10 Relationships Sales Engineers Need to Build

Humans, in general, work with people on a daily basis. Usually, engineers work with their own teams and tend to have some relationships beyond that if they work in a cross-functional team.

Before becoming a Sales Engineer, I worked for a big Network Equipment Manufacturer (NEM) in Canada. I was a support engineer and was co-located with my teammates. However, most of the time I did my own thing and my colleagues did their thing with some limited teamwork here and there.  On occasion, I would also work with the product verification team to debug a complicated issue. I was in my own little bubble, and if I ever left it, I could not wait to get back in.

When I moved on to the Sales Engineering position, I noticed that things were very different. I needed to work with a lot more people to be successful. I either needed information, resources or favors to get the job done. The best way I found, and I’m not alone here, is to have good relationships with many people. Some people ask me, well, isn’t that the Account Manager’s job? Yes, it is. It is also my job to build these relationships, and I cannot depend on someone else to do it for me. This will prepare me for when I don’t have a good Account Manager to still be able to sell since both my performance review and my commission are tied to that.

Below is the list of people needed to build a good relationship with to be successful:

1- Customers:

I hope I’m not surprising anyone with this one. Customers are the most important people to build a good relationship with, and, as I mentioned, it’s not only the Account Manager’s job to look after this. Sales Engineers actually have an “in” that Account Managers don’t since SEs are viewed as useful. If we can build on that, prove that yes we are helpful, and become valuable trusted advisers and in some cases friends, the information we can have access to is invaluable.

2- Account Manager(s):

Account Managers can either use you as their trusted resource, or they can use you like their free resource. Having a good relationship with our Account Manager, especially if we only support one, makes our lives so much easier. A bad relationship with an Account Manager is a nightmare. We might be treated like gofers instead of a valuable member of the team. Some people are ok with that, and they like being told what to do, or at least think that they do. I imagine it’s not fun, and I would rather be proactive and build a relationship with my Account Manager. I find I can do that by being part of the account planning, communicating often with my Account Manager, showing him that I’m eager and happy to help when that is the best thing to do with a customer (so that I can gently push back when it’s not). As time goes by, and we both show that we know what we are doing, the trust builds and our opinions carry more weight.

If one Sales Engineer is working with multiple Account Managers, relationship building gets a bit tougher since they would have to split our attention amongst many Account Managers. I’ve not been in this situation, so I’m leaning on the expertise of folks I talked to on the podcast, but they say that what’s worked for them is being open with all of their Account Managers with what you’re doing and why.

3- Product Managers (and Marketing Managers)

Product Managers (PMs) and Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) are a rare resource based on my experience. Usually, there are one or two PMs per function or feature. If it’s a hot feature, then these PMs are being pulled in many directions to chat with customers, work with their internal teams, or attend conferences or trade shows. If you think Sales Engineers have it bad in terms of being pulled in many directions while working with multiple Account Managers, this is way worse since there are a lot more sales teams to service. They also have to take into consideration what is best for the company, and not just what helps sales teams achieve their quota.

Having a good relationship with PMs is a mutually beneficial relationship. All the PMs that I was friends with would use me, amongst many others, as a sounding board to why a new feature/product will or will not work. They also kept me up to date with the roadmaps, and if ever I needed their help demonstrating a new feature to a customer, they would be happy to spend the time to work on it with me. In some cases, that saved me hours of just flailing in the wind trying to get a configuration to work.

Quick note, PM visits don’t happen often due to the geographic area they cover. If they do show up in town, the best way to build a relationship is to grab a meal with them. Could be breakfast or lunch if the family keeps you too busy for dinners. But the PM just flew, in my case, multiple connections. If I’m too busy to entertain them during lunch, they might be too busy to help me if I’m working on a deal that might not move the needle for them.

