Fear and Loathing as an Overlay Sales Specialist

Background

Enterprise technology vendors have greatly expanded their product offerings and portfolios to drive growth, capture market share, and provide end-to-end solutions to their customers. Networking companies are becoming server companies, hardware companies are becoming software companies, data companies are becoming AI companies, and hyper-scalers are becoming ALL companies.?

Whether this is organic (adjacent technologies built in-house), or inorganic (technologies acquired through acquisition to address new markets), the result is the same:?A team of overlay technology sales and field engineers is usually built (or inherited through acquisition) to help introduce, grow, and scale new/emerging products.?

These teams go by many names:?sales overlay, product specialist, technology specialist, brand specialist, emerging technology team, etc. I've personally been an overlay sales specialist and built/run specialty teams at several companies during my career:?Cisco, Microsoft, EMC/Dell, and Pivotal.?Some through startup acquisitions; others as part of a team taking newly-built products to market in the enterprise technology space.

Why Overlay Specialists are Needed

The technology landscape has become so complex and moves at such a breathtaking pace that despite Thomas Watson's prescient commentary in the 1931 "IBM Manual of Sales Instruction," in which he encouraged sales teams to consume everything a company creates about its products, it's nearly impossible for a modern field sales team to keep up with a technology firm's burgeoning portfolio of products and services. Some product portfolios are so broad they've created maps and search engines for them.

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“There is only one way to gain knowledge and that is through study. Right here a good many fail because that means reading books, listening, discussing, observing and thinking. You must not overlook any one of these things. Read everything the company publishes for you in the way of instruction; discuss the business with everyone with whom you come in contact, listen when anyone talks about the business—be a good listener, observe, study through observation.” -Thomas Watson, CEO IBM

Core/Specialist Sales Model

To deal with this complexity, most enterprise tech companies have segmented their sales models into a core/specialist construct. Similar to specializations in medicine, in which a General Practioner is expected to know a lot about the field of medicine in order to diagnose a patient and then refer them to a specialist for particular ailments, the core sales generalist in a large technology organization identifies client problems and opportunities and engages specialist support for domain-specific opportunities.??

Like Russian nesting dolls, overlay specialists generally align with their core sales team counterparts (as well as an extended team of other specialists in some cases) and work together as follows:?

Core Account Team:?Responsible for overall client relationships:?executive relationships, customer success, overall account revenue, and strategy. Leverages specialists and other teams to develop and execute the account strategy.

Sales Specialist:?Deep domain expert on a particular product, service,?or technology that is aligned to the core sales team (by account, territory, etc). Plays a supporting role to many core account teams.

Core/Specialist Sales Done Right and Wrong

Done Right

When this model is done right, a well-orchestrated core/specialty team can create magic and massive value for a client, as well as significant shareholder value for the tech firm itself.

Done Wrong

When this model is done wrong, the tech firm risks showing up disjointed and fragmented in front of the client.?Sloppy execution can also incur unnecessary complexity, cost, low morale, and inertia in its sales/go-to-market function, making them vulnerable to better-organized and orchestrated competitors.??

Best Practices

Being a sales overlay can be one of the most fulfilling sales jobs in the tech industry. One has the luxury of being able to become a domain expert in an innovative field of technology that excites them, all while leveraging the relationships and resources of a larger machine. It's almost like working in a well-funded startup.

Over the years, I've been a keen observer of how folks have succeeded and failed in these roles and thought I'd share a list of best / worst practices:

