Sales SE
The Sales or Systems Engineer (SE) is often considered one of the two most important customer-facing roles in the Company (the other being the Product Manager). It's not uncommon for the PM role to be a career path for the SE role, often producing the strongest role contribution during critical stages of company growth given the wealth of real-world knowledge the SE would have.
Interesting debates occur around where the SE role reports to -- being a technical role, and how much sales activity the SE should be able to handle. As an aside, it's generally improper use to use the term 'engineer' associated with this role title as it is a designated title reserved for formalized engineering roles (mechanical, electrical, civil, etc). Your company could conceivably receive cease and desist notices from the local engineering society if seen to be using the engineering title improperly in public settings, although most all technology companies seem to use the term SE as described in this section.
Many quality SEs come from the inside the technical side of the Company, perhaps a software developer with excellent communication skills (and the ability to travel a lot), one of the top product support specialists or even someone from the software testing team. Occasionally a technically oriented sales rep would prefer an SE role over a quota-carrying selling role. People with consulting service backgrounds also make great SE's as they can often easily relate to and communicate the needs of the customer. In all cases, the deep technical background tends to allow the SE to bond better with the prospect, especially in early stage markets where the prospect is looking for a trusted individual to introduce them to new technology and not get burned (e.g. lose their job making a bad bet). SE's can also (ideally) come from the industries you sell into - bringing relevance, insight and trust to the relationships the Company is trying to build with the prospective client.
SE's can focus on prospect activities -- pre-sales SE, or on working with customers -- post-sales SE. In this section we'll look at the details of the SE role from both sides with more emphasis on pre-sales, including how SE's work hand-in-hand with the sales organization, possible organizational scenarios to consider, career path management, compensation and more. It's a critical role and worth the additional time and money investment to help build a Sales motion delivering excellence to the organization.
Pre-Sales SE
The pre-sales SE often works with multiple sales reps as an integral part of a sales cycle. One SE can often service the needs of as many as 8 sales reps but it is more common in traditional sales models to limit the number of reps an SE works with from anywhere from 2 to 4. The choice depends on the number and length of tasks in the sales cycle where the SE is directly involved. As a simple example, if the pre-sales SE does all on-line demos (which is common so the reps can focus on selling), it's hard to manage more than a couple per day so working for 8 reps each managing a few dozen leads per week would become impossible to handle. The ratios further reduce if territory travel is involved -- too many reps would spread the SE to thin making the role a bottleneck in the sales cycle.
The main role of the pre-sales SE is to convey the value proposition of the product -- often in a technical way. The SE should be able to relate to a variety of types of prospects from very technical (e.g. the hands-on evaluators) through to the more senior decision makers who are often looking for succinct high level benefit statements to buy into. Some of the key activities a pre-sales SE will undertake include:
- performing a product demonstration -- on-line, in person, web seminar, 1-1, group session - the SE needs to be extensively skilled in performing product demonstrations of all kinds and in a variety of venues. Although most teams use a demo early in a sales cycle, it should ideally be used later in the sales cycle given the time and resource expense required -- the first order of business is to sell the value proposition to the prospect, sales skills are used for this, not lines of code.
- responding to objections -- most sales objections revolve around product capabilities. Gap discussions are common which is where the SE should raise the level of the discussion to the strategic nature of the customer-supplier relationship. The SE should be focusing on the overall solution picture (or whatever is appropriate for your product), not lines of code.
- completing sections of a proposal or RFP -- the writing skills of the SE should be sufficient that they can complete the relevant sections of a business proposal (or RFP). Ultimately the rep should be in charge of the overall response, but often the bulk of the work falls to the SE. If you have high caliber SE's, you may want to leave the final work product to the SE to organize drawing input from the reps.
- reviewing sales proposals -- the SE tends to be a bit less salesy in the way they view an opportunity. As such, they can provide a good check and balance for a business proposal. Including the SE in the review cycle is often a good thing.
- tracking support tickets -- the SE is the insider for the prospect or customer. When issues arise in a pre-sales cycle, the SE should be following it through the internal stages. This might include sitting with support to help recreate the problem, working with development to plan a solution, talking with the prospect to make sure the issue is understood, taking the front lines when complaints arrive.
- attending trade shows -- the SE's, especially in smaller companies, often are the key people tending to booth duty at trade shows. It's also useful to have Development and Product Management involved, but the SE tends to be the work horse for the show. Duties typically include arranging for the right equipment to be sent (Marketing manages logistics), setting up demo's, communicating the demo scripts to other booth people, etc.
