The Sales Engineer Guy

Raising your Industry Profile

2012-01-05T07:02:00.000-05:00

Sales Engineers (and other outwardly focused Technical experts) can help their careers and stature in their own company by raising their industry profile. What I mean by this is make sure that people in the industry respect your opinion and will come to you with questions regardless of the products & services you sell. Obviously this puts you into a privileged position with those people as long

SE Guy Highlights of 2011

2012-01-04T05:11:00.000-05:00

2011 was a busy year, both out in the field and on the blog with 34 new posts. My blogging highlights are: In Presenting the Product Roadmap I discussed how presenting the product roadmap can be a tricky kind of presentation - one that needs to consider your customer's current and future needs very carefully. Types of Sales Engineer Roles discusses the different hats & titles SEs may

How to Answer Sales Engineer Interview Questions

2011-12-29T08:27:00.000-05:00

Getting your first Sales Engineer job can be tricky - particularly if you can't get that sort of position in your current company. The interview - Razvan Caliman To get one, you will need to prove that your current experience shows that you can do the job and will be a low risk option. Remember, everyone should have some kind of experience that proves you can sell something. A sales

Sales Engineers - look back at 2011

2011-12-28T06:14:00.002-05:00

For some of you, this is the end of your financial year. Even if it isn't, it is probably a good time to look back at the year and think of ways of doing things even better. Happy New Year to all SEs - picture by Billy Alexander My GM likes us to always think of the following things after a meeting: What did we do well? What did we not do well? How could we improve next time? I think

Sales Engineers: Present YOUR Way & Make your own Slides

2011-12-14T11:13:00.001-05:00

10 Excellent slideshows showing how you should present to an audience. FOLLOW and get inspired! Think you can do better than your corporate marketing slides? Just do it!

Stuck in RFP hell

2011-12-12T11:05:00.004-05:00

I've been a bit quiet lately - its because I am stuck in RFP hell. At least almost - more like purgatory... . This RFP at least is well qualified - we know why they are writing it, and have been asked to respond. We even believe we are the main influence on its contents. Lets hope this is enough to get ahead. In general the less you know about an RFP or if you haven't been aware that it

What is the ROI of Sales Engineers?

2011-12-08T04:40:00.001-05:00

Businesses often ask what the ROI (Return on Investment) is of something, before spending money on it. Sales Engineering is an example - of course the prediction and calculation of ROI is quite a tricky subject. ROI growth - Image by Christian Ferrari Financially speaking, an ROI is about the performance of investments - which to a company are Assets that go on the balance sheet. An SE is a

How to (not) Oversell!

2011-12-05T07:09:00.001-05:00

How often do you hear after a deal has been signed with a customer that people decide something has been oversold? Overselling - Copyright penywise 2008 Hopefully not too often. Overselling is when the customer experience post-sale doesn't meet their expectations of the agreement. When you have the opportunity, make sure your customers are happy with the result, and that any step that they

Free Sales Engineering Resources on the Web

2011-11-30T18:34:00.000-05:00

Free SE online resources: There are a number of fantastic resources to help you become a better SE. Remember, great SEs develop themselves, they aren't produced or trained by any college or school that I know of. Normally you have to go out there and learn it for yourself. Books (EmZed Copyright 2006) So much training that SEs receive is aimed either for technical audiences or for Sales

Sales Engineers: Presenting the Product Roadmap

2011-11-29T05:05:00.001-05:00

Sometimes a Sales Engineer has to do that special kind of presentation - the Product Roadmap. The trick to this is to show a strong future, but not a weak current product. The Product Roadmap (Photo Michiru Maeda 2011) There are 3 main things you need to get across: Your future product aligns well with the customer/prospect's needs There is excellent value in paying their maintenance

Don't let your Engineers be Assholes!

2011-11-28T04:04:00.001-05:00

Today there is a very important message and key to everyone in the sales team. It surely will increase your word of mouth influence and ensure your company is seen as positive to all of your customers. I must warn you, today's post goes into the use of some mildly strong language - please don't be offended - I don't want to be the one thing I am trying to post against today! I stumbled onto

Be suspicious of the big software vendors

2011-11-24T03:08:00.001-05:00

Suspicious of the big software vendors? Here is why you should be: Business Insider: What Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, And SAP Don't Tell Customers

How Saving a Lost Deal saved my Sales guy his Job!

