Blog
Notes:
Over the many years that I’ve been doing this podcast, we’ve talked about the skills required, how to manage the team, communication, and relationship building. But we’ve never talked about the SE Big picture, how external factors like the economy can affect the role, and what moves can be made internally to save money.
So I invited John Simpson on this show to discuss that. John is the former head of Solution Engineering for EMEA at Qualtrics do discuss this in more detail.
Key Takeaways:
- Diving into the SE Big Picture: Economic Trends and Impacts
- The Rule of 40: A New Metric for Business Success
- Adapting to Change: Sales Engineering in the New Economy
- Embracing Offshore Teams and Automation for Efficiency
- Change Management: Navigating Shifts in Sales Engineering
- Navigating the Financial Aspects of Sales Engineering
- The Challenges of Hiring and the Impact of Bad Hires
- Exploring Contract SEs and the Flexibility of the Role
- Optimizing the SE Process for Better Integration and Efficiency
Quotes:
“People quite often have an emotional response or they have like a more rational response to this kind of thing. You know, number one is, Hey, they’re stealing our jobs!” – John Simpson
“You should make sure that that offshore or nearshore function maybe is part of the SE team” – John Simpson
“Do more with Less” – John Simpson on Any CRO
“I’ve never met an SE who wants to do an RFP.” – Ramzi Marjaba
“What you’re doing, in fact, is just freeing them up to do what they’re best at, which is interacting with customers” – Ramzi Marjaba about offshoring
“The field SE team is the face of the organization to the customer, to the sales organization” – John Simpson
