First off, we wanted to thank you all for supporting our Leave No SE Behind initiative. And to show you our appreciation, we’ve decided to highlight three people from the campaign in today’s episode. We’ve already put up their interviews on the website, Linkedin, and on Youtube, but we’re hoping that by featuring them on our podcast, this will open up many opportunities for them to get hired directly or get approached and interviewed.
Brian Anderson has had diverse experience across multiple industries with Fortune 500 companies in reporting, analytics, and project management and is now looking for opportunities in Solutions consulting or Sales Engineering and talk directly with hiring managers and directors of Sales Engineering, and Sales Managers in As A Service industries.
Nirav Dave has worked as a network engineer for 10 years and has entered the Sales Engineering field for over a year with a focus on customer service.
Nicole Zillinger started her career as an account executive and realized later on that she wanted a more customer-facing role where she could leverage code and her passion in technology as well as working directly with product people, so she became a software engineer.
Join me as they share about their individual backgrounds, the specific roles and opportunities they’re looking for, what they bring to the table in terms of skills and expertise, who they’d like to speak with directly, and their roles in the sales process.
Key Takeaways:
- Why Brian believes that as Sales Engineers, we should be customer-focused
- How his role impacts the sales cycle
- How he establishes expectations with sales reps before meeting with customers
- How Nirav keeps himself busy by constantly updating his knowledge, keeping up with people in his industry, earning certifications to further enhance his skills
- Why he started business development as a Shopify expert
- A weakness of Nirav that he is now continuously working on improving
- Why Nicole switched roles from being an account executive to software engineer
- What she is looking for in her next role
- One of the proudest moments in her career
Quotes:
Brian, on how the role of Sales Engineers impacts the sales cycle:
“You need to have that foundation of the problem the customer is trying to solve, maybe it’s increasing revenue, maybe it’s better operations… we’re the ones painting the picture for the customer to visualize their life with the solution, and to build a bridge between where they at, and where they want to go, and clearly illustrate what’s going to happen today, 6 months after implementation, 5 years down the road.”
Nirav, on why he is looking for opportunities as a Sales Engineer:
Networking and technology overall excites me, and if I can combine my skills dealing with customers, as well as my technical skills, Sales Engineering seems to be the perfect role where I could marry the two.
Nirav, on why Sales Engineering isn’t just about being technical:
“Aside from developing your technical skillset, it’s just as important to work on your soft skills.”
Nicole, on what she is looking for in the next role:
“I want a product that I can be passionate about, I want to help customers reach their goals.”
Nicole, on how she took an almost failed opportunity and turned it around:
“This doesn’t need to mean what you think it means, and because I’m so great at building relationships, I had also built relationships with the teams working internally in my company… and I wound up getting credit for one of the biggest sales in my career.”
Connect with them on Linkedin:
Thanks once again for listening to our podcast and supporting our Leave No SE Behind Initiative. To find out more, please check out: https://wethesalesengineers.com/no-se-left-behind-initiative/
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