#188 Amazing Interview Stories with a Principal Sales Engineer

Notes:

What are the three biggest ingredients of a successful SE? Find out on this week’s podcast, as we bring on Mike Atkinson.

Mike is the Principal Solution Architect at Armis, and a cybersecurity leader with broad experience in consulting practice management, presales engineering, project management, security policy, network design, and troubleshooting. He has interviewed over 300 sales engineers over the course of his career and he is also an experienced speaker and co-founder of the Chicago Security Meetup.

Key Takeaways:

One of the funniest things Mike has ever done as an SE
What is the role of a principal solution architect or principal sales engineer?
Your circle of influence becomes so much bigger, and you’re basically offloading some of the management work is accurate
How Mike landed in his role today by working on strategic issues, both with product management and strategic initiatives on the sales side
His experience interviewing over 200 people for technical roles
Several reasons Mike enjoys interviewing other potential SEs
What influence do SEs have when it comes to hiring or not hiring an interviewee?
The three biggest ingredients of a successful SE – curiosity, drive, and integrity
What Mike asks every candidate regardless of which position he’s applying for
How he hates and advocates against using pressure tactics
How does storytelling work in a SE-client partner meeting?
Why an interview is like a sales process between you and the company
An SE must be skilled or at the very least, willing and enthusiastic about learning the necessary SE skills

Quotes:

“I want the team to get better. I want to hire people who will help me be better. I want to hire people who will help me make money. And I don’t want to hire people that will be a drag on the organization.” – Mike Atkinson

“The three biggest ingredients of a successful SE are curiosity, drive, and integrity. And if we don’t have all three of those things, nothing else matters.” – Mike Atkinson

“I look for communication skills, especially storytelling. Storytelling is crucial for SEs in my opinion. If they don’t know how to do it, they need to learn.” – Mike Atkinson

“Communication is not just you correctly telling somebody something, it’s also them correctly hearing it, and remembering it. And the way people remember things is through stories.” – Mike Atkinson

“This is people business, it’s not just technology.” – Mike Atkinson

“We are not technical professionals alone. We are technical professionals, and we are sales professionals. And that’s a different mindset, we can be both.” – Mike Atkinson

“The best sales engineers I know are always honing their craft, in technology. And in sales. They’re always doing both every day.” – Mike Atkinson

“It’s hard to find people with a strong technical background, who are even willing to learn sales skills, much less have scaled sales.” – Mike Atkinson