#213 Finding The Right PreSales Role to Make You Happy

Notes:

So you’re a sales engineer—what does that mean?

Sales Engineering differs from company to company, industry to industry, and even individual to individual. The great thing about being a sales engineer is that there are so many ways to be one.

It’s important to understand what makes the organization successful, and what makes the individual happy.

My guest this week is Amber L. Fallon. Amber went through a few SE roles before her current positions. Some were great, some she did not enjoy. We discuss why that is, and what folks can do to understand what they want in a Sales Engineering role.

Key Takeaways:

Growing up being surrounded by tech and getting her first sales engineering position in 2015
How to define being happy and comfortable in your job
Why Amber left her first sales engineering role
The core of what makes Amber personally happy is customers that she can relate to and the stories she can tell
How Amber convinced her previous employees to take the risk of hiring her even when she was new to the industry
Why she prefers working in marketing technology as compared to working in IT
The role of an SE in a prolonged sales cycle
Why Amber didn’t quite enjoy working in a company that dealt with very long sales cycles
How Amber draws the line between being very helpful with customers versus actually selling to the customers
What makes Amber really happy in her current sales engineering role today
How Amber separates her work from her everyday life now that she’s working from home
Why it’s so important to set boundaries very early on in order to achieve work-life balance
What challenges Amber today that may keep her from being optimistic and happy all the time
A time when Amber was tied to a 1:20 SE to AE ratio and how she dealt with all of that
What should be the ideal SE:AE ratio in Amber’s opinion?
What makes a team a great team?
The biggest challenge Amber faced in her role as a sales engineer

Quotes:

“If I don’t believe in something, I can’t sell something. So I couldn’t be an effective sales engineer for a product I would never use for never had any relationship or experience with.” – Amber Fallon

“The ability to walk the walk, it’s something that’s really important as a sales engineer. If you’re going to put yourself in a position where you’re talking to somebody about their day to day activities, and how your tool can really help them and make their lives easier or better or faster, more efficient, you really need to be able to speak to a place of understanding. I need to be able to convince prospects that I know what their job is, what they’re doing and what they’re going through.” – Amber Fallon

“My goal in life is to make whatever situation, circumstance or place that I happen to be in better than it was before I got there.” – Amber Fallon

“I try to apply that philosophy to constant change. Whether that is we have made a change in the product, or we need you to make a change in the product, or brand new use case, or completely redoing the POC, all of that you can kind of spin as it’s experience, you’re helping somebody out, you’re helping your sales team, just finding the silver lining and kind of clinging on to that sometimes even when it’s really really thin on the edge of that clouds, sometimes you just got to cling to it.” – Amber Fallon

“If you always look for the bright spot, that’s what you’re going to find. If you’re always looking for the dark clouds, you’re gonna see more dark clouds, even if we’re looking at the same picture.” – Amber Fallon

“Sales engineer isn’t just a job title, it’s like a slider bar. So you’re gonna fall somewhere either closer to the sales side or closer to the engineering side. Some people may be more salesy, have more business acumen, some people may be more technical, you can work in those directions if that’s something you want the understanding that is huge to the success and happiness of the sales engineering organization.” – Amber Fallon