Books I would love to have read when starting as an SE

Today my younger daughter is learning how to fly a small plane. And doing and practising is key, no doubt. But I do not want her to crash when flying! Therefore she goes to an aeroclub and flies with an instructor, and she has to read and study a lot of theory. Thanks to this method, she can quickly learn the basics without fear of crashing into the ground.

As I wrote, I started as an accidental presales. I learnt by copying my colleagues and by trial & error. However, isn’t there a better way to learn without the risk of failing in front of a customer?

If you start your presales career today, in a company with a mature presales organization, you will be put into an onboarding plan with objectives for the next 30–90–180 days. A good onboarding plan will cover all the basics, but potentially, many things could be left out. And I wish I had access to these materials when I started:

What does it mean to be a presales? And how do you steer your career? Or they are asking me to master *storytelling*, industry knowledge, competitive information, and being an orchestrator, Which ones are the most critical?

• In Mastering Technical Presales, John Care and Aron Bohlig define what means to be a technical salesperson. With a lot of practical advice on how to pursue and evolve your career: do you want to be a fellow or a people manager? What’s important for each role?

I have a first meeting with a client, what do I ask? How will I prepare for that *discovery* meeting?

• Are you insecure about your discovery skills? Or your organization is immature, then pick Doing Discovery, Peter E. Cohan. Use his recommendations to bring a plan for discovery improvements to your manager. By the way, this is a way to move forward in your career.

I know the product (achieved the minimum certifications), but still, my presentation lacks the wow effect, are there practical tips to improve it?

• Last week you were deep coding or architecting a solution and tomorrow you have to make a presentation: terrified? Then you are lucky: a lot has been written, and more have been put into videos or podcasts, but in Just F\*\ing Demo, by Rob Falcone; Great Demo, by Peter E. Cohan; and Demonstrating to Win, by Robert Riefstahl, you will find a lot of practical advise if you are not confident of your presentation skills. And believe me, even the most confident presales need to rehearse the basics every time.
• Frameworks are good, and Made to Stick, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, provides a very good one to test if your presentations are memorable. Are you technical? Then you love frameworks and patterns. So, you will like this book.
• Who does not love Pixar movies? If you do not, Pixar’s course on storytelling still is worth watching: Pixar in a Box — Storytelling

How do I manage the most critical relationship in this job? Guess with whom? If you have guessed the account executive, then yes, you are spot on.

• However with some overlap with Mastering…, Becoming the Go To Sales Engineer, by Brad Towers, adds another dimension of the core things in the role and puts a lot of emphasis on developing your sales mindset (if you are coming from a technical background)

They ask you to be a thought leader and an influencer, and many more things!

• Today is all about branding, and whatever level of exposition you would like to achieve, in The Social Sales Engineer, Patrick Pissang gives much-needed advice to anyone born way before social was a thing.

Feel free to download a deck with the titles and share it with your colleagues!