• Know your product and industry. As a specialist, you should be able to clearly articulate the value of your product, know it inside out, and how it solves customer problems. This includes having some level of depth on the technology itself. After all, you are the expert. If you don't know the product and defer to your technical overlay (field systems engineer) counterpart on every sales call, you'll lose credibility with your core counterparts and wonder why they don't invite you to client accounts.?
• Educate your core teams: Treat your core sales team as a customer, a route-to-market, a franchise, and a classroom. Ensure they have the best information on how your product helps a client, how it fits into the overall technology strategy, and most importantly how they make money on it. Tell them about the market the product is in. Tell them how much their customers might spend in this category, and teach them how to identify opportunities. Tell them how the specialty product complements core products to solve client problems and grow deal sizes. Make it simple for them to communicate and engage with you.?Don't expect them to pick it up immediately. Develop a "lesson plan" that starts easy and over the span of 3-12 months ratchets up in complexity with an ultimate goal of having a core seller able to handle about 50% of a client qualification/pitch/discussion on the product before they pull you in. This creates leverage so you don't need to shoulder the burden of every sales effort.
• Don't expect handouts. You are competing with other specialists for the core team's limited attention and the client's limited budget. You must show up and add value. Asking for a "carve out" of a big deal so you can make your number if there's little to no client value for your product (or you've done nothing to earn it), isn't a sustainable strategy. The tactic may work for a year or so, but over time, you'll earn the title "Ambulance Chaser" and won't be engaged.?
• Share the wins: Winning is a team sport. Everyone loves recognition. When you win a deal/project, sublimate your natural desire to take credit and give most of the credit to your core team. Write up wins and successful collaborations and share widely among the core teams and their leadership. Make them look brilliant and successful. Invite them to present the win to the broader team so they feel ownership. Communicating success invites others to invest in learning. Your job is to get more folks engaging you, and nothing drives better FOMO engagement than one rep on a core team seeing another crush it with your product and your support.
• Do the work: Attend account planning meetings, customer de-briefs, forecast calls, post-mortems, etc. Show up prepared and organized. Early on, most meetings may be exploratory and may not result in having the right decision-makers for your product in the room. Be patient and persistent. Use these meetings to try to find out how you might be able to get to the decision-maker and educate your core counterparts to improve meeting quality for the next time.
• Don't be Houdini: I've seen this happen so many times. A specialty rep plays no part in the account strategy and only shows up when the deal seems ready to close, never to be heard from again after it books. No one likes the specialty rep who shows up for the order and disappears after they get credit for the deal. They even have a name for this type of person: a Houdini.
• Know when yield: Often, the core sales team will have good reasons to avoid pulling your product or service into a deal. It may be due to a pending transaction that they don't want to disrupt. Yield on these deals. Show empathy. But always ask if there's an eventual path to collaborate and get your product/service into the account. Keep the door open. Play the long game.??
• Know when to hostage negotiate: Sometimes the core sellers won't support engaging you with a client because they are incompetent, checked out, are overly controlling, don't like you, or simply don't understand why it makes sense to spend time on your product. If you have good evidence that the client could benefit from your product/service, spends a lot with your competition, etc, have a straightforward discussion about it. Pull a page out of expert FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss' book Never Split the Difference and pose the question: "It seems to me that it's not a good time to talk about our solution with client X. How are we going to grow our business in this account?" Let them be empowered to exercise the control of saying "no" and come up with the solution, which invariably leads to you getting engaged to grow the business with your product.
• Talk to the manager: No one likes to leave money on the table. Core territory managers usually have specialty product goals and only make their numbers if their team is producing. Talk with their manager about the lost opportunity or competitive threat and how you're there to help their team hit their goals. Ask for advice. Don't tattle.
• Arbitrage for Immediate Effect: As a sales overlay, you typically have a larger account base or territory to work across. Prioritize and spend your time with the A players and those core folks who get it. The "Pioneers." Ask around and find out who the most successful and innovative core teams are. You generally have a limited time to make a difference in your role so early wins and traction count.
• Play Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners: As above, spend time with the "Pioneers" on your core team. Once the trend emerges, work with the "Settler" core folks to broaden your footprint. Finally, if you've done your job right, the specialty technology becomes so successful that the "Town Planners" on the team start to engage.??

Thanks!

I hope it's helpful for any of you aspiring or existing sales specialists. If you have any of your own experiences or ideas to share, please comment below.??