4- Professional Services

Professional Services usually comes in after the sale to implement whatever the customer purchased. They are very technical folks who have actual real world experience on the products that the company sells. That differentiates them from Product Managers since professional services folks may be at customer sites for weeks or months, whereas a PM shows up, meets with the customer then leaves. Having friends in Professional Services will provide access to experts who know exactly how the customers are using the products. Since they are also very technical, they can educate us on different features for our own knowledge which we can show in a demonstration or proof of concept at a later date.

5- SE Managers

I don’t know how this happened, but the best managers I’ve had have been SE Managers. My other managers were great, but something about SE Managers seems to be different.

1. They know how to deal with people since they did that as Sales Engineers
2. They are very interested in the business.

The second point makes them either amazing or ruthless depending on how we are doing as Sales Engineers. If we are doing everything we can to help the business, then they will do everything to support you.

Having a good relationship with our SE Manager is helpful in case we need them to mediate meetings with Account Managers we are having trouble with, or escalate an issue with “Support” that might be affecting a sale. Also, they are the best people to mentor us, in my opinion, since they have been through what we are or will be going through, and they have the most access to all other Sales Engineers and can tell us what other folks did to solve problems.

6- Overlay/Specialist/Consultants

The overlay team is a sales team specialized in a couple of technologies or products. The overlay team is usually commission based, and they are not usually as involved with customers as the local sales team. This usually leads to them having different priorities than the local sales teams. For example, if their quota is $1M, to keep it simple. The local sales team can be working on a $1M deal with a strategic customer that could combine multiple products. The portion that would count towards the overlay’s quota is $10K. Another team might be working on a deal worth $100K, all of which would count towards the overlay’s quota. Which would be more beneficial to the overlay?

Having a good relationship with the overlay would go a long way to convince them to either help with the deal or at least give a portion of their time to help the local team prepare to lead it.

7- Field Service Engineers

Not all companies have Field Service Engineers (FSE). I’ve worked for companies that have FSEs, and others that do not. Sales Engineers end up doing a lot of the FSE’s work if that position does not exist, which is why I’m always thankful to my FSE whenever I have them around. The FSE is important to the sales team since they work very closely with customers, know what pains the customers are going through and, in some cases, will bring back leads. For that reason (among others), FSEs are valuable. They are usually unsung heroes who lay a lot of groundwork so the sales team can swoop in, sell another product and get the credit for it. I know my FSE loved it when I would mention that he was instrumental in finding the lead and helped us come in and kick behind. Note here that I’m not buttering him up, I’m just telling the truth. I hate buttering up.

8- Teammates

Teammates, aka other Sales Engineers,  are the only other folks who are going through what we are going through. They can be a sounding board, a venting mechanism (yes we do vent about our Account Managers, just sometimes), or people to share experiences with. Good teammates can act as both mentors and mentees simultaneously. Having good relationships here provides a support system like no other.

9- Support

“Support” is the team we call on when we notice there might be a bug, which never happens [I could not write that with a straight face]. They have different names in different companies. It could be frontline and backline, or 2nd, 3rd, or whatever tier support.

Support is usually the first department we contact when there is an issue in the field. In my experience, the better my relationship with the support team, the faster I got help. That can change with the size of the company, but it has worked for me, and I believe that if the team is too big, make friends with one or two team leads that can assign someone to assist on short notice.

It is amazing how many members of the support team show joy once they get a “thank you” email from me either during or after they have helped me out from a tough spot. I don’t know if they are underappreciated or if nobody thanks them, but saying thank you, and meaning it, seems to go a long way.

10- Channel Partners

Channel Partners are companies that help us extend our footprint and are able to reach the prospect that we may not have access to, or don’t have the time to cold call. In most cases, these channels have multiple products from different companies, sometimes competing companies, that they can sell. Having a good relationship with them might skew them towards us.

As a summary, sales is a people business. We need to be able to build relationships so we can leverage as many resources as possible and be successful in our careers. I encourage you to pick one person who you want to build a relationship with and start doing that. You can add a note in your calendar to reach out to them, or if you see an article you think they would like, forward it to them.

Are there any folks that you build relationships with that are not on the list?