
Ask HN: Sales Engineer – Experiences - ramblerman
I&#x27;m 2 years shy of 40, have been a software engineer till now.<p>The last 5 years I&#x27;ve found myself enjoying social interactions far more, and am intrigued to go into sales engineering. I&#x27;d love to hear from people that did this.<p>What are the skillsets you leverage mostly, do you like it?
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anoojb
Technical Sales is like any sub-specialized role.

For instance, you can have an MD who did their residency in Oncology, then
sub-specialize into Radiation Oncology/Surgery via fellowship study. They take
on additional training and develop experience to fulfill demand.

It can be incredibly rewarding (economically and psychologically) to be deeply
sub-specialized in most domains…with Sales being one of the major exceptions.

Sales is a volume/transaction game. It’s simply a matter of how much you can
do to influence and transact revenue/consumption. You are not rewarded for
deep mastery, your autonomy to learn and develop something impactful is only
as wide as the revenue goals.

If you’re still curious, I would encourage you to make it a short tour of
duty, not a long-term professional path. I am personally interested in moving
back into product/engineering…for one reason —

Leverage. A sales engineer has only one lever to pull, her time. A product
engineer is fundamentally setup (especially in SaaS and zero marginal cost
products) to succeed by virtue of the company creating inherent distribution
and funding mechanisms to support the development and consumption of scalable
product. The economic and psychological rewards are also much greater in
product/engineering roles. This is especially at technology companies.

Experience: Transitioned from product/engineering. Recruited by a well known
CEO for a Technical Sales role. Went through an acquisition and maintained the
Technical Sales role for almost 10 years. Now looking for a
Product/Engineering role.

~~~
jameshush
Wouldn’t the second lever you can pull be your relationships? E.g. a close
friend of mine works as a VP of Sales for EdTech startups. He knows every
person to talk to at every school board. As long as the product is good he can
(and does) bring in millions of dollars in deals with some phone calls and
plane trips.

I can see what you mean by the tech leverage, but in my experience unless
you’re employee number is less than 10 or greater than 100,000 you don’t
really get rewarded or have the power to get rewarded from engineering
changes. I’ve made changes that increased the bottom line directly by $100k+ a
month but still only get a 3% raise unless I have a competing offer. I think
the real trick is striking off as a consultant who charges based on results in
that situation.

~~~
apohn
IME PreSales is not typically based on your direct sales. Your variable comp
typically comes from the overall sales performance of the sales org.

I was at a job where I was the reason we closed a $2M deal. I'm not bragging -
even the customer said it. I got no bonus or raise that year because overall
the sales org didn't hit their target.

On the plus side, the base comp for PreSales tends to be quite good. So even
some basic variable comp on top can give you a nice income. Plus, you can live
in a low COL area and work for a company that pays higher COL salaries.

~~~
jameshush
Great insight! That makes sense. One of my sales engineer friends pulls the
low COL trick too.

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jnwatson
I was a software engineer, then I went into sales engineering for 8 years,
then I went back to engineering.

The specific job role of a SE vary quite a bit by company. Some SEs are always
tied to a salesperson, and some are given free rein to "sell". Another
dimension that varies quite a bit is how much time you have in the office in
preparation vs. meeting with customers.

(As an aside, I'm curious how Covid is impacting sales these days. I used to
fly 6 plane segments a week as an SE.)

The biggest skills are speaking, listening, and thinking on your feet. Reading
people and understanding whether points are landing is super important.

There's a performative aspect to sales which is quite different than a typical
engineering job; it is somewhat akin to doing whiteboard interviews for a
living.

The nice thing about sales is everything is tactical, and there's little long
term planning. The downside is everything is about closing stuff for the
quarter, and every new quarter is a clean slate.

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Draw_Daw
Solution Architect here. Here are a few things you should take into account:

\- You need obviously to know your stuff inside out, especially the technical
side of things.

\- the split between tech knowledge and business knowledge will depend on the
SE position/vertical and company, but do expect at least a 50% / 50%.

\- You need to develop you business skills. This doesn't include only
finance/accounting jargons, but also soft skills such as presenting, talking,
listening, dealing with angry customers, dealing with C-suite..etc.

\- Depending on the job specs, you will spend your time doing the following:
\- Presentations \- PoC \- Demos \- Design and proposal documents \- Costing
for the solution and putting a business case together (I do this in my current
role, but it's rare that you'd need to do it) \- responding to RFP/RFI \-
Working together with the sales team to land new accounts, or penetrate
existing accounts. \- Working with delivery team to estimate project costs or
design feedback.

Some rookie mistakes when beginning as an SE:

\- DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT talk about a solution before you listened to the
customer, understood their pain points and let them speak. Unless they ask a
specific question, try to ask questions and then just listen to them.

\- Talk slowly and with confidence. Know who your audiance is. If they are
business people, prepare yourself and talk about ROI and how the solution will
help them reduce cost, increase sale or make things easier. Do not talk
technical stuff if your audiance doesn't understand it. Your audiance will
mostly not care about frameworks, programing language, or the latest and
greatest AWS service. You need to fight the urge to talk like a nerd, unless
ofcourse the situation requires it.

\- Have a call/meeting with the area sales manager before you go see or talk
to the customer. This is crucial for SE's. Some, and I say some Sales AM are
only interested in their quarter numbers and will try to sell anything to the
customer, even if the solution is not fit for purpose. Its your job to make
sure the solution you are selling fits the customers requirements

I'm writing a guide for SE at the moment and might post it here. But for books
I would suggest: Mastering the technical sales by John Care. Its nothing
groundbreaking but its a good read.

I'm an introvert and actually enjoy working as an SE, but it's not for
everyone. If you don't like dealing with customers and meetings, demos,
writing a lot of documents then it's probably not for you.

The pay is generally quite good depending on the vertical/company.

