How to Become a Sales Engineer
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All 3 parts are now part of a single eBook. Click below to download.
How to Become a Sales Engineer - eBook
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Judging from search engine traffic, many people are interested in how they can become a sales engineer. I’m going to talk about my general theories behind job hunting applied to everything I know about hiring (and being hired) for Sales Engineering positions. I’m going to make a general assumption that you aren’t already an SE, though it applies almost equally as well to those switching companies. And, in case you’re wondering, this should work well even in challenging economic times when sales organizations are being reduced.
Because this is a lengthy topic I’ll spilt the article into 3 parts. Let’s get to it.
1. Know the job
Back when I got my first SE gig, there weren’t a lot of resources for finding out about the role of an SE. Much of it had to be learned on the job. Today, there are many resources. Start here. Read the books I have listed. Subscribe and plow through the archives of each blog I recommended. You should feel like an industry veteran (sans direct experience) before you make your first job inquiry. This also ensures you know if the position is right for you, which leads me to my next point.
2. Understand your unique strengths
As I’ve mentioned previously, I am a big fan of business author Marcus Buckingham. I recommend you read two books of his for the purpose of this exercise, Now, Discover Your Strengths
and Go Put Your Strengths to Work
3. Determine your employer profile
After you thoroughly understand the role (conceptually at least) of an SE from step 1, you should know fairly quickly if the role is generally a match to your personality. Most of the books mentioned in the SE Resources page even have sections that help you think through this. If you think you have what it takes, keep reading. Just don’t count yourself out too early. Speaking from personal experience, I learned I had many innate talents I could apply to the role that I never knew existed until I was forced to leverage them.
One thing in Making the Technical Sale I found very insightful was the practice of understanding your personality traits to the point of using that to target companies that played in market spaces that map to your strengths (i.e. finding the right company match). I view this as more applicable to seasoned SEs since it requires an understanding about your skills that you may not have uncovered yet—even from step 2. But I still recommend even new entrants to spend time reviewing the section to at least make an educated guess.
Once you have this understanding, you can put these pieces together to forge a profile of potential companies that 1) maximizes your chances of getting hired, 2) obtains the highest level of job satisfaction, which 3) sets you up for the best chances of succeeding as a new SE.
Your profile may be as simple as: A fast growing 100M+ enterprise software company with an established customer base selling desktop management solutions. It can get as specific as your understanding of yourself and the market allows, but even a simple profile like this one can allow you to narrow down potential employers to less than ten.
4. Research your profile companies
The goal of this step is to allow you to narrow down your potential company matches to just a few. At this point in the job hunt I am not in favor of using a job board or industry recruiters. You’ll set yourself apart by contacting these companies directly and will keep your options open (some firms are not allowed to use recruiters for example). If all else fails this can still be a fallback option.
To determine your best matches, I recommend a few approaches:
- Think of the companies that best match your skill set and industry experience
- Use the corporate website to find out all of the products each of them sells
- Use publically available research to determine market leading companies in the space. Though not always the best fit, it’s usually better to be employed by market leaders.
- Use your personal network (including social networks like LinkedIn) to find connections you may have that can provide more information about the company. More on this in part 2.
Using these basic approaches you should easily be able to find the top handful of companies in the market that best match your profile.
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In part 2 we’ll touch on the resume and getting an interview.
Related Posts at thesalesengineer.com
Filed under: Career Path
