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I've just signed papers for an internal transition over to Sales as a Sales Engineer. Company's product is SaaS. This is going to be a whole lotta different, particularly considering I'm going to be the only person from Sales in the Engineering headquarters. Despite how that sounds, the company is not small.
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Apr 7, 2015 07:03
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Pierced Bronson posted:Greetings, fam. Thought one or two of you might be interested to know my boss's boss was very receptive to me not wanting to be a sales assistant for much longer, and I'll likely be moved to the position of "genius" (copied from Apple but for BMWs) in a couple months. I won't get rich but I also won't have to do degrading poo poo like fetch other peoples' food for them. Congratulations, dude. On a personal note, in my first week after transferring I attended my first Sales Kick Off event after ten years of working other roles in tech. Holy poo poo.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:47
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Lyon posted:Kickoff meeting for a new project/customer or an internal sales meeting? Kickoff meetings for big customers can be a blast. I've attended a couple when I was on the training team at my company and you always eat and drink well, definitely had some shaky mornings at the customer. It was a start of financial year internal event. An absolutely mindblowing way to start a new position, and a really good opportunity to build relationships with the remote members of the team (of which I'm one). I know it's a skewing factor and wide-eyed newbieness, but those fours days really had a motivating, positive influence on me beyond starting the new job.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:08
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Snatch Duster posted:This will be you soon. I'm in Sales Engineering, so hopefully less of a burnout risk than being a sales exec. If not, I look forward to looking like a really old Walter White. lazercunt posted:I do love kickoff meetings, biannual meetings, and the like. Since (in my current position, not the There was so much goddamn alcohol and fun times. Funnily enough the remote folks were some of the best to hang out with.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:07
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one) I'm field sales, I don't see people beyond my immediate team very often. So there's always lots of alcohol and catching up to do.
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Lyon posted:No, sales support is usually helping with contracts, RFPs, references, booking orders, etc. Yup. Basically we're intended to handle the technical discussions and aspects of the sale. The line varies depending on the rep, the relationship and the opportunity. Coming from handling enterprise escalations, it's nice to be working on scenarios the complete opposite of when the poo poo has completely hit the fan and the customer is contemplating cancellation or downgrading. I'm also in software. hi5. Thank god it's SaaS.
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Apr 30, 2015 05:58
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Apparently mattress sales are ridiculous. I struck up conversation with the guy at the store I bought my new mattress from and the commissions on a Sealy or similar are in the 800-1000 range. From what he said, most people in his regional group are clearing $100k a year and there are something like 55-60 top tier mattress-only stores in my metro area (Portland), ignoring the other big retailers who also carry the same brands. Of course I hit him up hard for discounts off the sale price after he told me that.
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May 13, 2015 19:14
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Software that makes your software better, as technical sales. All the fun and interesting conversation, none of the paperwork.
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Aug 29, 2015 19:24
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KittenofDoom posted:I've been trying to get into technology sales in the San Francisco Bay Area for months now, and have applied to hundreds of postings on LinkedIn. The only interviews I've gotten were for obvious scam companies or jobs that would halve my current salary and probably not lead anywhere else in tech. Are you trying to get into sales exec roles, or things like a business/sales development representative (pursue incoming leads, qualify for sales exec) role? Been to meetups to network?
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Sep 27, 2015 06:12
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KittenofDoom posted:I've been applying mostly to entry-level positions like Sales Development Representative roles. Even the ones that don't require experience have only given me a handful of phone interviews. Meetup.com. Reach out to sales recruiters that work at companies you'd like to be employed by. If you have friends in the industry, get them to review your resume and be references. I wouldn't bother with generating a business card - get an e-mail address or business card from the person you engage with, even if you whip out your phone and e-mail them right then and there.
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Sep 27, 2015 10:05
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lord1234 posted:I've always wanted to move from Engineering to a more Sales Engineering or customer facing role. What books can you guys recommend? I have already picked up Spin Selling and Solution Selling. Our sales force uses the stuff covered in this book - http://www.amazon.com/The-Challenger-Sale-Customer-Conversation/dp/1591844355 I moved from tech roles over to sales engineering, happy to answer questions if I can.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:22
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Sock The Great posted:I also moved from Engineering to Sales Engineering. However, structurally we are a little different. Probably worth me contextualizing as Sock has done. We have loose mappings to account executives. Once they've performed basic discovery/qualification of a lead that's been prospected and submitted to them, they'll get us engaged. Review the initial notes and understanding of the opportunity, go in for more technical discovery and obligatory demo tailored to the details we've surfaced in discovery. Next step is generally guiding them through a POC, serving as overwatch for any support interactions they need to kick off, monitoring their data and progress through the POC. Work through to a sale (usually within the 1-2 month timeline) and continue to guide their full implementation. Maintain contact to ensure full utilization and as they mature, introduce them to additional products that may not have worked in the initial land. A bunch more activity goes into it, but that's the core. The selling I do is to generally a technical audience or business stakeholders who appreciate technical value, so there's a lot of problem discovery, reframing, ROI workthrough and building a rapport and trust that I'm not just there to sell them a boatload of software.