~~~
apohn
>You need obviously to know your stuff inside out, especially the technical
side of things.

>the split between tech knowledge and business knowledge will depend on the SE
position/vertical and company, but do expect at least a 50% / 50%.

I agree with your post overall, but I'd say there is a much wider variance in
this than indicated in your post. In smaller companies with a smaller sales
force technical skills is very important. In bigger companies, it's entirely
possible to be a "Solution Architect" where all you do is regurgitate talking
points without actually having a good practical understanding of the product
you are selling.

I only say this because it's important to evaluate the type of Sales
Engineering role you want to be in and how much you want to use your technical
skills. Some Sales Engineers primarily interact with technical people. Others
spend most of their time with slides, flowcharts (e.g. Vizio), and managers.
If you want to be in one type of role but end up in the other you'll be
miserable.

>Some, and I say some Sales AM are only interested in their quarter numbers
and will try to sell anything to the customer, even if the solution is not fit
for purpose.

Here's a tough thing. If you are the Sales Engineer assigned to this type of
sales rep, it's your job to peddle this crap to the customer and build demos
and "solutions" that you don't even agree are good fit for the customer use
case. It can really drain you if you are a generally honest person. But that's
what you're paid to do.

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apohn
You didn't ask about this, but I thought I'd tell you since you are coming
from a software engineer background.

The other side of PreSales is Post-Sales Services. Basically, it's your job to
build what Sales/PreSales sold to the customer.

In services you also interact a lot with clients, but it's less sales and your
technical knowledge is more highly valued. You are more likely to become a
trusted advisor. Your customer has already paid, so they know they want a real
defined thing of value and not just have a demo. Finally, since you actually
have to build something and not just an MVP, you use your technical skills.
The major downside is that some jobs are very travel heavy.

A lot of people bounce between PreSales/PostSales before settling on one or
the other. Which one fits best depends on your personality.

~~~
anoojb
This manifests as a technical sales role in the "Customer Success"
organization or a post-sales implementation consulting role in the Services
organization.

It's effectively a "retention" sales role or consulting role for SaaS
companies who value recurring revenue.

It may feel less "sales-y", but ultimately your compensation is usually
dependent on recurring revenue or billed hours.

The experience in these organizations will be highly dependent on the culture
of the technical sales team and the kinds of customers you work to enable.
Which is usually a derivative function of the kind of market your company
addresses.

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Demonsult
I transitioned to sales engineering last year. My software engineering
opportunities had plateaued and I was not interested in management (I hate
meetings). I considered going back to consulting, but health insurance prices
make that impossible.

Part of the job is to make your quirky company appear to be operating smoothly
from a customer point of view. You must give the customer warm fuzzy feelings
about spending lots on your product. A prerequisite of this is to know and be
able to communicate about your specific product domain very well.

I get paid really well for my knowledge and it's very satisfying. The workload
comes in waves and is very different from the grind of coding. If I do want to
code, I can code for my company or the customer.

------
segmondy
depends inside sales or outside sales? if someone is generating the lead and
all you have to do is close it, might be easier. if you have to hit the
pavement and cold call to generate leads, might be tough. you should read up
on sales, as someone else mentioned, there's then the post sales which might
be easier, where you're pretty much running demos and helping them setup
things. lot's of listening and having strong empathy for the customer to know
what problem they are having, being able to communicate clearly so they can
immediately understand the values you are presenting, those I'll say are the
core skills.

