How Sales Engineers / Presales Consultants can improve their productivity and increase their revenue impact contribution?

I invite every Sr. Developer or Delivery Consultant out there to try their hands at a sales engineer role, this role comes with endless possibilities (literally). If you are a matured people’s person and not in love with yourself, you will do great at this role.

Also, if you are a sales engineer currently not yielding desired results, then follow the simple steps covered here. Make this your bible and you will almost always do right by your company and your customers.

Essentially, you require a simple combination of 1) average intelligence 2) high emotional intelligence. The requirement of a high emotional intelligence is because people love working with high EQ people.

I have just finished 7 years working as a presales engineer, although I have a senior consultant title, I’m just a glorified sales engineer at heart. Prior to that, I have been a developer/consultant for IDS (Oil n gas software company), Swinburne University, Juris Technologies and Nimbustratus.

In this article, I will share with you timeless recipes to become a great sales engineer (trust me I know this, over the years the AEs I worked with seldom missed their quotas – not trying to take all the credit, just a humble brag. I’m self deprecating almost all the time, if you know me, you know this.)

1. Laser focus on a technical discovery

After an opportunity gets lodged into Salesforce and before the opportunity gets moved to a ‘POC’ stage, you should execute a simple yet comprehensive technical discovery to familiarise yourself with the customer requirements, their ecosystem, their unique challenges and processes. The technical discovery format may vary depending on a vendor solution, however, in essence it stays the same. I’ve worked on release automation platform, service virtualisation stack, app monitoring, mobile analytics and software intelligence platforms, however, the tech discovery step didn’t change and potentially ever important for a sales engineer. Your solution should make the life of your customer better (regardless of their title – developer, SRE, analyst, engineering manager, practice lead, C-suite) and your job is to capture a success criteria and client’s architectural understanding during this phase.

2. Create a POC process (randomisation is expensive).

In other words, productise your POC process, stop the re-invention of wheel for each customer engagement, you’ll burn out I promise.

I have a set POC process to date and I execute it in 3 simple steps:

Collection phase:

In this phase, I execute mutual activities with the customer, even if the customer prefers a self-service trial. I guide them with the best practices for enabling data collection from their environments. Before this phase begin, share an easy-to-navigate success criteria sheet with the customer.

Activation phase:

In this phase, I share my specialist knowledge that can’t be learned by simply skimming through our management console. I re-visit the use-cases I captured in the tech discovery phase as a success criteria and perform a quick gap analysis and notify all involved stakeholders on those gaps.

Presentation phase:

In this phase, you should ideally spend more time preparing. However, the secret recipe is to perform micro-presentations in the first two phases so that you validate the outcomes along the way. Before the final preso or wrap, meet your key stakeholder (buyer) and validate a successful outcome once again before the preso. The idea isn’t necessarily to blow the socks off through a compelling preso (I’ll go with it if it happens), it is to ensure that things don’t get lost in translation and you get your technical validation.

3. Become a customer champion

Tools don’t solve enterprise problems, partnerships do. Don’t think of yourself as a vendor resource, but a partner. A partner goes over and above to have a customer successful and doesn’t wrap an engagement but continues to keep in touch with the customer to solve their hairiest problems (assist them in their moment of truth). I totally get it that we all have limited hours and we can only spend so much time with a prospect. I recommend that you spend most time with the customer who needs your most; your technology is new to them; their resources are limited and they have the budget to buy your technology. Even though, I sound a little selfish, to truly help a customer that customer has to buy your tech and make it a part of their daily tasks, otherwise you would simply bring them temporary joys that wouldn’t provide any savings or revenues.

Be customer obsessed not competition obsessed. I see way too much time being spent focusing on competition, frankly I don’t care about the competition because I believe in the value we can add and I stay honest about it. If the tech I represent and the consulting we provide can’t improve my customers life than knowing about my competition’s abilities and inabilities is futile. Also, this one can’t be emphasised enough ‘know thy demo’. Remember, you’re not the focus, it’s your tech or platform which is the focus.

4. Challenge the sales team on properly qualifying an opportunity

This is to help the sales team help themselves and not to slow them down. Without a standard qualification process, especially in a company that has no shortage of leads, sales team (who aren’t tech savvy) won’t fully understand the prospects needs (can’t blame the sellers, the tech landscape is ever-changing, even technos are falling back). Hence, this step must be executed as an equal partner. Yes, sales has more at stake (50% of their yearly revenue minimum) but a smart seller let’s the propeller heads (customer and you) get along like icing on a cake. Hence, double check that your solution is really needed and there are real pain points to alleviate.

5. Don’t assume the success criteria passed on by an Account manager

This goes back to my previous point, however, more importantly your prospect won’t be able to share all the criteria in a single meeting, these criteria mutate pretty fast due to lots of moving parts for our prospects (organisational transformation, adoption of new tech stack, change in team structure etc). Hence, you’re really discovering the fullness of the success criteria along the POC journey.

6. Support Account executives in closing the deals

Don’t pull out of the engagement as soon as the technical validation is achieved, once Account executive get into commercial negotiation phase, continue to provide your feedback, even if it’s not asked for. Remember, the buyers are mostly technologists and they think like a sales engineer, do not undermine your role as a cog in the wheel. In the course of a POC/Pilot engagement, you’ll get a vantage point into an opportunity and you’ll always end up playing a critical part.

7. Follow a WKPT methodology

For every opportunity (POC), have a simple framework:

W – who wants the POC delivered

K – who knows the environment best

P – who has privileges or access to the environment

T – who has time to work with you

Without having the above information at your hands, don’t start the engagement.

8. Be a master of analogy

The account manager and SE are like two Coppers (police) who are partners in it all and should have each other’s back. If you don’t feel you’re partners, leave that organisation or work with another AE who has that mentality. Same goes for the AE, if you don’t gel with your SE, change right away. I know it’s easy said than done, but work with your leadership on this part. I digress. People loves stories and analogies, it’s how the best teachers out there explain the most complex theories and workings. Be a sensei of analogy. Pick up attributes from the best in your business.

Lastly, enjoy the process otherwise why even do it in the first place. Remember, these are just my curated top favourites, there are many other contemporary techniques to amplify your impact on your customers and your organisation.

Hope this will be helpful and some of my nuggets resonated with you and you’ll apply them in your presales/sales life. If you liked this article, please leave a comment/feedback and hit some claps up. I’ll really appreciate as this will continue to motivate me to share the knowledge that many companies guard and charge 1000s of dollars for.

LinkedIn: nikmjain #monitorjain