Transition from IT Pro to Sales Engineer: How?
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So I started a thread over there talking about how I think that, in my career, I want to start working towards more of a sales role over my current straight IT role. I've gotten a lot of good feedback that helped me narrow it down. Sales engineer sounds like the best role for me right now. That being said, I feel like, in a lot of ways, I'm back to square one. I've only worked IT roles up to this point, and while that's essential for the job, I also need sales experience. I have some of that, but not at a business level.
A lot of people have told me that working for a big company allows good lateral growth. However, I can't see myself being a sales engineer where I am currently. Nothing against the company, just I can't see it.
All that being said, how would I make this transition? How would I get companies to give my resume a serious look, given my current experience? Would enlisting a recruiting firm to help me be a good idea? I'm not unhappy with my current job. However, I think I need to F5 my career.
Thanks!
A.J. -
For an IT Sales Engineer, the typical path, as I know it, is to switch from being a generalist to being a specialist, work up to a senior level and then leverage your network with the vendor(s) associated with your specialization to see what Sales Engineer options there are. Remember that a sales engineer is still an engineer and there is no engineering in the generalist realm.
So, for example, if you want to be a Linux Sales Engineer you would likely choose Red Hat, build a career in RH administration and engineering, rise through the specialization ranks associated with that job role, work at several companies using that technology across multiple industries (medical, finance, manufacturing are good ones) and then, once at a high level of experience, you can expect that RH will approach you or you can reach out to RH partners in the hope that one of their partner companies will need an RH sales engineer too.
Typically sales engineers are rather senior specialists who have really good business experience and knowledge in addition to their IT specialization and have good personal skills.
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It is extremely rare that someone would set out with the purpose of becoming a sales engineer. Since it is a career path that only opens up once you are far along in your career people tend to not even think about it until they are quite a ways down whatever path they want to focus on since it is being on that path that generally makes the sales engineering role seem attractive. You really have to know the product and like the vendor to make it work.
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I'm not as into job titles as @scottalanmiller so I don't know what a Sales Engineer is. What are you wanting to do exactly? In the UK we have Technical Sales people - people who do a bit of selling and a bit of technical. That's typically someone who would talk to a customer and then put together a fairly technical solution for them, which the customer would then buy. I like these people.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm not as into job titles as @scottalanmiller so I don't know what a Sales Engineer is. What are you wanting to do exactly? In the UK we have Technical Sales people - people who do a bit of selling and a bit of technical. That's typically someone who would talk to a customer and then put together a fairly technical solution for them, which the customer would then buy. I like these people.
A sales engineer is not a salesperson, they are normally a technical resource that is part of a sales team and tasked with getting a customer to buy something by speaking technically. They are not a solution provider. They are sales, but not the salesperson. The salesperson does the selling, the SE answers technical questions. A salesperson and an SE generally work as a team. One to do the sales, one to provide technical resources under the framework of "only information that supports the sale."
Like the sales people you like, these are all very dangerous people to be listening to. In no case are any of these positions people who are looking out for your interest. These are the people looking to empty your wallet. The SE is an important role because salespeople lack the technical background to answer questions or know when things apply or do not apply.
You should never "like" or "dislike" a position like this. They are not your friends. Their interest are in opposition to yours, always. But they play a critical part of your ecosystem. You can't avoid them, you need them. But they are never your "friend." An SE is important in determining when a product will work or how it can work. But they are not a neutral resource and are just as much a part of the sales team as the salespeople.
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A technical salesperson is a sales engineer and a salesperson combined. Generally you get a little less of each as it is extremely hard for one person to be really great at both. But it is easier having it all in one because you deal with one person rather than having the obvious "one person pushing a product that they don't understand" and the other "person who can't make a sale answering the actual questions."
@bsouder is a technical salesperson. He can do IT work and he does sales. He doesn't use a sales engineer.
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Sales Engineer is not a normal title. The standard industry title is Presales Engineer. It is a technical resource that is only available as part of the sales process. Not a technical resource that you have access to after a sale is made.
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It's ok, if @ajstringham ever tries to sell me a product I can just search a few IT forums and find out what he *really *thinks of it
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@Carnival-Boy said:
It's ok, if @ajstringham ever tries to sell me a product I can just search a few IT forums and find out what he *really *thinks of it
Yes, he is probably a bad choice for a customer facing position as he tends to be rather vocal about what he does or doesn't like in products. That's a good thing, until you want to be in sales and companies care a lot about whether you can tow the company line. Being in sales means you are the face of a company and have to maintain the facade at all times.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
It's ok, if @ajstringham ever tries to sell me a product I can just search a few IT forums and find out what he *really *thinks of it
Yes, he is probably a bad choice for a customer facing position as he tends to be rather vocal about what he does or doesn't like in products. That's a good thing, until you want to be in sales and companies care a lot about whether you can tow the company line. Being in sales means you are the face of a company and have to maintain the facade at all times.
I refuse to maintain a facade, or lie. If I don't like something, I will say so. I would never work sales for a product I didn't believe in. I'll support something I don't like, and I won't tell the customer who has already purchased it that I don't like it. However, I would never be able to work sales for my current employer. I couldn't bring myself to try and sell it.
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I think a sales engineer is more of a "fellow" type job and isn't something you can set out to do per-se, but that's very limited knowledge.
Do you enjoy sales? I think maybe testing the waters for 6mos before you set your heart on something might be a safe bet. I always steer clear of anything commission-based, but you may really like it.
