I caught up with Chris White on his Linkedin Live show a bit ago. This time he interviews me and we dig into what happens behind the scenes, or at least what should happen behind the scenes to make sure that SEs are successful in front of the customer.    Everyone loves what we do on the front end, working directly with the customer, performing, and getting the Aha moment. However, we can not do any of that if we don’t prepare, if we don’t generate leads (even as SEs), or prepare for discovery, demos, and POV.  We barely scratch the surface. But it’s a start.  show notes: h ..read more

AI is coming for us all. According to our guest, Anthony Palmoze, he’s heard many SEs talk about BDR being the first to become obsolete. So we jump on a call to dig into what BDR is and see if it will be obsolete, or more specifically, what parts will be taken over by AI. show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show315 ..read more

I have my own opinions of what sales engineers should do, and how they should be involved in the sales process. My opinion is that they should be involved, early and often.   But I sell in the enterprise market, with a small number of customers. My SE is tied only to me, and the main decision-makers are the users who use the product. So it would make sense that my SE is heavily involved, follows up post-demo, and maintains relationships.    But when your product is being sold to other Salespeople, and the goal is to show them how easy it is to use, and the SE that supports your ..read more

Over the many years that I’ve been doing this podcast, we’ve talked about the skills required, how to manage the team, communication, relationship building. But we’ve never discussed 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.   show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show313 ..read more

At the ground level, we all put our heads down and work. We demo, discover, and manage support calls. How we do all that is the tactical work. But what about the strategy? How do we move an entire organization from reactive to proactive? How does the organization incentivize people, or in other words, how do they line up their interests with their employee’s interests?   These are some topics I discussed with Fadi Bassil, the VP of Support at Incorta. Fadi is a fellow Lebanese, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is what he has been able to achieve in such a short period sin ..read more

Many of us go to university, wondering what we are supposed to study. Those of us who complete it then graduate, wondering what the job would entail. Once we get the job that we may or may not have thought we wanted, we find that we are bored out of our minds.    Some people stick with it and learn to love it, or simply stick with it. Others try to find a solution. That’s what today’s guest did. Sameer Kausar found himself in a job he was not excited about. So he looked within, and looked around, and identified Sales Engineering as a potential dream job. Since he got the job, he has ..read more

My guest for today is Chris Beaumont and he is a recruiter. We discuss how people should approach the job hunt, and what they can do to increase their chances to secure a job. We also talk about what employers are doing wrong while they are trying to fill the few recs they have open.  Show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show308 ..read more

 Life does not exist without stress. There’s also added stress when you’re in the sales world. So I wanted to share the causes of stress as I see it, and how I handle it.  show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show307 ..read more

Engineers are not usually known as creative types. This is a strange notion for me as I think engineers are some of the most creative people. We might not be creating art (although some engineers are artists), but we are being creative in solving a set of problems.  The problem is it doesn’t show to the outside world.  But there are ways to do so, and Melanie Flores, my guest for this week found out that she can do it through Solution Engineering. It’s not just about solving a problem creatively. It’s about telling stories and asking questions where creativity can shine while being i ..read more

A big piece of Sales Engineering is Sales. Most engineers don’t like the sales part of Sales Engineering, but it’s what SEs have to excel at to be good at their jobs. Taking it a step further, SEs have to excel at knowing their customers and that will make every aspect of sales easier.    These are all topics of conversation that Alvaro Tuscano and I get deep into, in addition to the challenges of presales in Spain specifically, and how he overcame them to become a great SE and a trainer for other SEs.    show notes: https://wethesalesengineers.com/show305 ..read more