Transition from IT Pro to Sales Engineer: How?
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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.
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The example you're thinking of is Sophos, in their actual endpoint protection, for $90/PC/year. While I agree that the price is steep, think of the alternative. Sure, you can get Vipre for $15/PC/year. Webroot EP in a 5-user license is $25/PC/year. However, then the customer has to manage all the backend stuff. The $90/PC/year was in a small part for the product, but mostly for the management of the console. Your average home user pays a premium for business-level protection, without requiring any of the knowledge to manage it themselves. I still stand by that being a good value, albeit not the cheapest solution.
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@scottalanmiller said:
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.
That has to be about one of the best jobs in the world! and yet you still have a day (or is it night) on wallstreet?
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@ajstringham said:
The example you're thinking of is Sophos, in their actual endpoint protection, for $90/PC/year. While I agree that the price is steep, think of the alternative. Sure, you can get Vipre for $15/PC/year. Webroot EP in a 5-user license is $25/PC/year. However, then the customer has to manage all the backend stuff. The $90/PC/year was in a small part for the product, but mostly for the management of the console. Your average home user pays a premium for business-level protection, without requiring any of the knowledge to manage it themselves. I still stand by that being a good value, albeit not the cheapest solution.
No, the example I was thinking of is when you had a farmer bury a cheap switch in the yard and run CAT5 and power underground between consumer routers rather than skipping all of that and saving a few hundred dollars and running fiber. We talked about it and how the farmer was getting screwed because Staples didn't sell the appropriate gear but he trusted you so you were able to sell him a ridiculous solution that I'm sure has shorted out and caused a fire by now. He lost money, wasted effort and took on actually electrical risk all to end up with an unstable, pointless solution when doing the right thing was super cheap and simple (and safe.)
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@Dashrender said:
That has to be about one of the best jobs in the world! and yet you still have a day (or is it night) on wallstreet?
I'm really a solutions architect. That's the broad category that lets me do those roles internally.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
The example you're thinking of is Sophos, in their actual endpoint protection, for $90/PC/year. While I agree that the price is steep, think of the alternative. Sure, you can get Vipre for $15/PC/year. Webroot EP in a 5-user license is $25/PC/year. However, then the customer has to manage all the backend stuff. The $90/PC/year was in a small part for the product, but mostly for the management of the console. Your average home user pays a premium for business-level protection, without requiring any of the knowledge to manage it themselves. I still stand by that being a good value, albeit not the cheapest solution.
No, the example I was thinking of is when you had a farmer bury a cheap switch in the yard and run CAT5 and power underground between consumer routers rather than skipping all of that and saving a few hundred dollars and running fiber. We talked about it and how the farmer was getting screwed because Staples didn't sell the appropriate gear but he trusted you so you were able to sell him a ridiculous solution that I'm sure has shorted out and caused a fire by now. He lost money, wasted effort and took on actually electrical risk all to end up with an unstable, pointless solution when doing the right thing was super cheap and simple (and safe.)
The solution was sound and worked. Fiber would have been an option, but you are right, it's nothing I would have been able to implement. However, when you talk about time, materials, and labor, I don't think it would have been cheaper, or easier.
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Wow. On My phone so I'll keep it short.
That's just crazy. I worked in Sales myself for about 2 & 1/2 years. I liked it though it wasn't normal retail sales. I worked with Follett Corporation we did sales to both Higher Education and K12. We made software (Density ILS among other things) and also found and recommended products for Higher Ed - Software solutions, online learning, laptops based on students tracks (Engineer laptops vs english student laptop need to be way different) We also dealt with textbooks and stuff.
Sales/And Sales Engineer were merged in our company. I was both. We had some just doing sales only but it wasn't that common. I think a lot of companies will or have merged the two. You generally get commission which is nice.
But the thing that concerns me is that you were recommend products that weren't the best solution. Heck even dangerous - potentially deadly and a liability to the company. You should never do that. If you don't have the best solution for them don't try to make one up customers will appreciate that. It will actually give you more business for your honesty if we didn't have the best solution for someone and someone else would have a better and/or cheaper solution for them we always refer them to that solution even when not our own. I believe it was Macy's that started doing sales like this, they would not sale a product they didn't believe was the right fit, infact they'd recommend another store that they knew probably had it to them. Just my two cents from a few years of sales (and lots of commission to prove it works).
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@ajstringham said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@ajstringham said:
The example you're thinking of is Sophos, in their actual endpoint protection, for $90/PC/year. While I agree that the price is steep, think of the alternative. Sure, you can get Vipre for $15/PC/year. Webroot EP in a 5-user license is $25/PC/year. However, then the customer has to manage all the backend stuff. The $90/PC/year was in a small part for the product, but mostly for the management of the console. Your average home user pays a premium for business-level protection, without requiring any of the knowledge to manage it themselves. I still stand by that being a good value, albeit not the cheapest solution.
No, the example I was thinking of is when you had a farmer bury a cheap switch in the yard and run CAT5 and power underground between consumer routers rather than skipping all of that and saving a few hundred dollars and running fiber. We talked about it and how the farmer was getting screwed because Staples didn't sell the appropriate gear but he trusted you so you were able to sell him a ridiculous solution that I'm sure has shorted out and caused a fire by now. He lost money, wasted effort and took on actually electrical risk all to end up with an unstable, pointless solution when doing the right thing was super cheap and simple (and safe.)
The solution was sound and worked. Fiber would have been an option, but you are right, it's nothing I would have been able to implement. However, when you talk about time, materials, and labor, I don't think it would have been cheaper, or easier.
There is nothing sound about that solution. It violates all kinds of NEC laws. Yeah UF rated power feeder can be directly buried but, no switch could be weather in some sort of box or not. It is not uncommon for this underground things to become breached with water overtime even if sealed. No big deal for an UF rated power feeder but it is for a expose device.
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@ajstringham said:
The solution was sound and worked. Fiber would have been an option, but you are right, it's nothing I would have been able to implement. However, when you talk about time, materials, and labor, I don't think it would have been cheaper, or easier.
At the time we determined that the fiber solution would have been about half the cost and a tiny fraction of the effort. All it required were very entry point unmanaged switches with the fiber options (Netgear Prosafe for example) and one fiber connection. You just plug it in. No power underground or anything like that.
Anyone could implement the fiber solution. Only a crazed electrician could do the "buried switch" approach.
The decision to do something expensive, complex, dangerous and fragile was based purely on the requirement to sell Staples products. The good of the customer definitely took a back seat in that case.
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We also discussed the even more standard solution of using wireless point to point. I can't remember why that was shot down but it was either because Staples didn't carry access points or because it was more expensive than the fiber solution.
But there were two solid solutions available that were turned down because Staples couldn't support them.
The wireless option would be just $185 today and only slightly more then and super simple. Way simpler than burying cable or electric and a switch.
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