We The Sales Engineers: A Resource For Sales Engineers, By Sales Engineers

"You Miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Michael Jordan - I think What do you do if you are being left out important pieces of the sales process? You fight to be a part of it. If you don't ask to be a part of something, you will never be included. That's what Kirk did. He fought to be part of the discovery process. We will discuss how and why. We will also discuss how that helped him and his organization.

Feedback can be hard to take but it’s important to remember that you will always be biased towards yourself.  Trust others to have your best interests at heart when they’re providing you feedback.  Similarly, you must have the best interests of others when you’re giving them feedback.  

Are leaders born or bred? For today, this doesn’t matter, what matters is that if you are a leader currently, or you think you may want to be a leader in the future, this is the show for you.  Peter Polizzi, currently the VP Global Sales Engineering at Splunk visits the show to give the perspective of a tested leader on leadership. What does it mean, who can be a leader, what type of qualities should you have, what does he look for in the leaders he wants on his teams? All of this and more are all within.   Show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show105

Facing new challenges can be scary, but if you know you want to face it, then face it, and you’ll be better for it.  Today’s show has a relatively new SE, Tobias Metz from Cisco Systems shares his views on what SEing was before he started vs. now and shares quite a bit about what he has learned coming from a more process-oriented side of the business to where he is now. show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show104

Like a fine wine or an aged cheese, some things require time before they achieve greatness. Vik Arya, CEO and Co-Founder of Pudding.app, has had many years of experience honing his craft as an SE and SE Leader.  Now, Vik has found a valuable niche as an enabler of SE Teams to be more effective in how they deliver proof of concepts (PoCs). This show gives us a CEO’s perspective on the importance of the discovery, understanding customers, your own value and overall the importance of a methodical approach to not only lead a company but to deliver great PoCs.   Show Notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show103

Trevor Lancon joins this week’s show to share his insights on selling to an extremely technical audience - an audience that’s expected to be more technical than he is.  Additionally, Trevor, while quite technical himself, has just transitioned into a hybrid Sales Engineering/Account Management role (similar to Ramzi) which presents its own fair share of challenges.

Career paths for technical folks going into sales is Sales Engineering and then Sales. Matt took a different route where he started off as a Salesperson and then moved to Sales Engineering. Here's his story.   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show101  

The Centennial Show.  Show 100. This one is a special one, bringing together three behemoths in Sales Engineering leadership to speak about Sales Engineering as it is, where it came from, where it’s going, how it's valuable and how to be better at it.  Chris White, Greg Holmes and John Care share their insights in this show you do not want to miss. https://wethesalesengineers.com/show100

In order to deliver the best demo, the best presentation, the best value to any customer/prospect, you have to know what they want.  The way to find out what they want is through a process called Discovery. Today’s show welcomes back Chris White, author, leader, consultant and coach, to explain his views on discovery: what it is, how to do it well, and why it’s important. There’s something for everyone in this show no matter your experience level.  Enjoy! https://wethesalesengineers.com/show99

Nathan Fierley is the Senior Director of Sales Engineering at Bigtincan, a company that empowers sales organizations through sales enablement to provide the resources necessary for sales teams to more effectively sell to their target audience.  Today’s show covers a wide variety of topics, from learning what Sales Enablement is all about, learning what it means to be a player-coach, the lessons learned from working one job in how it can lead to the next, and so many other things - enjoy!   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show98

Liz Whitaker-Freitas is a Sales Engineering Manager at Splunk, one of the leaders in managing and interpreting big data for organizations in today’s data-driven economy. Today’s show covers Liz’s unique journey into sales engineering and SE Management   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show97

Bryan Young is an experienced SE who works for Cisco, one of the largest technology conglomerates in the world. Today we cover some of the unique perspectives of an SE who has to know so much about a constantly changing technology stack.   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show96

Chris White is an accomplished author, trainer, coach, teacher and Sales Engineering leader.  He penned “The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers”, an amalgamation of over a decade of experience in the field where Chris is able to articulate the importance of a number of key habits that will lead any SE to success. Today’s show covers the 6 main habits plus some bonus ones that you’ll only find here! https://wethesalesengineers.com/show95

Description: Starting as a Sales Engineer is a daunting task. There is not a manual, and in many cases, there is no mentoring. You are supposed to figure out on your own. In Jacob’s case, he asked for a coaching call and agreed to get it recorded.   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show94

There are a lot of things that are said during demos, some are canned, some are improvised, but all are always geared to get you and your audience in agreement and towards a sale.  Not all words are equal however, and there are some words and phrases that can be detrimental to your success. Today we discuss some words and phrases to avoid when you’re demoing.

Many Salespeople have their origins in being Sales Engineers first including our guest, Ricardo Guzman. Drawing on how he was treated as a Sales Engineer, he treats his SEs differently and also uses his technical knowledge to speed up the sales cycle.

Bini, my cohost, just started reading Mastering Technical Sales by John Care. We wanted to discuss a bit about it, and discuss the diversity in the role of Sales engineers.

Demonstrations are the keystone foundation of a Sales Engineer’s Career. Some SEs demo on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Some companies actually hire demo engineers separate from Sales Engineers. But why do we demo?   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show90

Working for a company that provides fremium products to consumers as well as a paid product to business can be tricky. We discuss how do SEs use it to their advantage.   https://wethesalesengineers.com/show89

Folks are having great conversations on We The Sales Engineers Forums. Join in!