only ways to get into SE, but I would say they are a good starting point.  If you do have the background of being able to learn quickly, understand core principles of technology, and can present well over a screen share and in front of a crowd, you probably have what it takes to get a call back.