What is a Sales Engineer?

The Sales Engineer is also known by the terms Pre-Sales, Technical Sales, Sales Consultant, and Solutions Architect among others. Sales engineering is a unique role that works hand in hand with traditional "bag carrying" sales roles. However, the role is very different from this traditional sales role. To be effective, sales people work in a symbiotic manner with pre-sales people. One can't survive without the other.

Technical Consulting roles are often found in companies that sell complex products and solutions including Software and Technical Hardware. For example IBM employs a variety of Technical Engineers to demonstrate their various computers, technical machines and software (e.g., Tivoli, DB2, File Net, Cognos and more).

Often referred to generically as pre-sales, these individuals help the sales person to qualify prospects by understanding the prospect's needs, identifying and elevating pain and demonstrating a solution to the prospect that meets their needs and mitigates their pain.

To be successful, Technical Engineers must first posses a functional expertise that is necessary to understand the market they are selling to. For example, a Sales Consultant selling a budgeting software product should first have extensive experience with budgeting...e.g., a former FP&A manager or director. Unfortunately, many new pre-sales managers make the mistake of thinking they can teach these functional skills. The fact is that people buy from people they trust and a pre-sales person has to have the proper credentials and pedigree to gain the trust of their customer.

Second, the Sales Engineer must have a technical acumen and the ability to quickly learn the solution(s) he/she is selling. The Sales Consultant needs to not only understand the various functional aspects of the product, but also the practical reasons these functions exists. For example, spell check is a function of most word processing software, but the practical reason for the function is to insure documents are not distributed with misspelled words. So pre-sales people explain what a function is and why it is important.

Third, and just as important, Technical Sales people must be good with people. Let me say that again. You have to be a people person! This factor alone is why it is so hard to find great pre-sales people. There are many people that have the functional expertise and ability to learn technology, but very few of them posses a talent for communication. The Sales Engineer must generate excitement in the customer and get them to share the vision the pre-sales person is trying to convey. This is the second mistake many new managers make. They think they can turn soft spoken, monotone introverts into outgoing "control the room" sales people. Having been there, I can tell you it will never happen.

The compensation for Sales Engineers is often significantly higher than their peers in other industries. For example, when I began my career in pre-sales in the mid-90's with Oracle, my starting salary was 70% higher than what I was making at Deloitte & Touche. That's right...70% higher!!! Furthermore, I began as a staff pre-sales at Oracle and left Deloitte as a Sr. Manager. As I moved into Technical Sales management, my salary again increased significantly. This is the lure of pre-sales and why so many people desire to get into it. That said, just like anything in life, to be successful, you truly have to have a passion for what you are doing...and that passion can't be money.

If you're exploring whether a career in pre-sales is right for you, I highly recommend you network with other Sales Engineers to get a better understanding of what they do. There is usually a number of these positions open at any given time throughout the US and the World. But, as I said earlier, despite the high supply of interested candidates, very few have what it takes to do the job.