- on-site evaluations -- the SE typically is the key resource that might go on-site to a prospect as they go through a hands-on product evaluation. At this stage of the sales cycle, ideally the prospect is already well down the buying path -- many companies assume if you are on-site you can increase the chances of a sale, but often you are just educating the evaluation teams of large companies -- not furthering the decision maker towards you as the choice. Sales needs to have prepped the situation properly to warrant an expensive on-site visit. The whole account team needs to have pre-established the criteria for success so a positive evaluation outcome does lead to a sale.
- providing product requirements input -- the SE is an excellent source of product knowledge. The strength and weakness assessments should be communicated regularly to the relevant teams by the SE. The credibility of a quality SE is strong and their input should be heeded.
One caution is to make sure the pre-sales SE does not become the primary point of contact for the customer after the sale. Ideally, the support team takes on that role (or post-sales SE) with assistance from the account rep. It's commonplace for the new customer to have bonded with the SE such that they become reliant on them for all product issues. A formal hand-off process is a good approach for this with the pre-sales SE checking in once in a while to make sure things are going well.
Most pre-sales SE's would say they do anything that is needed to help close a deal. The above items represent many of the core tasks but many more might exist in your organization for your products.
Post-Sales SE
Post-sales SE's are less common in most organizations. They often exist to help develop the potential of an existing account, essentially acting as a pre-sales SE looking for other opportunities in the account. In scenario's where there is a large scale implementation component, the post-sales SE may play the role of consultant to help the customer become successful.
Many of the tasks described above for pre-sales SE applies to the post-sales role. The skills are often similar although the post-sales SE bonds more with the customer given the relationship starts with the sale and continues long after. Some additional activities the post-sales SE might do include:
- regular project reviews -- the post-sales SE meets regularly with the customer to review the success of the project. This would include reviewing key milestones, setting next objectives, reviewing any outstanding support issues, etc. This might be the most important item to implement correctly as it can often diffuse fire fighting situations if they are anticipated properly.
- product training -- if there is not a separate resource, the post-sales SE would likely deliver any needed product training (on-site or via web). Over time, this becomes a regular event as users come and go at the customer site. Training may also be required for new product releases.
- handling upgrades -- despite all efforts, some products do not upgrade smoothly in an automated way. It is advantageous to have the SE make sure upgrades occur and are successful. It is to everyone's advantage that an upgrade occur, so the SE should be preparing the customer as early as possible to make sure it happens (nobody wants to support old code).
- listening for opportunities -- the post-sales SE should always keep an eye open for more sales opportunities within the account, or for references to other leads outside the customer. Incenting the post-sales SE with a growth goal helps with this.
The post-sales SE role is not that unlike a project managers role and can often be interchangeable if needed.
Compensation
SE compensation is often related to sales rep compensation. Given the SE is normally working in a region with one or more sales reps, sharing common targets tends to keep everyone involved focused on the same overall goal. As such, it is common to provide a variable compensation component based on territory target achievement. This compensation model is usually in dependant of whether you are operating a direct sales model or indirect (e.g. selling through partners).
Keep in mind that most SE's unsurprisingly feel they could sell products without the sales rep so often feel discouraged if their compensation drops because the rep did not meet the target given how much work they typically do in support of selling. They are not often exposed to what goes on at the start and end of a sales cycle so miss appreciating the skill of a quality sales rep (e.g. prospecting and closing). Conversely, sales reps should leave the middle parts of the sales cycle to the SE as the rep often just gets in the way if they try to do deep dives into the value proposition of a solution. The best level of technical trust is between the SE and the prospect no matter how hard the rep tries. You can create inventive incentive plans along these lines for both roles.
As mentioned, the SE is often tasked with doing most of the grunt work in closing a deal (demos, product support, on-site travel, email follow up, etc). It may be a good idea to provide some level of separate incentives that are earned regardless of overall territory achievement. Replacement SE's are very costly to the organization, often more than the cost of introducing replacement sales reps. Don't loose a good SE for a few dollars of variable salary. If SE's are managed from within Sales, these nuances are often lost, if they are managed outside of Sales and provided as an internal service to Sales, these nuances are often managed well. Unfortunately you are breaking with many traditions if you have the SE's report to anyone other than Sales although Product Management is one viable possibility (as is having them standalone or within a larger customer services group). It's up to you to decide how non-standard the organization can afford to be, but this is an area worthy of some consideration..
Possible objectives-based incentives for an SE include:
- building special tools to help with demos. Given the SE is often technical in nature, they could be tasked with creating their own demo tools to help accelerate the sales process. This may not apply to all kinds of products but can be helpful so as to minimize distraction of the core development group.
- preparing an input document for product requirements. Perhaps twice a year you have the SE prepare a document designed to help the PM team understand the latest requirements from the prospects perspective. Although this type of communication should be something that occurs regularly, you may need to encourage the SE to formalize the input coincident with the general rhythm of other requirements gathering processes.
