Documentation Addiction for Sales Engineers

Data plays a critical role in the Sales Engineering profession. I am writing this article to raise awareness for the aspect of the data that is most often forgotten and undervalued - SE activity data. If you have worked in a sales organization you know how fast things move and how much "magic" happens during a sales cycle with objection handling, competitive differentiation, workarounds, product commitments, custom solutions and so much more. I don't mean to highlight this "magic" in any negative way (pulling wool over someone's eyes), rather it's the "magic" of education, consulting, solution architecting, and problem-solving.

This magic is what I often refer to as the art & science of Sales Engineering

One of the most critical ingredients to successful and effective Sales Engineering is documenting as much of this magic as possible. This aspect of our role, sometimes, can be painful, tedious, and frankly not the fun. But its the necessary evil. Personally, I am addicted to it. It has become a second nature to me. I document thoroughly and timely. That's the only way for me to be effective, accountable, and responsive to all the sales opportunities I get pulled into.

In most high-performance SE organizations, accurate documentation and activity tracking is a non-negotiable requirement for all team members. As unique is our profession, this requirement to document everything is unique as well. But with power comes responsibility.

Our power to come up with solutions on-the-fly, overcome objections, demonstrate value, and influence buying decisions come with the core responsibility to make sure we document and track everything.

Let's explore the consequences of not documenting the "Sales Engineering" portion of the sales cycle:

Sales Organization: Many functions within the sales org rely on the data entered by the Account Executive and Sales Engineers. Sales Operations team uses this data to ensure opportunities are transitioning through the sales stages as planned. Sales leadership may look at this data for forecasting and deal evaluation purposes. An SE insight of product fit and likelihood of winning can be a huge asset to Sales Management. Other Sales Engineers may need this documentation in a situation where they need to take over the sales opportunity when the primary/original SE is unavailable.

Services Organization: What gets promised and proposed in pre-sales, gets delivered in post-sales. It is vital to the overall success of a new customer, that the loss of information, lack of interpretation and gap in expectations is minimized. The only feasible way to accomplish this is via thorough documentation by the SE during the sales process. Instead of an implementation starting with a lack of context and clarity, with proper SE documentation, it can continue with a streamlined transition and setup for a successful launch.

Marketing Organization: Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, and Sales Engineering should always have a tight alignment as all 3 functions exist to deliver higher win rates. Often ignored, but SE documentation can be very insightful to the marketing team. Being able to report on the competitive win/loss and analyzing the sales process can help marketing fine-tune the value proposition or competitive positioning going forward.

Product Organization: Imagine a world where Product Managers can join and listen in on every sales presentation to learn how the product they are responsible for is being presented, perceived, and what problems prospects are trying to solve. Well, we all know that's not possible. But with proper SE documentation, we can still provide the "voice and view from the field" that Product Managers can leverage to influence their roadmap decisions. This is probably the hardest use case but if SE bandwidth and resources allow, can be a game changer for a company.

If you are a practicing Sales Engineer or an SE leader, I would love to hear how you think about data and documentation. Also if you belong to Services, Marketing or Product organization and have benefitted from SE documentation, please share your stories in the comments below.