Forget How, Focus on The Why!

Notes:

Can we like the business of Software without enjoying software coding? Our guest today proves that you can. And you can be successful at it.

Our guest today is Devon Montgomery, a Lead Solution Engineer at Collibra. Devon’s path to Solution Engineering is interesting. It’s not just that he was an SDR who got into Solution Engineering; what he was before and how he got there are also interesting.

We also dig into common solution engineering challenges and share our opinions on how we handle them.

Key Takeaways:

Mechanical Engineering to SDR to SE
Software Business vs Software Engineering
Knowing coding to be a good SE
Becoming a great SDR and becoming an SE.
SDR onboarding and enablement
Losing your Technical Know how as an SDR
My career path going forward
Solution Engineering Organizations
Where does customer success come in?
Handling unreasonable requests.
Using silence as a tool.

Quotes:

“For the less technical roles …those will get automated much easier and much faster. So basically, learn some form of coding or learn some form of technology.” Ramzi

“When you’re a sales engineer, two years fly by quickly.” – Ramzi.

“Doesn’t really matter as an SDR, like how does the product work and everything. So I really had to shift my mindset to kind of take it a step back, which helped me in my day-to-day as an SC now” – Devon

“It’s always easier to sell to existing customers than to get new ones. And it’s much harder to sell to a pissed-off customer than to a happy customer.” – Ramzi

“I just love being able to solve those puzzles and put the pieces together and get paid pretty well for it” -Devon