What do Sales Engineers have to do with leadership? After all, no one reports to the Sales Engineer, and Sales Engineers cannot tell anyone what to do. We can ask nicely and try to influence the outcome. So how can a Sales Engineer lead from the bottom of the totem pole?

Contrary to popular belief, people can lead up the chain of command, not just down the chain. As Sales Engineers, we have to discover how to do that. If we learn to lead up the chain, it helps to change our role from a gopher (go do this demo, answer this question) to a valuable and appreciated consultant to both the customer and the Account Managers.

I sent a question a while back on one of the Reddit forums asking SEs what they struggle with. I don’t know what I was expecting,  but I definitely was not expecting what I saw. Most of the problems were about the Account Manager and a bit of leadership from the SE would have solved the issues. Before we go any further, I want to note that most Account Managers I talked to are great at their jobs, some not so much. The issues Sales Engineers run into have nothing to do with how good the Account Manager is at closing deals, they have more to do with communication between the Account Manager and the Sales Engineer. Here are some of the issues:

1- Sales Engineers are in the dark

What do Sales Engineers do? In most cases, they come into an opportunity, maybe as part of the discovery process, perform a demo, answer some technical questions and be off on their way. At this point, the Sales Engineer has no idea what is happening with the opportunity. They have done great on the demo, answered all the questions, but they have no indication beyond that from the Account Manager. The Sales Engineer’s job is done. It’s the Account Manager’s job to close the deal while the Sales Engineer gets busy working on other demos.

2- Account Managers don’t understand the technology

Conversely to the first point, here the Account Manager is very dependent on the Sales Engineer. I have personally faced this issue. I had a new Account Manager coming in from a different industry. He was not familiar with the technology, customers, or industry. He was also a perfectionist, and would not attend any meeting, internal or external without me to back him up. Naturally, there are some meetings I would have loved to skip, such as internal pricing meeting as I had demos to work on, discovery meeting to prepare for, and my own customers to follow up with instead of staying late to do so.

3- Account Managers commits to demos or POCs without a proper discovery or without time to prepare.

It seems that this is prevalent with Account Managers. It is especially prevalent with Account Managers who don’t know what it takes to prepare for a demo or thinks that the Sales Engineer just does the same canned demo over and over.

This has also happened to me on a couple of different occasions with a couple of different Account Managers. The first time I was a rookie Sales Engineer and I had no skills that allowed me to handle this situation properly. I get a call early in the week from my Account Manager and his Regional Director. They casually inform me of my impending demo at the end of the week for one of our biggest and toughest customers. Being a Sales Engineer, I probe a bit so I can understand better what the customer wants to see. The response was, and I’m paraphrasing as it’s been a while “Oh, they just want to see the product”.

To my lack of surprise, when demo time came and I started showing them my baby, the customer provided me some details which conflicted with the ones provided by my Account Manager. The demo I had prepared was not useful to them at all and I had to scramble to show them what they need.

How many Sales Engineers has this happened to? Type in SENation in the comments to let me know. 

These are the main three issues that I saw, and I’m sure there are many more ranging from minor annoyances to vein-popping grievances.

The biggest issue that I have is the methods I see Sales Engineers handle these issues:

1- Blame the Account Manager for everything wrong in their life

2- Complain to anyone who would listen (could be jokingly)

3- Live with it and hope the Sales Engineer Manager would deal with it.

Is that the best way to deal with it?

It seems that we are leaving it to the outside world to deal with the issues for us. We, as human beings, cannot control the world. We can control ourselves and how we react to different issues. Complaining and blaming might make us feel better for a very short period of time, but that will show us in a negative light and do nothing to solve the problem. Instead, we can lead.

How can one lead up the chain of command?

1- Open the lines of Communication

The Account Manager’s purpose in life is not to make our lives miserable. Most Account Managers I know care about their good Sales Engineers as that makes their jobs much easier. If there is something legitimate bothering the Sales Engineer, the Account Manager would want to do something about it.

Open lines of communication solve two of the three issues mentioned above. The first was that the Sales Engineer is in the dark. If the Account Manager is not updating their opportunities in the Customer Resource Manager (CRM), or not updating the Sales Engineer personally, by letting them know that it is in their best interest to do so, their behavior will change. Although my Account Manager was ok with updating the CRM, here’s the question I used to ask him “Which opportunities can I provide a little nudge to close?” A list of opportunities he is working on closing would magically appear in front of me with some context of what’s is happening, and I now know what to do.

The second issue was to schedule a demo with limited discovery. A colleague of mine kept getting demos scheduled for him with very short notice. He was working late, and showing up to the demo without the proper preparation, and then proceeded to not do a great demo, at least not to his standard. After a year of silent suffering, he opened the line of communication with his Account Manager and asked for more lead time to prepare for better discovery and then demos. When he got push back, which happens, my colleague asked his Account Manager the following question: “Do you want to demo our product? Or do you want to sell our product and win deals?” From that point on, the Account Manager and the Sales Engineer worked as a very good team.

2- Pick your battles:

If we fight with our Account Manager or complain about every little thing that they do, we will be known as complainers and fighters, and not in a good way. We need to be known as trusted advisors to our Account Managers. The more trusted we are, the more the Account Manager will allow us to take the lead on different opportunities or scheduling our own demos and proof of concepts.

3- Do an amazing job and make them look good:

This should happen whether the Sales Engineer is having problems with the Account Manager or not. If the Account Manager is not familiar with the technology, this means that they have to lean on the Sales Engineer more than they are used to or would like. I once asked a senior member of my team if I am supposed to be getting on qualification calls and pricing meetings with my Account Manager, his response was that the SE’s job is to make his AM successful. If that means attending boring meetings, then that is our job. Even in his example, he had a great AM who found new opportunities and closed deals, but he was lacking severely in the technology aspect of his job. This SE had to do things which are not typically part of the SE job description and he performed them to the best of his abilities without complaining. His AM looked great and he was closing deals, and the SE was happy for making his commission and looked like one of the best SEs on my team and a leader.

I know I’ve said it a few times so far, but I will say it again. Leadership works both up and down the chain. As SEs, we usually have to work up the chain. If we do it right, like my colleague in the example above, we are viewed as trusted advisors to our AMs, leaders within our team, and we’re not as pissed off as someone who complains all the time.

Are you running into issues that a little bit of leadership can solve? If so, what are they, and how will you solve it?