Supercharging your Sales Engineer Force
By Joe Morgan, Founder, Proven Sales EngineeringMost high-tech product companies have Sales Engineers, who serve as the counterpart to the account’s technical reviewer. As opposed to salespeople who are opposite the economic buyer. SEs are the Sales Encyclopedia, technical resource, for both the salesperson and customer. SEs know the product and the supporting technology and relating this to the customer in plain terms is their primary function as the technical member of the sales team.
Figure 1
The problem is that most high-tech firms have too few SEs or underutilize the SEs they have for reasons such as the following:
Not enough staff
The top 30% do all the work
Sales are delayed waiting for the qualified SEs
Can’t seem to hire new SEs with the right qualifications
We incorrectly train them to be salespeople, not sales support people
A common thread running through most of these problems is a basic tactical error made at most large high-tech companies. They spend a bundle hiring green recruits with all the right credentials and then end up leaving them to stumble through the school of hard knocks to learn how to make their expensive knowledge truly effective and profitable! Most companies are penny-wise and pound-foolish in this way, especially when employees are funded/directed by less experienced managers. These managers try to save on their training budget; not realizing how much money the personnel department had spent getting the employees to them in the first place. Management should make sure everyone has the training they need to be effective. Research shows it takes months and well over $100,000 to get an SE to a point where they are actively adding value to the sales process. If they leave, frustrated, discourage or whatever -- Guess what? You have to spend it all over again! It's a lot cheaper to spend $10-15 grand to make them the employees they're capable of becoming. It's cheaper e-v-e-r-y-t-i-m-e to train people rather than replace them. Unless you hired a DOG, then you beat on the hiring manager. An SE shouldn't be standing there wearing your company’s badge unless you originally believed they could become one of the Good SE's.
The solution, as I see it, is to:
1. Clarify SE and Sales roles and empower the SEs
2. Evaluate the best SEs and institutionalize what they do
3. Train them all in best practices – make the lower 70% as good as the top 30%
Clarify roles. Determine how responsibilities should be split between salespeople and SEs (see Figure 1). Salespeople should handle the business end of the sales process. They are the customer manager. They work with the economic buyers, manage the business relationships, lead the sales calls, handle the financial aspects of the sale and close the deal. The SE should handle the technical side of the sale. They handle the technical issues, act as the Sales Encyclopedia – technical resource, do the technical presentations and demos and bond with the technical buyer.
Next, evaluate your best SEs and institutionalize what they do. Ask yourself why a few of your SEs are making all the money. Could it be they are involved in more deals that close? Send your best SEs on a retreat with the goal of producing an SE Best Practices document. Send them somewhere for 4-5 days, away from the office and all the interruptions. They will be refreshed and they will feel like they are making a difference. And you will have a procedure document written by the people who really know Sales Engineering at your company.
Then train them all in SE Best Practices. Train the lower 70% to be as good as the top 30%. You can jump-start this with classroom training. Put all your SEs together for at least a couple days of best practices training. How often do you get all your SEs together, anyway? The dynamics of having your whole team together are incredible. The Junior SEs can’t help but learn something from the Senior SEs. The discussions, information sharing and war stories are invaluable to your whole SE Team.
However, the SE role is way too complex to learn in 2 days. To permanently improve your Junior SEs, I propose a Mentoring Program. Have a Jr SE travel with a Sr SE for 2-3 months, progressively taking more responsibility in each sales call until the Sr SE is only acting in a supporting role. The time-frame is directly related to the complexity of your product. However, I think 3 months is ideal for most high-tech companies. Yes, you will have some duplicate travel expenses, but compare those costs to replacing an ineffective, disgruntled SE -- $100,000+.
Mentoring Month 1: The Jr SE works alongside the Sr SE, listens to pre-onsite calls, assists in onsite preparation, helps customize the demo, contributes to post-onsite tasks, etc… The Jr SE also accompanies the Sr SE to the onsites and listens, taking notes. When they return they debrief and discuss what went well and what went wrong. The Sr SE assigns half the follow-up tasks to the Jr SE and verifies the results.
Month 2: Week 1 - Jr SE presents the 1st half of the demo. Week 2 - Jr SE presents the 2nd half of the demo. Week 3 - Jr SE presents the 1st half of the technical presentation. Week 4 - Jr SE presents the 2nd half of the technical presentation. As with Month 1, the Jr SE receives task assignments from the Sr SE for pre- and post-onsite duties.
Month 3: Week 1- Jr SE performs the whole demo. Week 2 - Jr SE performs the whole presentation. Week 3-4: Jr SE does it all, including all pre- and post-onsite tasks. The Sr SE acts only in a supporting role.
The end result is that you now have a Jr SE that is on their way to becoming a good Sr SE and you haven’t lost them to another opportunity because of job dissatisfaction. You’re making the lower 70% as good as the top 30%. You’ve also improved the teamwork and morale of your whole SE force.
I’m also a strong proponent of having the Jr SE’s do all post-sales product training. What a great stage on which to learn and interact with customers. No company is going to return your product because the training was bad! If they complain, apologize and tell them you will send out your most senior SE to do a makeup session.
Sales Engineers are essential in today’s high-tech product sales. You can’t sell without them. If you try, you probably will fail. Might as well train them to be GOOD SEs.
Joe Morgan is the President of Proven Sales Engineering, specializing in training and consulting for sales engineers in high-tech product firms. See their website at www.provense.com or contact them at 719-330-9770.