#190 The Perfect Career to Be there for Your Family

Notes:

Are you a director of sales engineering? Or are you an individual contributor, trying to figure out how to get promoted?

In this episode of We the Sales Engineers Podcast, I interview the Director of Solutions Consulting at Elastic Path, Julie Mall. She shares her tips to help you understand what it takes to be successful as an individual contributor and how to transition into management. We also discuss what it takes to be a good manager and leader in your organization.

Key Takeaways:

How Julie discovered sales engineering by way of consulting
The difference in her interactions between customers before and after becoming a sales engineer
Julie’s experience working from individual contributor to director of solutions consulting
Why she believes sales engineering is the best job for a working mother
How Julie manages to walk the thin line between working too much and hardly ever getting any work done
Was it a huge sacrifice to make when she decided to leave her role as director to become an individual contributor at a new company?
Why her learnings and takeaways as an individual contributor actually helped Julie become a better manager or director of sales engineering
Some of the things that she does for her SEs that they might not be aware of
Extra activities that mostly take up time but are not really necessary or unrelated to their role as sales engineers
Julie’s advice to her employees who would like to take up a leadership role in the future
Where to start with if you plan to join the leadership roster of your company
How are leaders measured differently aside from helping the team hit quota
What is employee engagement?
Qualities Julie looks for in someone who wants to take up a leadership role
What were Julie’s criteria in choosing which company to work in?
Questions you should be asking your interviewers that would help you decide better if that company is fit for you

Quotes:

“One of the great things about coming out of consulting into sales engineering was hands-on experience with the product, exposure to what customers were successful doing or struggle doing. And I think that lent a sort of credibility to those interactions I would have with customers was that experience.” – Julie Mall

“I decided to move from a management role into an individual contributor role, but I knew the company I was going to, would have a lot of opportunities available. And so I thought, well, individual contributor, prove yourself, and then the timing between my personal goals, life, family life balance, and opportunity would likely align at some point and they did.” – Julie Mall

“I would start first by asking what is it about leadership that’s interesting to you? Is it simple career progression or do you really like the mentoring aspect? Or what is the attraction to leadership, and, you know, I’ve worked with some folks who really just want to be individual contributors are really, really good at what they do, and they know it, and that’s great. And that’s what they want to focus on.” – Julie Mall

“If I get too far away from the customer and too far away from the product, and too far away from what’s happening on the ground, then for me, it’s not doing what I love about the job, which is helping software companies be successful selling products. So for me, that’s what’s important..” – Julie Mall

“There’s a lot of stuff that happens in a leadership role that nobody talks about, it’s not the funnest stuff that you do. So I would just encourage folks who are interested to ask themselves why that is and try and get the experience that would prepare you for the role and take advantage of that.” – Julie Mall

“I always ask a lot of questions about, how have you worked with sales engineers in the past? What’s your vision of how that relationship should work? I’m trying to find alignment there. And that’s, that’s super important to me.” – Julie Mall