The Path to Sales Engineer

IRJ

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thanksajdotcom

@scottalanmiller said:

Most SEs (that I know at the very least) have similar paths....

They have extensive IT backgrounds. Five years in mid to senior jobs at least. Often System Admins, Network Admins and once in a while, Generalists. It depends what products you end up selling, of course, but even desktop products get sold by people who were originally traditional admins and/or engineers.

They are naturally people people - they are the people that like to schmooze, hang out, do the talking, give presentations, make introductions, are happy to just provide info and step back. But the biggest thing is the stuff that can't be taught - the empathy, charm, smooth people management.

Broad business and industry experience so that their ideas and approaches are unlikely to be siloed or heavily biased by single industries.

@Minion-Queen has said she feels this would be an ideal role for me but @scottalanmiller , what are your thoughts?

Minion Queen

It is the ideal road but as @scottalanmiller they have extensive IT backgrounds.

IRJ

@thanksajdotcom , stop dreaming and start doing.

IRJ

Either way you need to start out at helpdesk again. Work for at least a year and then start working your way up.

Minion Queen

Find a NOC center and start out as an L0 and work your way up.

thanksajdotcom

@Minion-Queen said:

Find a NOC center and start out as an L0 and work your way up.

That's what I'm working on.

thanksajdotcom

@IRJ said:

Either way you need to start out at helpdesk again. Work for at least a year and then start working your way up.

Yup, working on that.

scottalanmiller

@thanksajdotcom said:

@Minion-Queen has said she feels this would be an ideal role for me but @scottalanmiller , what are your thoughts?

That's a tough one. There are two factors here: what you would enjoy doing and what you would excel at doing.

So would you like being a sales engineer? Maybe, I'm not sure. It might be something that you would like. It's demanding and performance driven and provides very little freedom. You often end up living on the road.

Would you excel at it? Honestly, no. I think that this is very much outside of your wheelhouse. One on one sales in a limited, boxes consumer setting is totally different than sales engineering for enterprise. Schmoozing, ad hoc social situations, reading the customer and the situation, taking social cues for feedback and all specifically areas where you struggle. Could you spent a lot of effort attempting to overcome those things? Perhaps. Should you? Certainly.

But should you endeavor to have as a goal a late career move that requires one set of skills which you have for most of your career and then, late in the game, switch to one that specifically highlights the areas where you struggle? Probably not.

StrongBad

Sales engineer is a tough job. I don't think that it is one that is very easy to look for or seek out. Pretty much any SE that I've met seems to have kind of "fallen into" the job role. It's just something that comes along and people grab the opportunity. I am not sure that I know anyone who has started off in their career wanting to be an SE and working towards it in any sort of methodical way.