The pre-sales engineer, SE, role seems to sit in the center of the sales activities of many businesses. But what makes them successful? Much of their success is built on knowledge. Knowledge of their solutions, its features, functionality, benefits, use cases and competitive advantages to name only a few. Let’s find out what are the 5 must haves for SE success.
But is that knowledge the only skill they need? Could it be that knowledge of the solution is not enough to help the employer, and sales team close the deal and make their target? Maybe knowledge of their solutions needs some complementary skills such as knowledge of the market0 It could also be their customers’ business and objectives, of when to pull back in a discussion, and when to go the extra mile.
Maybe it’s how you mix and balance all the various skills that builds the success.
I’m working in the exciting world of digital transformation. It’s a sector with huge challenges and opportunities and pre-sales engineers are key in sharing their passion and evangelizing in this growing market segment.
With so many questions and unknowns, the audience has high expectations of the pre-sales engineering team. They need to combine their skills with their knowledge and make a presentation or document that the audience or reader can convert into the solution to their problem. And this problem may be clearly identified as a goal for the customer, but could also just be some personal issue that the decider has.
So how do we build such a pre-sales engineering, SE, team?
I was not sure how best to approach this, maybe a long list of characteristics, maybe a top 3 skills. In the end, I have chosen to pick one trait and discuss some of the different facets of it and how they benefit the pre-sales engineer, the employer, and customer. Later I will look at other traits such as communication skills, objective setting, recruitment, that all go into the mix when we build a productive pre-sales team.
So, knowledge, what is it and how do we use it best? How to obtain knowledge that is constantly challenged and reviewed?
Technical Knowledge
A deep understanding of the solution and its components is essential. Without this, you might be able to wing it for a few weeks, or meetings, but one day your pre-sales engineer will be found out. I think that provided our pre-sales team are people with a desire to learn and inquisitive they should be able to gain the technical knowledge required. They can build on foundations they have acquired in school or their previous roles. They can get this from their peers, training, experimentation, and documentation. This technical knowledge is a nice to have in the recruitment process. The ability to learn is not. Pre-sales engineers must always be learning. In technology, the time to get up to speed can be anything from 3 to 6 months so a plan to onboard a recruit is important.
Books are not enough
Given our pre-sales engineers are keen learners they will be able to digest 100s of features, commands, architectures and present them to prospects in meetings. The real benefit during these presentations will be the ability to talk about experience “when I did this”. I recall an old joke many years ago. It went along the lines of a pilot announcing to the passengers on his plane that he knew “you may be anxious as this is your first flight, but do not worry, this is my first flight too and I am not worried”. The ability of the pre-sales engineers to explain that they have done it all before with the anecdotes, pitfalls, tricks of the trade and successful outcomes is key knowledge. This is picked up proactively during the years in post. This takes time and is why turnover in pre-sales engineering teams is a curse to be avoided. I will look at how we can reduce this in another article.
Share the Knowledge
I hope we agree that knowing your technology, customers, markets etc. is important. So I will add that the people who have the information should share it within the organization so that others can benefit from their experience. Each organization has its preferred method for sharing the information and each person will be more a less a fan of the method. Everyone must participate and develop a culture of sharing is essential. Creating blogs, wiki, or social networks to share experiences. Learning from team members’ past jobs and their social network can all play an important role when equipping a pre-sales team with the skills necessary to deliver the right pitch.
Learn and Lunch, and it should be this way round, sessions can be a great means of seeding this culture of sharing. Their informal atmosphere where everybody gets something out of the time they spend, even if its only lunch! They are, perhaps, better than blogs, for demonstrating which pitches work, what to avoid, how to structure an argument because you can do and redo the messaging in real time. These skills are probably as important as understanding the technology. Getting the customer to understand the message being delivered is key, without that what have we achieved?
From a technology aspect, being comfortable with the whole portfolio is essential. From Pre-sales Engineering VP down, everyone must be able to do the pitch, present the key messages and focus quickly on the value for the audience. Depending on the breadth of the portfolio, nominating technology champions amongst the pre-sales engineers for specific features and functions is useful. They master the technology and share their knowledge amongst the team, over a sandwich, and via the intranet.
Market Knowledge
I will be bold and say that given a good technical education or background learning the technology and product features should be accessible to all pre-sales engineers given access to the documentation, training, and knowledgeable peers. It is therefore not critical that the new pre-sales engineer has the product knowledge from day 1. So, in the recruitment process, we need to focus on the knowledge that we cannot provide to the candidate easily.
Being able to stand up and say, “when I did this”, “in my past experience”, “when I was faced with” and such like is a real confidence boost for the potential purchaser of your solution and gives credibility to everything that follows. It can’t be fake, fake news could do untold damage. However, this is not easy to obtain in the job, and therefore has to be obtained beforehand or, with luck, working on successful deals.
Building and Maintaining the Knowledge
To conclude, 5 must haves for SE success in a successful pre-sales engineering team, #PresalesEngineering, need to be built around a group of individuals with at least:
- different but related backgrounds to share their experience,
- at different stages of their career to be able to maintain the pool of knowledge,
- inquisitive quick learners,
- good listeners who can communicate,
- people who understand the necessity to keep up to date with innovation and the latest changes in the industry.
