I’ve asked a few of my podcast guests what makes a “Great” Sales Engineer, or what skills are required to be a Sales Engineer. The answers I’ve received have varied from being a good listener to being self-aware. It’s very hard to narrow down what makes a Great Sales Engineer. The Sales Engineer has to have numerous skills, most of which are intangible and are unquantifiable.

I’ll be listing some of the common skills below that we as Sales Engineers should have, but it doesn’t mean that every single Sales Engineer should have all of them, or excel at them all. There are some core skills that are needed, but most Sales Engineers have a combination of these skills, and if the combo works synergistically, it just adds an edge to the SE’s performance. I will be talking about the extreme skills combo of Sales Engineers as well.

What Sales Engineer Skills am I talking about?

Here’s a list of skills that I think are useful for Sales Engineers in no specific order.

Technical: Knowing the products, the technology, what problems they solve and what value they add to different customers.

Self Awareness: Being able to review a demonstration, presentation, or meeting previously held with the customer and then recognizing the mistakes and triumphs of the meeting.

Sales: Showing the customer why you have the best solution, anticipating possible objections, and negotiating to an extent.

Active Listening: Taking notes, clarifying statements and questions from customers. Podcast show 1 with Bill McCarel goes in depth into this subject if you are looking for more information.

Humor: Being funny never hurt nobody! Well, maybe it does, but we have to know our audience. I usually try a couple of jokes. Sometimes they fall flat and I adjust. I guess humor is also knowing when to joke. If you want to hear a joke of mine that fell flat, check out show 34. I literally cringed and wanted to crawl under my desk while the interview was going on. But now I use it as an example of what not to do. 🙂

Demonstration: Showing the customer that you will be solving their problem.

Time and Task Management: Self-explanatory. I have an entire blog post dedicated to this Time and Task Management

Likeability: I don’t know if anyone else on earth thinks this is a skill, but I do. We can learn to be likable. I find it very simple. It’s the ability to use some of the previous skills I mentioned in combination, such as listening, humor, in addition to genuinely caring.

Asking the Right Questions: Asking questions is easy. However, not all questions are created equal. It’s common knowledge, I think, that in discovery calls, all questions should be open-ended. However, asking questions that enhances some weaknesses in the solution that is being sold is not the right question. The question that in the end highlights the strengths of the solution and allows the customer to envision themselves using it to solve their problems is the right one. This also requires that the Sales Engineer know their solutions very well.

Public Speaking: Another essential tool for Sales Engineers. I define speaking as the ability to hold the audience’s attention while providing valuable and helpful information.

Problem Solving: As Sales Engineers, we solve problems. Not sure what else to say about that other than “NO KIDDING!”…

One more bonus skill that no one talks about is the skill of leveraging other people to close the deal.

The 2 polar extremes of Sales Engineers:

In my mind, there are 2 extremes of Sales Engineers, but most are somewhere in between:

• The very technically-oriented Sales Engineer,
• And the very sales-oriented Sales Engineer.

Other than for a few exceptions, neither of these options actually makes a good Sales Engineer. On the one extreme, the SE is very technical, but may not actually provide information to the customer, would point out weaknesses to the product, and probably look at his own shoes while doing a demo. The other extreme, the SE has all the sales skills, but cannot answer any technical questions past, “oh yes, we can do that”. This does not inspire confidence.

A great Sales Engineer usually has a combination of these skills. They can still lean one way or another on the technical vs sales oriented scale, but he has other skills to back it up. For example, on a scale of 1 to 10, the table below provides an example where I compare 2 possibly great Sales Engineers with different skill sets.

There are many other combinations of Sales Engineers skills that would still “generate” a great Sales Engineer. I do want to note that every Sales Engineer is usually one part of the sales team. This is where having an Account Manager that compliments the Sales Engineer skills can lead to a very successful sales team. If the Sales Engineer is very technical but not very savvy saleswise, having a very Account Manager who can guide the Sales Engineer in what to show in a demo, or talk to a customer is really helpful as long as the Sales Engineer is open to suggestions and coachable (another bonus skill or trait).

Where do you think you fit on a scale of 1 to 10 in the skills mentioned above? Are there any other skills you would want to add to the list? The comment section is available for you.

What should a Sales Engineer choose to get better at?

There are two schools of thought that I’ve been exposed to here. Tim Ferriss, the author of the Four Hour Work Week is an advocate of focusing on the strengths and outsourcing the weaknesses. In the Sales Engineer’s work, outsourcing usually means leveraging your colleagues. That could be sales specialists teams, Product Managers, or whoever can help you.

The other school of thought, which is what I find most common, is that the focus should be on bringing up the weaknesses to an acceptable level, or even become great at since you are already strong in the other aspects.

I believe the answer is somewhere in the middle. Sales Engineers should have a base in all the skills mentioned above. If the Sales Engineer is lacking in one of the skills that it will hinder him from becoming a great Sales Engineer, then that is the skill the should be worked on.

Another aspect to take into consideration is the SE’s next step career move. Daryn Mason has an article called “Is There life After Solution Engineering”. In there he discusses the numerous “next moves” for Sales Engineers, but for the sake of this post, I will take discuss the following three examples: moving into Sales, specializing in Product Management, or staying as a Sales Engineer.

If you are moving into sales, the obvious answer would be to focus a lot more on the sales aspect of being a Sales Engineering. A word of caution here, there’s a lot more to Sales that we Sales Engineers are not subjected to. We go into a discovery meeting and we ask most of the questions and lead the meeting. We then look at our Account Manager, puff out chest, and think to ourselves that we can do their job better. However, we don’t know how many times this Account Manager called to get this meeting, how many rejections they faced, or how many times they had to follow up after the meetings to close the deal. Therefore, I say if you want to move into Sales, see if you can shadow an Account Manager, talk to as many Account Managers who were Sales Engineers, and talk to as many Sales Engineers who tried their hand in Sales and decided to switch back.

Product Management is very technical, and if they want to do their jobs well, they have to be very organized, excellent listeners, know their product inside out, and also great presenters. If you would like to get into Product Management, then focus on the skills that I just mentioned. Most Product Managers from the various companies I’ve worked for or interacted with tend to be former engineers with no sales experience. Having that Sales experience the knowledge of how to ask questions, listen to their answers, and present in an engaging way will be of great benefit if the next step for the Sales Engineer is to into Product Management.

If the path forward is to remain a Sales Engineer, then there is an opportunity to master a lot of the skills. If one works on 2 or 3 skills a year, they will become exceptional Sales Engineers. Also from a technical perspective, the Sales Engineer can choose to work on a different technology, so they can focus on that as well.

There is no one way to skin a cat. And frankly, I never understood why you want to skin a cat, so this saying has always been confusing to me.

Ehhem, ok, I’m back. If there is one skill that you would want to work on, which one would choose? It doesn’t have to be on the list above. You can add your own in the comments below.