Notes:
Did you complete a degree that was totally unrelated to sales engineering? Have you received job offers through networking sites for a job that you have no experience with? In this episode, we will interview and get inspired by how a graduate of Commerce landed a job in sales engineering and now works as a Director of Solution Engineers. Even though she had no experience in presales, people reached out to her to discuss Sales Engineering and then offer her a job.
Sarah Halley is currently the director of solutions engineers at Ungerboeck. After she graduated, she moved to South Africa and worked as a marketing intern. Funnily enough, she fell in love with sales engineering when she returned to Germany. Sarah experienced working in an SDR position but it wasn’t her favorite, later on, she found what she enjoys most and it helped her grow.
Key Takeaways:
- How she unexpectedly fell for sales engineering when she came back home after started her marketing career in South Africa
- How the ERP software helps businesses scale in the event and venue management background
- How she transitioned to sales engineering and what has she found exciting
- How tech-savvy you should be for the sales engineering role as per Sarah
- How Sarah invested in her technical skills
- Why SDR wasn’t her favorite position and what she enjoys most instead
- Would working in the SDR position be a good start for someone whose end goal is to be a sales engineer?
- How Sarah attracted LinkedIn recruiters despite not having a sales engineering background
- What working as a sales engineer for people around the world with different languages looks like
- The differences in objection handling between SDRs and SEs
Quotes:
“So I was basically representing leading exhibition organizers and was the sales rep for them. And when this company literally found me and recruited me on LinkedIn, I immediately could put the connection together, because I’m in that industry, I knew it was the market leader for providing software for that specific industry.” –Sarah Halley
“I really enjoyed the challenge of actually getting into tech, it’s been always something that came easy to me. And that was something I had zero skills in on my CV. And since I started into this position, I probably invested the most of my tech skills and my tax tech, because I didn’t have any background in that regard.” –Sarah Halley
“I can only speak for myself, I don’t think you need to be very techie. e need to speak in a language they understand. Tech can actually be a barrier. Basically, I expect them now to be able to talk platforms to be able to explain interfaces easily. In my mind, they don’t have to be equipped with that kind of a tech stack initially.” –Sarah Halley
“I did some training, I joined different trailhead, communities, app Scout myself, we have native integrations to other software. So obviously Mail Chimp DocuSign, I like to look outside of my own product bubble. I often talk to peers who work at software companies. If there’s a new release in some leading software, I go into my developer accounts that actually upskill myself, and do a ton of training. On the cloud technical side, I can only give a huge kudos to this actually really cool mentorship program that AWS provides not only for women getting into solution engineering roles but also those who don’t have to want to move into Solution Architect roles.” –Sarah Halley
“Frankly, BDR wasn’t my favorite position. I’m not a person who enjoys cold calling. I have to say, I really miss the technical challenge and the product expertise, and the business analysis really digging deep and understanding and listening to how our customers really operate. I think that’s what I enjoy the most.” –Sarah Halley
“It’s incredibly important to onboard SDRs in a way that they are comfortable talking the product on a very high level, that they have very sharp discovery skills in going through a lead qualification process. And really understanding if this lead is worth bringing to a demo stage. But to be honest, I don’t think it is a skill set I would have on my top rank before becoming a sales engineer.” –Sarah Halley
“There’s this famous quote from Nelson Mandela, actually, that if you’re talking to someone in their language, you talk to their heart more than anything ever can. And I’ve done demonstrations in trying to do my best in German, and African English that I have on offer. And it’s just not the same as if I would present the same in French. It’s, it’s just a fact.” –Sarah Halley
