An inside look at Sales Engineering
The term Sales Engineer generally refers to an individual who helps the sales organization communicate technical value propositions to customers. Preferred candidates are typically technically grounded with strong communications skills and a demonstrated business development mindset, but the responsibilities can vary widely from company to company.
We interviewed Dylan, a Sales Consultant at Tableau Software to shed some light on transitioning into Sales Engineering and how the role differs between two companies.
In your own words, what does a sales engineer do?
A sales engineer is a technical advisor that helps customers understand how a technology or group of technologies can be applied to solve business problems. The core objective of the role is to support a sales team and have customers adopt and purchase more of your technology. To do this you must understand the broader technological landscape, partner with many teams internally, and help identify projects and champions within customers and prospects. Depending on the technology and geography of where you are based, a sales engineer will typically support specific accounts or specific a industry.
How were you drawn to sales engineering?
I originally was on a hardware engineering path but wanted to be more customer facing. An opportunity came across my desk to move into software and work more directly on business processes. I quickly took to the role as it was faster paced, full of creativity and learning, and because I had the opportunity to work with a selection of Fortune 500 companies. After just a few months of being a SE, I found that the role garners a lot of respect. As an expert in my domain, my team and customers valued my perspective and looked to me for input on important decisions. Given this and the fact I was out in the field working with customers, I felt a significant amount autonomy and I immediately found this empowering.
What is the best part about being a SE? The most frustrating?
The reason I have stayed the course and continue to enjoy it is because I am constantly learning and the projects are interesting. Considering the array of challenges that come your way — be it working with a new technology, navigating the politics of a complex customer, building something to address a unique set of requirements, or traveling to a different city our country to work with a specific team, I feel that I am always growing and increasingly becoming a jack of all trades. I also fundamentally love to win so with each sale that my team makes, I feel a sense of accomplishment and pride. On the other side of the coin, as a sales engineer you are an external consultant to your customers and you often are vision painting. This has the benefits of getting to be wildly creative but the tradeoff is that you do not get to own the project and the satisfaction of completing it.
Describe a typical [day/week/month] for you. What types of tasks do you work on, and what kinds of people do you interact with internally and externally?
As my primary responsibilities are to support the sales team and drive revenue, my calendar fills up quickly with customer meetings and internal strategy meetings. In a given week I generally am on site with ~3 customers helping them whiteboard solutions or am working directly in our technologies to help build them out. Often in these meetings we, the sales team, learn of larger initiatives and identify how we can support those efforts. After discovering a business initiative, the next steps are to collect data from the customer, and help build a demonstration of what a potential future state could look like in our technology. Aside from the larger scale projects, I supplement these activities with many virtual meetings ranging from powering-up new business users to regular check-ins with IT teams.
When not working on any of the aforementioned, I am sharpening my technical skills or working on mini-research projects that will help my team or customers. This requires a fair amount of internal networking and cross-team collaboration so I am regularly interacting with sales, marketing, development, support, and our services (post-sales) team.
All in all, there’s is a great diversity of work and I find that stimulating.
How is SE different at Oracle than at Tableau?
The culture of the companies are very different. Oracle is an extremely large company with many products and many teams that specialize in each. Tableau is a mission based company with two products and a goal of helping people see and understand data. This overarching difference impacts the long term strategies for their technologies, the way the companies operate, and even my day-to-day. With Oracle, my job was more focused on creating and delivering demonstrations; with Tableau, the focus is more on educating individuals how to use the products to solve their questions and have them be more self-reliant.
Oracle provided an invaluable foundation teaching me how to sell software and solve business problems, but I enjoy being on the bleeding edge of technology with a smaller company and like the nature of how we work with our customers.
You don’t have a CS degree — Has this created any hurdles for you? If so, how did you overcome them? Would you recommend a CS degree to anyone wanting to be a Sales Engineer?
While I don’t have a background in CS, I do hold a BSEE and MSEE from Santa Clara University. As with any technical education, the most important takeaways are problem solving, adaptability, and a self-starter spirit. That said, proficiency software development is a sound base that many companies may be on the lookout for. A CS degree in this field is definitely a plus but not a requirement.
Speak with directly with Dylan and other professionals about potential careers on Aspire’s Career Education platform.
