Blog
Notes:
Sales Engineering looks different in different companies. It looks different in the same company selling to different customers. And being able to service all different customer sizes is a skill that not many people have. Some organizations look for specific SEs with experience working with specific customers mainly since Sales Engineers method of working is very dependent on who they have worked with in the past.
And that is part of the discussion I have with Mohamed Barkhad today, a Customer Engineer at Google Cloud who has been a Sales Engineer for close to 10 years. We discuss how he shifted between roles and customers, how he shifted industries as well, and how he learned to have
Key Takeaways:
- The difference in Sales Engineering between the different industries
- What got him interested in Cloud and less interested in Networking
- How he learned cloud technologies, what was easy and what was hard?
- The difference between Generalist vs Specialist SEs at different companies
- Dealing with a tough salesperson – one uncomfortable situation.
- Not so fire round
Quotes:
“ A lot of times, if you find out of an RFP, you already, probably already lost” – Mohamed Barkhad
“The idea to be successful there and in the federal is to be able to build a strong enough relationship with the government and basically position your solutions as a solution to their projects and then help influence the RFPs where you can show some of the capabilities as differentiators that you have over other vendors. So the battle is won before the RFP comes out.” – Mohamed Barkhad
“One of the first decisions people have to make is whether they respond to one or not.” Ramzi Marjaba
“Wanted to fully understand how the cloud architecture looks like. So I took various, you know, you to me courses. I started whiteboarding on my own. I started speaking to other cloud architects, validating my knowledge and Yeah, it took me a couple months.” – Mohamed Barkhad
“Hard, very hard, very hard. I was in the role, the generalist CE role in Google for a year and a half before I transitioned to the networking specialist, but that, that was probably one of the hardest roles I was a part of” – Mohamed Barkhad
“One uncomfortable conversation can take you further in a relationship. Then 100 comfortable conversations and even with customers” – Mohamed Barkhad