- shared incentive to reduce the time taken to close a deal (op2close metric). Encourage the SE to be more pro-active in helping the sales process along.
If you are offering stock options, the SE role is worthy of an allocation. If you are attracting a superstar from a competitor, a fair sized allocation at time of hire is reasonable, combined with performance-based stock allocation at an annual level. Set the goals high, most SE's will reach them.
Interviewing
There are a variety of key characteristics to look for in a quality SE. Some can be developed if the SE is migrating from a different role, others tend to be inherent so need to be there from the start. Focus on the following areas as much as you can:
- communication skills - a quality SE needs to be an excellent communicator in all of its forms (written, verbal, presentation skills, etc). Credibility is established in the first few minutes interacting with an SE, so they should come across as confident from the very first hand-shake. Don't shy away from asking for various written samples nor putting a candidate to the test by having the candidate perform a sample presentation (on something they are familiar with so you will see them at their best).
- technically skills - it's not important if they already know about your product area (it's a bonus if they do). It is important that they are technical in nature, come across that way when interacting with other technical people and ideally are not too 'geeky' in their overall persona (sometimes it's hard to avoid though). It should not take them long to pick up the technical details of your product. Perhaps have them guess what the issues are as part of an interviewing cycle (e.g. likely architecture, customer challenges, key features, competitive issues, etc). If the candidate does not show they have looked at the product details on your web site, there may be an issue to explore -- they should take the initiative to learn what they can prior to the first interview. All SE candidates will say they can learn new things, the challenge is to find out if they really can -- sometimes career diversity is a positive indicator versus someone who stayed in one industry with one type of product all of their career.
- ability to working with/for sales reps -- inquire about how they like to work with sales reps. What types of activities are they most comfortable doing such as demos, Q&A sessions, architecture presentations, first experience trouble shooting, etc. The SE needs to team with the reps so they should not be referring to the reps in condescending ways. Ask what they learn from working with sales reps, what would be the ideal role definition for the SE, do they always need the rep in each customer call, etc. You can learn a lot the more they talk about Sales and selling. Sometimes the SE has an aspiration to become a rep, this is generally a good thing as long as they don't end-run a rep to prove something. If they have an aspiration to take quota, hire the SE with the goal to move them into a sales role within 12 months, as they would not likely stay in the SE role longer than that before considering leaving.
- comfort traveling -- although all SE's expect to travel, not all are prepared to travel all the time. It's helpful to inquire about what they expect not just in terms of total days per month on the road but types of travel required. Some businesses would see an SE spend a week on the road at a time to optimize travel costs and other logistics. Others have the SE doing a lot of single trips which creates different burdens. If the candidate has some constraints, be clear about the job requirements, if there is not a fit, pass on the candidate. If you have this discussion, make sure you follow up on it down the road to make sure the Company keeps its side of the bargain. You should plan with HR and the hiring manager times when the SE would be rooted at the home office to recover from the trials of traveling. You can extend the longevity of someone in the SE role if you pay attention to this more than you do making sure they take vacation. They also tend to be valuable sources of knowledge when in the office so make sure their office time is well spent meeting internally with support, product management, development, etc.
- sales or business aptitude -- regardless of the career aspirations of an SE, you should value sales aptitude. Given the SE works hand in hand with sales reps following a sales playbook, they should understand the overall methodology of closing a deal. If the SE does not understand pricing, can't grasp how and when to use discounting, is not familiar with the basics of contract negotiation -- essentially can only play a pure technical role in a sales effort, they are of limited value to the organization, especially when in an early stage. Once they are experienced with your product and working with the relevant reps, it's not uncommon for some deals to essentially be sold by the SE completely, so a minimal level of sales competence is an asset.
- time management skills -- the SE role tends to bring with it the requirement to juggle many tasks at once. Aside from working on a handful of key accounts throughout the week, there is internal follow-up required (e.g. tracking down support tickets perhaps), meetings to attend to, presentations to prepare, travel to arrange, paperwork to complete (CRM, time sheets), etc. One SE is also often supporting multiple sales reps, so this has its own time management challenges. If the candidate gets too stressed by the sometimes ad-hoc nature of the role, they are not the right candidate.
Once you have a candidate identified and all first round interviewing is complete, you may want to put the candidate to task. One of the best is to perform a roll-play session where they get to play the SE with you as the prospect. See how they present your product, handle objections, show sales acumen, etc. Don't expect them to shine on the details of your product, but they should not sound ignorant either. It's worth choosing and paying for great candidates, take the time to find them. A bad SE choice can mess up a sales cycle more than a poor rep can.