Notes:
Sales Engineers are great at multitasking or juggling multiple responsibilities and tasks at any given time. But what if you had to lead Sales Engineers as their technical director of presales? How do you handle managing everyone else’s problems while remaining happy with your job and preserving your joy while doing it?
Peter Near is the National Director of Solution Engineering at VMware Canada. In his role as the lead of the best solution engineering team, he assists organizations across Canada in modernizing their data centers, integrating public clouds, transforming their networks and security, and embracing digital transformation. Furthermore, he consults Canadian executives on IT strategies concerning cloud computing and digital transformation.
Peter recently received VMware Canada’s EPIC2 Award, which recognizes employees who embody VMware’s core values: Execution, Passion, Integrity, Customers, and Community.
In this podcast, Peter discusses his role and life at VMware Canada, how he empowers his team to become better Sales Engineers, and how he keeps his sanity working as a sales leader and technical director.
Key Takeaways:
- Peter shares his journey becoming Technical Director of Presales
- Was in product management for one of the largest software company in Canada
- similar traits between product management and PreSales
- Different paths you could take to become technical director of presales
- Why Peter spends most of his time working with his people rather than with customer
- How he’s able to clock out at 5 pm and allow his Sales Engineers to do the same
- What you can do to leverage your team members
- How do you keep your sanity in check while managing your team but also talking with customers and other departments who want to work with your team?
- How can presales leaders set the rules that affect up the chain of command?
- Learning to say no by going through cycles of busy, super busy, and not very busy
- Why building relationships with your team or your SE leader is so important
- One thing Peter learned that useful for any SE leader
- Communicating and seeing things from the lens of talking to your best friend
Quotes:
3:57 “My job as an SE leader is to make sure my people are successful. It’s not necessarily for me to be successful at all. So, you have to really like working with people, developing careers, grabbing some of the stuff that is challenging for the SEs and say, okay, I’ll try to I’ll try to wrestle that down for you and help you out there.” – Peter Near
7:36 “Prioritization is easy to say, harder to do. And when you think of prioritization, really what it means is figuring out what things are you going to say no to… and that’s setting boundaries. – Peter Near
13:30 “Often SEs are the last line of defense for some of the things that are going on. So, when you say no, maybe that means nothing happens. And that’s a lot of weight to have on your shoulders. Because you own these technical relationships.” – Peter Near
14:18 “If you’ve already committed to doing something, frankly, you got to follow that through. It’s just part of what we’re doing. But if you see yourself getting busy, and you need to be able to say notice and things even your salesperson, you got to say no.” – Peter Near
16:23 “I think it’s worth the investment of time to build up some of those relationships with other people in the team. And then partners in your territory and things like that, so that you can have that ability to, to then call somebody up.” – Peter Near
19:08 “If you will be respected for it, in saying no, especially if your business is running well, you earn a lot of credibility by having a well, a well-performing business, right?” – Peter Near
33:12 “If I don’t see them (my customer) as quota relief, and I see them as people, I’m trying to help, my demeanor changes.” – Ramzi Marjaba
35:02 “Even if you don’t have a friendly relationship, I’m not saying be buddies with your customer. Treat them as if they were though, like, don’t sell them futures… If you had their job, what would you do? And try to take that perspective on things.” – Peter Near
35:53 “Your reputation as an individual is more important than the logo that’s on a business card in any given day.” – Peter Near