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Nov 9, 2015 19:01
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Kraftwerk posted:Is it possible to transition from one industry to another as a sales person? A lot of people at my work tell me that packaging is a black hole that sucks you in and you're stuck there. I'm not really looking at dedicating my life to the packaging industry. I was thinking I'd eventually move to Pharmaceuticals, software or some other product that isn't quite so niche. I work with someone who previously had experience selling networked commercial gas detection equipment and then had a personal items startup. They're now selling SaaS application monitoring. This person may not have domain knowledge, but has thrown themselves into acquiring it. I figure that the hiring manager probably saw the same good things I'm seeing now, which is why they were hired.
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Dec 1, 2015 01:47
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I vaguely remember Alf doing some kind of all-in-one field sales role years ago. That kind of thing is pretty different to the structure sales pipeline it sounds like you've been put into. If you were sold (pun not intended) a different position than the one you're at, and you feel you have the experience to be an account exec, then it sounds like you need to transition to another org. Edit: Rather than double post, going to see whether anyone else is in a technical sales/sales engineer role. Curious about different perspectives as I try to take my successful first year in this type of role and really double down on bringing a lot of value to my engagement in opportunities, rather than just being the guy that does a killer demo. devoir fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 04:04
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ObsidianBeast posted:I've been a mix of a pre-sales and post-sales engineer for the past 5 years for a few different startups. Being an SE in a smaller company is a lot different than a large company, so if you can give a better description of the size of the team then it might affect the advice. My company went public in the last 12 months and I think our publicly-stated headcount puts us at under 1000 people. My immediate team, addressing a particular market segment based on target company size, is about six people. I work with an account executive force that's quite a few times that size, with some loose relationships defining the accounts I work on. Your advice resonates pretty well with the things I think have gotten me to where I am, as well as what I'll continue to hold close as I continue forward. I should probably contextualize and say I've got over a decade of technical roles, a lot of them customer facing, just nothing that has formally been sales-orientated. I have a challenge right now with the volume of work coming my way. Part of it is the market demand and making sure that our scaling is sustainable, part of it is I've been able to generate personal demand from the sales executives based on my past performance. This is all important work, and bringing the correct level of preparation and strategy to each opportunity is the thing that occupies the most of my non-customer facing time. This extends into trying to figure out how to keep better customer notes, how to better frame my prep time with AEs, getting enough clarity on how the next meeting moves us towards our longer term goal, etc. The opportunities I work on range from a simple "one-and-done" demo through to really long-term engagements where we have the initial purchase and need to plot out 12-24 months worth of timeline for account expansion across other business units, other products in our platform, etc.
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Feb 4, 2016 03:00
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My wider team is hiring a significant number of Sales Engineers - http://newrelic.com/about/careers/job/oBXgZfwx Relocation is on the table if you aren't already in SF, but no additional permanent remote staff are being considered at this time. I don't want to gush unnecessarily, but I only transitioned to a sales engineer role here because of how excellent the company, product and team are. Happy to take questions via PMs or leave your e-mail. We're open to people who don't have previous sales experience, but have the technical chops and people skills proven in other roles.
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Feb 19, 2016 00:31
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Kraftwerk posted:Holy poo poo. My recruiter is actually looking into new relic for me as an option for when I inevitably jump ship from my current company. I heard a LOT of good things about this company. A large portion of my time is spent working with our Enterprise AEs. We have hired AEs with wildly varying levels of domain knowledge/experience, predominantly based on their proven ability to compete, sell and be agile. Looks like you don't have PMs - if you can post your e-mail or something we can have go a little deeper.
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Feb 19, 2016 04:26
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DogsCantBudget posted:drat, if I didn't have to move to SF, this would be a super interesting role for me. I have a pretty great set of qualifications for it too That sucks. If you think you're an excellent fit for the role, I'd love to see the resume and an informal "why me" paragraph - maybe you're the exception to the location rule?
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Feb 19, 2016 07:39
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Impromptu Flip posted:I'm now officially in sales as a sales engineer. Thanks thread, there's a lot of great stuff in here. Don't work too hard. Congratulations. Sales engineer is the best role I have ever had, and is going to be the role that completes my arc from small country town in Australia to Silicon Valley.
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Oct 8, 2016 17:05
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bEatmstrJ posted:Best perk so far is being constantly recruited on LinkedIn. Makes you feel like you chose the right career. hi5 Sr Sales Engineer buddy. Are you in the Bay Area?
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Mar 15, 2017 06:17
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bEatmstrJ posted:No, I'm down in SoCal. I work from home. My previous employer's US headquarters was in the Bay Area though so I was up there fairly regularly. Current employer is on the East coast. I am currently remote, but am being relocated to the Bay Area by my current employer, which is nice (yes, it's more expensive, etc). I will miss the flexibility of working from home 100%, but re-gaining the better interpersonal connections in the office is something to look forward to. It also helps for further career progression.
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Mar 16, 2017 08:22
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@Kraftwerk, I see https://www.welovesalt.com come up a lot. Even if they don't place you directly/upfront, perhaps talking to them will get you some additional grounding.
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Apr 4, 2017 01:19
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tangy yet delightful posted:Website is throwing an https warning for me in Chrome. Hrm, I pasted the URL from Google search results without checking when I did my last post. I get the same cert warning you mentioned. When I go to http://www.welovesalt.com/usa/ I don't get a cert error.
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Apr 4, 2017 07:04
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