Presales to Product Part I: 3 Differences Between Presales and Product
This article is part of a mini series on transitioning from presales/sales engineering to product management. Start from the beginning here.
“As an SE, I built things using someone else’s tools that they put into my tool belt. I had a hammer, a wrench, and a screwdriver, and I used them to build the best solutions to showcase value to our customers. As a PM, I help to build the tools to put into the other teams’ tool belts.”
So just how different is sales engineering from product management? After almost a year as a product manager and 7+ as an SE, I’d be lying if I said they had a similar day-to-day. That’s not to say there aren’t skills that naturally translate from being an SE to a PM (and vice versa) – there are plenty that do and I will cover these in another post. But the role itself is quite different in three distinct ways:
1) Difference 1: Where the SE and PM fall in the business funnel
2) Difference 2: The teams that an SE and PM collaborate with
3) Difference 3: The degree of ownership that an SE and PM have
Let’s dive in one by one:
Difference 1: Where the SE and PM fall in the business funnel
First, let’s define the “business funnel” as the set of steps involved in doing business with a customer. This varies from organization to organization, but in general, a business: 1) creates a product, 2) markets a product, 3) sells a product, and 4) supports a product. As an SE, I spent a lot of time in the “sells a product” step and (as much as it may pain my former SE Managers to hear…) the “supports a product” step. Year after year, I strived to support my sales partners in accomplishing their goals, which I can sum up as 1) making customers happy, and 2) crushing their quota. In order to do that, I did a lot of discovering, educating, solutioning, demoing, (and supporting) of our products. And I loved it! But as an SE, I was always further down the “business funnel”, shielded from the decisions that were made further up front.
As a product manager, I have a role in every step of the business funnel described above. The newest step to me as a freshly minted PM is the first one: creating a product. A lot of my time is consumed analyzing the market, discovering its gaps, and establishing the scope for a product that I believe will really solve a customer’s pain. And that just begins to describes the long process of creating a product. There is so much more that goes into refining lower-level requirements, planning the work that needs to get done, and executing on the plan. And by “creating”, I don’t necessarily mean that I am the one physically doing the hands-on work to code software or solder hardware. Creating in product management mainly includes planning, corralling, motivating, and communicating with other teams that actually make the product come to life. And because of that, I am just as involved in marketing, selling, and supporting the product our teams put out into the world as I am in creating them.
As a SE-to-PM transfer, marketing the product is also a new step in the funnel for me. I am amazed at the marketing machine that can live within a large software company. “Marketing” has SO many different disciplines. To name a few of them inside of product marketing, there is: campaign management, brand marketing, public relations, analyst relations, enablement, advertising, go-to-market, market research, user research, competitive research, pricing operations, strategic partnerships, events, … and the list goes on and on. And all of these folks are absolute professionals with deep expertise in how to market to our customers within their own discipline (which helps make my life a heck of a lot easier!)
“Hey…what about product strategy?” I’m glad you asked! Working tactically through each step in the business funnel is all done while also keeping an eye to where the puck is going. As a product manager, I fight to constantly enhance and reinvent our products before they become irrelevant (even if it means cannibalizing our own team’s work). The high-level vision work I had done for years as an SE still exists in product management. It just applies to a broader market now, and not just a single customer.
To summarize the difference between being an SE and PM, consider this analogy: As an SE, I built things using someone else’s tools that they put into my tool belt. I had a hammer, a wrench, and a screwdriver, and I used them to build the best solutions to showcase value to our customers. As a PM, I help to build the tools to put into the other teams’ tool belts. I have to listen to the market and find evidence that the new tool we want to create will actually improve a customer’s experience … and then actually create it, market it, sell it, and support it!
Difference 2: The teams that an SE and PM collaborate with
“Each discipline works together and blends like a beautiful recipe. It’s my job as a product manager to make sure the right ingredients get added at the right time so the finished product tastes delicious.”
My time working as an SE was heavily spent working with my Account Executive (read: salesperson). In my opinion, an SE’s relationship with the Account Executive (“AE”) is the most important relationship they can have. It’s more important than their relationship with their SE Manager because they spend way more time with the AE day-to-day. But SEs work with more than just salespeople. The “account team” often consists of sales leaders, other SEs and SE leaders, customer success managers, value engineering analysts, implementation resources, architects, and more. But largely, my scope as an SE was teaming directly with my account team and other account teams within the company.
As a product manager, the level of cross-functional partners grows exponentially. Here are some of the teams I work with daily: Engineering, Design, Legal, Privacy, Ethics, Program Management, Product Marketing (see breakdown of Product Marketing disciplines above in ‘Difference 1’), Enablement, Customer Success, Support, Content and Documentation, Pricing and Packaging, Sales Operations, Partnerships, and of course, customers!
Working with each of these disciplines has truly given me a glimpse into what it means to build a business from the ground up. Each discipline works together and blends like a beautiful recipe. It’s my job as a product manager to make sure the right ingredients get added at the right time so the finished product tastes delicious. In product management, we call this “stakeholder management”, and let’s just say…it is far more of an art than a science!
Difference 3: The degree of ownership that an SE and PM have
“The product manager carries the bag of the product. If the product team fails, it is the product manager’s fault. And if the product team succeeds, it is because of the product team, and not the product manager.”
Although it was always my goal to help my sales partners crush their quotas, and my personal attitude was always “their quota is my quota”, I never truly experienced the pressure of owning the number quite like they did. Yes, I took it personally when we wouldn’t hit our number as an account team, but one big difference between myself and the AE was that I wouldn’t feel the professional or financial impact of not hitting our goal as hard as they would. The sales engineer is crucial (absolutely essential) to the team’s success, but it’s the salesperson who has the final decision making authority on account-related activities because they are the true owner of the relationship. Even though I tried to act like I “carried the bag”, I never really did.
I like to say the PM is the “Account Executive” of the product team because the product manager is the final decision maker over the products they “own”. They decide the requirements, the tradeoffs, and the overall direction of the product(s) on a day-to-day basis. Each small decision compounds to build the product. But product management is a team sport, and it’s extremely rare to see other members of the product team (like the designers, engineers, etc.) report directly to the product manager. This is what makes the product manager’s job so unique: they must influence, motivate, and empower the product team to create the best product possible without having any direct authority over the team.
The product manager carries the bag of the product. If the product team fails, it is the product manager’s fault (something I take seriously and personally). And if the product team succeeds, it is because of the product team, and not the product manager– after all, they did all of the hard work!
We just covered three differences between the sales engineering and product manager roles. In Part II, we’ll dive into the gaps that exist from SE to PM so you’ll know what to be aware of while making your transition!
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About the Author:
I’m just a Sales Engineer turned Product Manager that’s sharing my experiences with folks who are eager to make a similar transition. Feel free to drop me a note in the comments!
If you enjoyed this article, check out some of these blog posts!
•Presales to Product: A Mini-Series
•Presales to Product Part I: The Three Biggest Differences Between Presales and Product
•Presales to Product Part II: Skill Gaps
•Presales to Product Part III: Skill Overlaps
•Presales to Product Part IV: 3 Practical Actions for Transitioning to Product
