Who is a Sales Engineer ?
To be frank I came to know about this profession during my final year of engineering via campus placements. My friends and relatives were familiar with some client facing roles like sales, marketing, support but not about sales engineering.
So let me drill down and explain who is a sales engineer!
To be a successful sales engineer you must have great technical interests and firm business acumen. [It’s a deadly combo ]
An entry level technical sales engineer is also called as a product consultant, pre sales engineer, solution consultant etc.
Difference between Sales and Pre Sales.
First let’s understand the difference between sales and pre sales.
Pre Sales is the technical side of sales. A pre sales person assist the sales team by helping the prospect to understand the value behind buying the product and also clears his technical queries.
In a typical sales cycle, A sales rep does the initial sales pitch and tries to understand the requirements from the client.
After requirements elicitation, a pre sales engineer will understand the requirements and finds a solution that meets the client’s expectation. He communicates his solution via a demo/presentation to the client. Once the client is convinced he buys the product.The sales rep will eventually takes care of this process.
A sales rep and a sales engineer must work together in order to close a deal!
TRAITS OF A SALES ENGINEER.
1.Should possess deep technical knowledge of the product.
Yes, he should know all the nitty-gritty of the product. He must understand and be thorough with the features, benefits, the underlying architecture, implementation details etc of the product.
2. A problem solver.
Client requirement’s are tough,vague and sometimes out of scope. A sales engineer should analyse the requirements of the client and should collaborate with his team or sometimes from other departments in an software company like marketing, development ,product management etc to solve the problem.
3. An excellent story teller.
Story telling is a cognitive play. Nowadays most of the marketers use storytelling to market their products.It helps the clients to understand the product and to remember the pitch. A sales engineer should prepare a story based pitch about the product so that the client won’t forget after the demo/presentation is done!
4.Master the art of “demoing”.
A sales engineer spends most of his time by doing product demo’s to clients.
In a product demo the sales engineer explains how the product actually solves the client’s requirements and stresses how it can add value to the client’s business.
But the term demo is not appropriate with the respect to the nature of a pre sales job. Instead of a product demonstration we can call it as product conversation.
I loved the following article written by Sanjeev NC- “Ban ‘product demos’ -let’s call them conversations”.Please have a look through.
5.Empathetic to the core!
As a product consultant you should understand your client’s feeling while you talk with them. If you are more empathetic to them they start to trust you and like to sustain your conversation with them.
6.Interact with teams from various departments.
When you are in the process of finding a solution to the client’s requirement you need to consult people from cross functional teams like marketing, sales, product management, product development , QA, testing etc. This makes Sales engineering an interesting job.
7. Should have great market research skills.
Every industry is competitive, especially software industry were many heavily funded startups emerge daily. A pre sales engineer should study the product features of a competitor and must know all the latest happenings in the tech industry. He can inform the product management team about the latest tools/technologies used in the market.
Having experience in marketing research is an added bonus!
8.Must respond to RFP/RFI/RFQ.
RFP - Request For Proposal.
RFI - Request For Information.
RFQ- Request For Quotation.
One of the important activities that a sales engineer must carry out is to respond to various RFP,RFI and RFQ’s from clients.
These are my perspectives about sales engineering. Can’t wait to be a full time sales engineer !
