Blog
Notes:
Sales engineers are the athletes of the business world. But while athletes receive hours and hours of training before launching into their careers, sales engineers are expected to perform well on their first day at work and they get almost zero training before we start.
I’ve talked about this conundrum many times in this podcast, but today we’ll get a bit deeper into this conversation.
This episode of the Sales Engineering Podcast tackles what sales and presales enablement is, why it sucks in most companies, and what should be done about it. If you are a sales engineer deep in the industry, you’ll find this episode extremely useful
Listen as I teach you how to get better at the job even if your employer fails to onboard or enable you properly.
Key Takeaways:
- What sales and presales enablement is
- Why a good manager is critical in sales enablement
- Why presales enablement has been an afterthought for most companies
- Why presales training is only great in a vacuum
- Why do salespeople get disproportionate training compared to account managers
- How newly hired sales engineers are onboarded in the first few weeks
- The importance of familiarizing yourself with the benefits of your product instead of their functions
- The lack of mentorship for new SEs
- The politics of mentorship
- How to continuously learn to get better as an SE
- Why companies should invest more time and resources in training and coaching their SEs
- The lack of coaching for salespeople and SEs
- Why all companies should have a presales enablement team
- The value of a coach who watches demo tapes
Quotes:
I think these training [presales training] are great in a vacuum. And I think Mike Tyson once said ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.’ — Ramzi Marjaba
If you have a company that has 20–30 products that SEs have to know, two months or two weeks is not enough to get in-depth training and everything. — Ramzi Marjaba
SEs are usually assigned a mentor: some are really helpful, some really love helping other people, and many want the best for the new SE. But in many cases, from what I’ve seen, mentors are assigned. They might not even want to be mentors, but they’re being challenged by their manager to become one. — Ramzi Marjaba
I think coaching should be a continuous thing… but not just for those who are struggling.
If you don’t want to invest externally, then elevate someone within the team to actually do the coaching. If you’re a startup then I think you shouldn’t invest in someone personally. — Ramzi Marjaba
There should be a coach assigned to a group of people who watches their [demo] tapes, who figures out what’s missing, what’s done, and then they get to go practice those. — Ramzi Marjaba
Links from the show:
- Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramzimarjaba/
- Listen to the previous episode on mentorship: https://wethesalesengineers.com/207-mentorship-sucks-how-to-overcome-it/
If you enjoyed this podcast, please support the show by dropping a review or rating on iTunes – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-sales-engineers-resource-for-sales-engineers-by/id1378292171
