Notes:
In this episode, Tim Brömme and Jan-Erik Jank come back to the podcast to have another casual chat around their roles as a sales engineering leader and an individual contributor, what they love about presales, how to coach team members, and what character traits most companies are looking for when hiring sales engineers.
Tim Brömme and Jan-Erik Jank are presales professionals and leaders with a passion for technology, people, and leadership. They are also hosts of the Sales Excellence Podcast, a podcast for Software B2B Sales & Presales. In this episode, we chat about how they started podcasting, what they love about it, and what they want to improve upon.
Key Takeaways:
- What it actually means to be a sales engineering leader
- Tim’s reason for getting into sales engineering and why he left his sales role to become an individual contributor SE
- How Jan found out he wanted to be an SE manager or get into a leadership role
- The difference between presales leadership versus development leadership
- Leadership is like an inverted pyramid where the leader is basically at the bottom and then it opens up like a triangle where team members are on top of it
- The difference in the way sales engineering works between the different companies such as organization structure
- What would entice someone to stay within one company for a while and would that be better for their career?
- What makes Jan and Tim happy in their professional lives respectively
- Have they found themselves changing their initial approach to presales
- Why value selling and customer-centricity is so important in sales engineering
- The SE manager or leader’s role in fixing or trying to correct their team’s mistakes
- Helping team members by asking them what help they need and giving constructive feedback
- Asking the question: What would be the best possible outcome for the 30 minutes we have today or what is the best possible way I can assist you to help you achieve your goal?
- Some red flags Tim and Jan see from someone beginning in presales that could be deemed dangerous
- Traits to look for when you’re hiring someone for a presales role
- The difference between being confident and being arrogant
- Is the status of sales today measured up to the standards we ask of presales engineers?
Quotes:
“If you are allowed to lead a group of people or to assist support a group of people, then in the best case, it should be very, very individual because they are all different, as humans, and I think this is one of the areas you should respect as a leader, also, as a manager, that people are different, and they need different things to maybe reach the same goal.” – Jan Erik-Jank
“Presales is amazing. There’s a lot of stuff I can learn, I can do, I can contribute and a good mix of different angles or worlds.” – Jan Erik-Jank
“Leadership is an inverted pyramid, where the leader is basically at the bottom, and then it opens up like a triangle, and team members are on top of it. And you interpret yourself as a servant to the team, and they dictate to you what you need to hold the way it should be paved for them to do their job.” – Jan Erik-Jank
“I think you should try to be aware for yourself, Hey, what is important to me? And to me, that’s often highly related to my very personal values.” – Jan Erik-Jank
“Having impact doesn’t mean that I need to be on-screen on stage or somewhere. This just means that what I do in my team, my organization, and so on, really has an impact which I’m able to see, right, which could be, people are being able to perform better people are making or reaching their personal goals, they define it, I was able to support them.” – Jan Erik-Jank
“The circle of influence you have as an individual is much bigger than most of the people would believe, by now. There are a lot of possibilities for myself, there are a lot of meaningful conversations. And there are a lot of like opportunities.” – Jan Erik-Jank
“What I like about sales engineering is it’s almost like this very complicated chess game with like 1000 different parameters. And if you actually get all the puzzle pieces, it leads to success and then reaping that recognition in whatever type of way or multiple ways as an individual contributor is what definitely drives me.” – Tim Brömme
I want to work on the craft, I want to work on my creativity, on the way I phrase things the way I pitch things, the way I show things. And I want to become better every single day. Basically, even if it’s just a marginal amount over time, it will convert into something more meaningful.” – Tim Brömme
“The big thing about sales engineering is coachability.” – Ramzi Marjaba
“Leave your ego at the front door.” – Tim Brömme
“It’s not about me, it’s really about the person you trying to, to assist. And if you really would like to assist the person or your customer, you have to understand the other person, and what they really, really looking for. And then you need to check if you’re able to give it to them.” – Jan Erik-Jank
“Raising the right questions at the right time can have an impact because it would help people to start thinking about it and reflecting about it and then making going their way, right? It’s maybe not my way, but it’s their way. And because of that, it’s just perfect. Because they will have the highest motivation, the highest dedication, to enable just deliver the best possible results.” – Tim Brömme
