Section 1: Introduction
https://www.udemy.com/course/mesecert/learn/lecture/4238862#overview
Section 2: What is a Sales Engineer?
https://www.udemy.com/course/mesecert/learn/lecture/3658756#overview
A member of a Sales Team whose specialty is a deep understanding of their company’s solution portfolio, and is adept as positioning those solutions to solve customers business issues, thus creating value and revenue generation.
Soft Skills
- Business Acumen (keenness and depth of perception, discernment, or discrimination especially in practical matters)
- Presentation skills
- Customer Relationships
- Engagement strategies
- Understanding of target industry
Who is a Sales Engineer
- Industry Expert
- Your business’s industry
- This includes your competitors!
- trends and translations? occurring
- Builds credibility
- Your business’s industry
- Technical Expert
- Know the products and complete portfolio
- Compliance standards & process
- Use this to make sales
- Company Expert
- works with various inter-company departments
- Business Expert
- Astute with financial modeling
- Business strategy
- Communication within all levels of both internal and client’s organizations.
Optimal Personalities
- Accountable
- Knowledgeable*
- Credible*
- Responsive
- Effective Communication
- Creative
- Technical aptitude
* Especially by their sales person. Don’t blow the sale before it’s begun!
Who do SE work with?
Most depts. within their org. One of the few people that fully experiences a product’s full lifecycle, from discovery of a product opportunity through implementing that solution for the client.
- Sales
- Executives
- Get buy in for new products
- Non-standard contract terms
- Specially priced solutions
- Product Development Teams / Product Marketing
- Project Management / Product Implementation
Organizational Role of an SE
- Partner with Sales Person to meet customers and identify opportunities
- Work with Product Managers and other Stakeholders to
- Validate technical solutions
- Determine supportability & feasibility
- Work with Product Management / Pricing Group to determine solution pricing
- May participate in Product Development
Bottom line: The SE’s role is to design valuable customer solutions that generate revenue!
Wrap Up
- Integral role within a technology company
- Highly skilled
- Professional
- Respected
- Valued
- Transferable skills
Section 3: The 5 Pillars of Sales Engineering
https://www.udemy.com/course/mesecert/learn/lecture/3658758#overview
Sales Engineering – The 5 Pillars
Strategic Sales Process – There’s a reason why SALES is the first word of the title.
- Discover
- Qualify
- (BANT)
- (Needs Analysis)
- Develop
- (Demo / POC)
- Close
- Transition
Discovery Pillar
Partner with your Sales Person. Make take one meeting or several weeks worth of meetings.
Discovery Sessions (meetings) are critical to any technical sales process.
- Projects
- Goals
- Business Issues
Who to meet with?
Don’t just meet with one person!
Who am I meeting with?
Examples:
- CIO / CFO
- IT Director
- Marketing Director
- Customer Service Director
Why am I meeting with this person?
- Tailor your meeting to that person
- Design your open ended questions towards their role in the Org.
- CFO – Financial aspects and preferences
- Do you prefer to purchase CapEx (one chunk) or OpEx (spread out over time)
- Understand the buying process
- Is this person part of the buying process
- Network Architect
- Don’t tell the DC manager to move HIS JOB to the cloud!
- CFO – Financial aspects and preferences
Conversational Goals
These are what you are hoping to solve with your solution design
- Understand Business Issues
- Technical Issues
- Business Demands
- Technical Demands
Get to know how the technology works with their company and learn how it aligns with their business goals and strategies.
“Go deep and go wide” within your customer’s organization.
Research is KEY
Get to know how the technology works with their company and learn how it aligns with their business goals and strategies.
“Go deep and go wide” within your customer’s organization.
- Never go into a meeting blind!
- Know the people you’re meeting with
- Know their industries
- Know their business trends
Resources for Research
Do not completely rely on your Sales person’s research. Do your own!
- LinkedIn
- Individuals
- Company page
- Possible Financial Reports if public
- Maybe find “Investor Relations” on website/LinkedIn
- Other media outlets
- Peruse their websites
- Check company’s job listings.
- If selling Cloud Computing and you see an opening for a Cloud Engineer:
- They either are already using it
- Are purposefully moving in that direction.
Discovery Framework – Storyboard
Gather as much information as possible & keep it as simple as possible
Using the Storyboard
- One template per meeting / dept.
- Work from bottom up (as listed)
- Customer Environment
- Business Trends
- What is happening in the customer’s business world.
- Challenges
- top projects
- goals
- resource issues
- competitive pressures
- Demands on Business
- Financials of current solution or what are they doing/cost impact
- Hard costs (actual $ – but $ figures are not required.)
- Soft Costs – “What would it cost you …”
- If you didn’t have this solution in place?
- If your current solution was to fail?
- Proposed Solution
- Tells the solutions story
- Engage the client / prospect
- OK to draw on a white board!
- Prepare Open Ended questions in advance and use in conjunction with Story Board process
- See attachment above
- Create a compelling image.
Qualify Pillar
Purpose: To ensure your solution, and it’s value, are qualified with both the prospect’s environment and your company’s internal environment.
- Meet with additional Technical staff to
- Garner buy-in
- Garner: To gather and store, acquire
- Understand prospect’s current and perceived future environment.
- Garner buy-in
- Validate
- Validate the supportability of the solution
- Use your storyboard, along with other do
- Resolve, if possible, any external or internal roadblocks.
- Verify unique design support with Product Management?