2011-11-22T05:33:00.001-05:00

Sometimes you don't feel like you are hearing the right things from a prospect. It could be a spider sense tingling you get. You just don't think you are getting through to them, like you normally would. This article at entrepreneur magazine goes through several important ways to tell if you are losing a deal, and how you might still save it: Entrepreneur magazine How to tell if you are

VBScript To Send Email Using CDO

2011-11-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

I recently found Paul Sadowski's scripting help on sending emails from VB script in Windows very helpful in testing configuration on a new SMTP server during a customer POC. I made sure that I sent emails to my phone so I could show them to the customer as they arrived! http://www.paulsadowski.com/wsh/cdo.htm

The New Software Pricing Model: Can the Older Giants Compete?

2011-11-16T06:41:00.001-05:00

The Motley Fool is getting into software licensing? Actually they are talking about whether the old dinosour companies with old licensing models can keep up with the trend for more fluid licensing models. Motley Fool: New Software pricing - can the older giants stay competitive? If the investment community is opening their eyes to the differences a new license model can make, and new ways

Travel tips for Sales Engineers

2011-11-06T11:06:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I find it hard to optimize is the soft perks of all the travelling you do as a sales engineer. With a bit of planning and joining the right flying partners you can quickly take advantage of the points on offer and fund your holidays and personal life - which might help make up for the work travel. The Points Guy! The Points Guy offers some great advice in setting up the right

What is a Sales Engineer (SE)?

2011-10-18T06:11:00.002-04:00

A Sales Engineer is a part of a technology sales team, for an organisation trying to sell Hardware, Software or Services. The sales engineer's role is to ensure the technical part of this sale removes any obstacles and helps ensure the deal happens with a good value to the seller. There can be different types of SE roles and ways of structuring an SE organisation. Types of Sales Engineer Roles

5 Easy steps: How to do a Great Tech Demo!

2011-10-18T05:40:00.002-04:00

One of the key things that a Sales Engineer can do well, that a gifted development engineer or consultant cannot, is present the product/solution to a mixed audience of technical and business buyers and ensure that it is at the same time compelling and interesting to all parties. How do you do this? 1. Make the demo SEXY! OK, maybe sexy is too strong a word for this, but ensure that you

Compensation: Do you earn a healthy commission as a Sales Engineer?

2011-10-07T04:15:00.001-04:00

I recently have been asked by a colleague if more senior SEs really get a higher proportion of their compensation as commission. I found the following article at Monster.Com Salary Commission guide: Sales Engineer which is actually sourced from data at payscale.com - real life data. They are grouping the median pay and commission by numbers of years in the company. My graph below shows bar

How should SEs be Compensated?

2011-10-04T05:31:00.001-04:00

What is the best way to pay your Sales Engineers? Are the SEs part of a sales team, do they work on their own, are they part of services? Most SEs should be closely aligned with Sales to ensure they maximize the value that they add. As such, each SE team has the target of supporting particular sales people, who have their own targets that they are aiming for. The SE team will feel closely

Types of Sales Engineer Roles

2011-09-30T09:29:00.000-04:00

Instead of just being demo dollies, SEs or Sales Engineers come in all sorts of different types and roles. Some sales organisations need many of the same kind, while other organisations need or have a variety of different roles. For many SEs, these descriptions may overlap or be interchanged, however in other organisations there is a strict demarcation of the roles. Subject Matter Expert (SME

Types of Virtualisation

2011-09-29T08:25:00.000-04:00

I was sent this one by a colleague today, but it is an excellent explanation of the different kinds of Virtualisation as defined by Microsoft as: Server Virtualisation Desktop Virtualisation Presentation Virtualisation Application Virtualisation Types of Virtualisation

Technology: Are you ready for Windows 8?

2011-09-27T08:39:00.003-04:00

Who is ready for Windows 8? Most companies I talk to are barely ready for Windows 7. The key challenges being the compatibility problems with existing apps. With Windows 8, it brings along a whole new User Interaction concept called Metro, which is about touch and tablet style interactions. How much use do we get of this in the office environment? Will we be using Windows 8 primarily on

Sales Engineer Skills - Shut up and Listen!

2011-09-22T05:16:00.002-04:00

Over at Mastering Technical Sales, there is an excellent PDF article on Shut Up And Listen. Listening is one of the most important parts of Selling, and of Sales Engineering. It is more important than talking, more critical than knowing the right answers, and more important than being able to fix someone's problem. If you find you are speaking more than about 20% of the time in a meeting -

Forbes: Is Oracle Considering Buying HP?

2011-08-23T05:21:00.001-04:00

Now this would be a huge shake up of the IT sector - and what would be the pros and cons if Oracle buys HP? Pros Another platform that people use to run Oracle - HPUX - would be owned by Oracle Oracle would suddenly have a ton of consumer users buying Printers, Tablets, Laptops and Desktops SEs in both companies should prove to be more valuable - in cross selling opportunities. ConsDoes