Career Path Deep Dive: Sales Engineering

Sales engineers help facilitate the sales process for technologically or scientifically complex products. Having a technical background may be handy, but it is not a prerequisite. You can have a successful career in sales engineering even if you come from a different role or an unrelated background.

There are many transferable skills that will benefit you in this role. Active listening, storytelling, and the ability to explain complex to simple concepts are just a few examples.

Our panelists Maddie Suppon (360Learning), Priti Shah (CHEQ) and Rachel Moser (WISE) shared some practical tips on navigating the sales engineering career path.

"You've done a version of this."

If you've been in any customer success, technical, or sales roles, you will likely find success in sales engineering. You don't have to be a technical maven to be a sales engineer. But you do need to be able to consult, teach, listen and advise to support your clients and your business.

Active listening is key.

To be successful in this role, you have to be able to listen to your customers' main goals, pain points, and values. In a demo call, be sure to always refer back to these objectives to demonstrate you understand where your customer is coming from.

Selling vs. investing in technology.

As a sales engineer, you are the reminder that your customer is purchasing a product that provides long-term value. Your customers aren't purchasing one-time items. They are investing in a relationship and software that will evolve with time. You are the commitment to a fruitful business relationship.

Sales engineering requires you to have a deeper level of technical understanding of your product. However, the fundamentals to be successful in this role are still the same. You still need to prepare for every call or demo, understand your customer, and be able to relate the value of your product to what they need.

Want to learn more? You can stream the full event recording here.

Thank you to all of the WISE partners that made this event possible and our panelists for sharing their time and advice.