- Validate the supportability of the solution
- Solution
- Translate the customer’s pain points into solutions
- Always attempt to solve a prospect’s issues with your solution.
- Use your storyboard, along with other support documents to help tell your solutions story.
- Diagrams
- Flowcharts
- Translate the customer’s pain points into solutions
Develop Pillar
Developing the solution will help you position your solution correctly and prove its value.
During this stage, you’ll be meeting with the prospect and making presentations. This meeting can make or break a sale!
- Position
- Thoroughly articulate how your solution solves business issues
- Why this solution is better than the current, or alternative, solution
- Uncover & Overcome objections
- Prove
- Provide Documents to build value propositions
- Diagrams
- Financial Modeling
- Demonstrate how the solution solves the business issues by providing:
- Use cases
- Pilot if available
- Provide Documents to build value propositions
Close Pillar
If all went well up to now, this should be the easiest phase! All objectives should be overcome.
- Concurrence (Agreement in opinion)
- Provide references
- Contractual discussions/redlining
- Close
- Contract signature!
- You really should understand the customer’s buying process prior to getting to this point if possible!
Transition Pillar
- Technical Documents / Calls
- SE may need to complete technical documents or lead transition calls to ensure the integrity of the sold design throughout the implementation process
- Detail is critical, especially for unique solution designes
- Client’s needs and expectations should be clearly articulated to all members of the implementation team.
- Move Order
- SE’s typically pass on technical documents and their design to others who pick up the solution and move it through the implementation process.
- Ensure each design element is captured and explained thoroughly to the implementation team.
- Introduce client to the post-sales organization
- At times, the SE is the one who performs the implementation support as well.
- SE’s typically pass on technical documents and their design to others who pick up the solution and move it through the implementation process.
Business Development – The 6th Pillar?
Keep tabs with your customer base!
- Routine Inquiries
- Ensure ongoing customer satisfaction and eventual realization of sold solutions
- Cultivate relationships that can assist with future sales and references.
- Industry Events & Organizations (You are a specialist in your industry!)
- Join & Volunteer to speak at local industry organizations
- Offer training to the business community
- Build & Maintain relationships with industry experts
- Leverate the online community
- Tech blogs
- Leverage and maintain partner & vendor relationships
Section 4: Soft Skills
Difference between Good Sales Engineer and a Great Sales Engineer
- Good Sales Engineer
- Knows the technology very well
- Great Sales Engineer
- Knows the technology very well
- Uses “Soft Skills”
- Executes 5 Pillars
- Especially Develop Pillar
- Articulates Valuable Solutions
- Customers make purchases that bring value to their organizations and meet business goals.
What are the Soft Skills
Consciously focus on these!
- Business Acumen
- Presentation Skills
- Customer Relationships
- Industry Knowledge / Competitive Landscape
How to master Soft Skills
- Realize their Importance
- Recognize their Value
- Practice, Practice, Practice!
- Toastmasters?
- Research
- Continual Education
- Seek a Mentor!
Business Acumen
- Financial Literacy – show
- TCO: Total Cost of Ownership
- TCO Sample Model
- Used to compare solutions
- Existing vs new
- 2 competing new solutions
- Examples:
- Hardware expenses
- Operational expenses
- Soft Costs
- …
- ROI: Return on Investment
- ROI Template
- Used to demonstrate how, over time, a solution will, save the prospect money.
- At what point will the expense cover it’s own cost?
- TCO: Total Cost of Ownership
- Strategic Thinking
- Anticipate what may be coming
- Have a peripheral view that is greater than what is in front of them.
- Anticipate issues
- Objections
- Competitive Threats
- Critical Thinking (Subset of Strategic Thinking)
- Challenges current mindsets
- Make attempt to get to the root cause of things.
- Customer solution that requires a non-standard design.
- Will it prove profitable?
- Constant Learning
- Practice humility
- Be confident and credible
- Do Not Be A Know It All!
- Heirarchical Flexibility
- Knowing how to speak to all levels of an organization.
- Do not be in denial when bringing value to all levels of meetings.
- Practice Practice Practice again! Get comfortable with these meetings.
- Physical appearance is REQUIRED!
- Over dress vs. Underdress!
- Do your Research!
- Process Orientation
- ??
Presentation Skills
Especially critical during the Develop Pillar. Practice this as well!
- Relevant Content
- Don’t present on a topic the audience has no interest in.
- Present your solution in a format that:
- Articulates the solution
- And a cle
- Clear Value Proposition
- Present your solution in a format that:
- articulates the solution AND
- offers a clear value proposition that matches your prospects story.
- Discovery and Qualify Pillars
- Present your solution in a format that:
- Confident
- Audience Tailored
Build Credibility & Relationships
You must have the first 3 to be GREAT!
- Approachable
- Never attack others when they bring different ideas to you.
- Responsive
- Accountable
- Technical Confidence (Given)
Know your Industry
- Who are your competitors?
- What exactly do they do that is the same or different from you?
- Industry Trends
- Industry Changes and Transformations
Know your Customers Industry!
- Customer Industry Research
- How does your customer stack up to their competitors?
- Customer Industry Trends
- Customer Industry Changes and Transformations
Wrap Up
- Business Acumen
- Presentation Skills
- Customer Relationships
- Know your Industry
- Competitive Landscape
- Know your Customer’s Industry
Section 5: Case Study & Tools
- Putting it all Together – Case Study Tools
- Putting it all Together – Open Ended Questions Answers
- Putting it all Together – ROI
- Putting it all Together – Storyboard