Industry Technical Sales Jobs and Careers

Sales engineers (SEs) are the technical glue of a technical sales jobs. Sometimes called "systems engineers," "pre-sales support," or "field consultants," SEs act as the sales team's technical careers encyclopedia during the sale, representing the technical aspects of how the product solves specific customer problems. They perform technical presentations for the product. They own the demonstration script for the product. With adequate staffing of trained SEs, Product Management does NOT go on sales calls.
We see three common problems with sales engineers in high tech firms: SEs lack technical skills; there just aren't enough SEs; and the SE is wasted early in the call so a sales person needs a "bigger gun" for later sales calls.
Often, sales people ask for deal support from Product Management simply because there are not enough sales engineers to go around. Well-run sales channels typically have one SE for every two sales people; many have 1:1. Yet the companies that report product management providing excessive support of the sales channel usually have 5:1 or more. And guess what happens? In the absence of an adequate number of sales engineers, product management must step in (or gets dragged in!).
One expert in sales engineering observes that roughly 30% of SEs do all the work. These "best SEs" have won the respect of the sales people and are in constant demand. That leaves 70% that are on staff but are not being used. Imagine their frustration at seeing product managers on calls that rightfully should be theirs.
So training the technical sales consultant can be effective. Companies normally train sales engineers in sales methodology by having them attend sales training classes with the sales reps. In other words, they are trained to be sales reps. But shouldn't they be trained in how to be good sales engineers? New (or under-utilized) sales engineers should have a mentor, a senior SE, who can show them the ropes and teach them the skills to effective.