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@ajstringham said:
I refuse to maintain a facade, or lie. If I don't like something, I will say so. I would never work sales for a product I didn't believe in. I'll support something I don't like, and I won't tell the customer who has already purchased it that I don't like it. However, I would never be able to work sales for my current employer. I couldn't bring myself to try and sell it.
That's highly admirable and a great personality trait. It does not, however, point you down the path of sales. Sales, as you know from Staples, means selling what you are told to sell and not what is good for the customer. Even when you work for a company you believe in their current sales initiatives might not align with your values. You have to push the products they want you to push whether to support a failed product line, empty old stock, get interest going in a new line, etc. You might believe in it, you might hate it, you'll not get to pick and choose ahead of time.
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@MattKing said:
I think a sales engineer is more of a "fellow" type job and isn't something you can set out to do per-se, but that's very limited knowledge.
As a "fellow", I don't think that they are that close typically. But maybe. But I totally agree that it isn't something that you set out to do necessarily. It's a career that you fall into, not one that you target.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@MattKing said:
I think a sales engineer is more of a "fellow" type job and isn't something you can set out to do per-se, but that's very limited knowledge.
As a "fellow", I don't think that they are that close typically. But maybe. But I totally agree that it isn't something that you set out to do necessarily. It's a career that you fall into, not one that you target.
Oh of course, it was more just relating to the "falling into" job type, and not so much as where they relate on the totem pole.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
I refuse to maintain a facade, or lie. If I don't like something, I will say so. I would never work sales for a product I didn't believe in. I'll support something I don't like, and I won't tell the customer who has already purchased it that I don't like it. However, I would never be able to work sales for my current employer. I couldn't bring myself to try and sell it.
That's highly admirable and a great personality trait. It does not, however, point you down the path of sales. Sales, as you know from Staples, means selling what you are told to sell and not what is good for the customer. Even when you work for a company you believe in their current sales initiatives might not align with your values. You have to push the products they want you to push whether to support a failed product line, empty old stock, get interest going in a new line, etc. You might believe in it, you might hate it, you'll not get to pick and choose ahead of time.
Staples used to try to tell me what to sell. They VERY quickly gave up on that when they realized letting me do things my way resulted in happier customers and better sales. That being said, if we had clearance stock, or stuff we needed to move, I would alter my approach, on the basis that it still fit the customer's needs well. If it was a matter of preference, and Y was just as good as X, and I just normally preferred X, I'd push Y. But I never just sold something because we were out to meet a goal or were instructed to. When you put the customer first, and focus on meeting their needs over the goals of the company, you usually walk away meeting both. If you strive to fall into line perfectly with unrealistic corporate expectations, then you're going to lose both the sale for the company and the satisfaction of the customer.
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It's my goal to get to sales engineer. Now for what that will be, I don't know yet. But based on this thread, I'm realizing I'm not going to get there anytime in the next couple years, or even likely the next decade. For now, I work the helpdesk and work my way up the chain of support to get to engineer. I need to get that half nailed down first, and the sales portion will follow.
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One of the reasons that I like working for a non-reseller MSP is that I get to play the "sales engineer"-like role but I do so as a representative of the customer, not of the vendor. I love Dell's R720xd server, for example. But their VRTX is a joke, at least for use by the SMB market. If I was a Dell SE, I would be required to push the VRTX and to potentially push it even when it makes zero sense. I'd be required to sell the R720xd in conjunction with a silly 3-2-1 architecture.
But because I am with a non-reseller MSP that works for the customer, I get to recommend the R720xd when it makes sense and I get to warn about the VRTX to protect the customer. No matter what initiative Dell has going on, I am free to do the best thing for the customer. If Dell doesn't bring out a good server in the future, I have no reason to recommend any Dell at all.
(I'm using Dell as an example here because of the huge dynamic in how much the R720xd is great and the VRTX doesn't make sense for normal businesses and carries crazy risk that no one likes to talk about. I don't believe in recommending server vendors at all, no value in it. Recommend a category of them and specific models from each but let customers pick the vendor of choice.)
I get to do all of the sales engineering type stuff that SEs do but without the compromise to integrity necessary to be an actual sales engineer.
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@MattKing said:
Oh of course, it was more just relating to the "falling into" job type, and not so much as where they relate on the totem pole.
Oh gotcha, yes that makes sense.
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@ajstringham said:
Staples used to try to tell me what to sell. They VERY quickly gave up on that when they realized letting me do things my way resulted in happier customers and better sales.
I remember us having conversations where you were forced to sell completely awful, overly expensive solutions because it was what Staples stocked when there were cheap, reliable solutions that they could have picked up from Amazon that were far better.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
Staples used to try to tell me what to sell. They VERY quickly gave up on that when they realized letting me do things my way resulted in happier customers and better sales.
I remember us having conversations where you were forced to sell completely awful, overly expensive solutions because it was what Staples stocked when there were cheap, reliable solutions that they could have picked up from Amazon that were far better.
There were times I told people to pick stuff up on Amazon, but the compromise I won't make is in terms of a quality product. If Staples sold product X for $50, and it was $25 on Amazon, I didn't tell people that. However, if Staples said product X is the greatest thing since sliced bread and I have to sell it, but I knew it was crap, that was different. There were plenty of times I told people Amazon had product X cheaper and that we would price match it for them. They didn't like that, but I did it all the time. I always sought to get people the best products at the best prices. Staples said sell product X? If I didn't think it was a good product, I couldn't have cared less. I wouldn't sell it, and I made sure all my techs didn't sell it. Some didn't have my knowledge, and took Staples' word at face value. But I always preserved my own technical integrity. As my knowledge grew, that definition changed, which is inevitable.
