Pick the Right Sales Team

Although SEs represent 30 percent to 50 percent of an IT sales force, they are often not screened as thoroughly as their sales-rep counterparts.

SEs are critical to the success of the sales cycle. Their duties are distinct, yet complementary, to the sales reps'. Typically, the sales rep makes the initial sales call and brings in the SE if a legitimate business opportunity exists. Sales engineering responsibilities may include ensuring that the proposed solution is technically salesworthy, verifying there is an appropriate technical fit, managing the prospect's evaluation and bringing the account to technical closure.

In short, this forgotten half of the sales force represents the credibility side of the sale. Typically, SEs can make or break the deal depending on how well they, not the sales reps, establish the value of the solution in the minds of the stakeholders.

Clearly, the SE is a specialized individual with many diverse skills. So, how do you know whether an SE recruit has the right stuff? To hire great SEs, you need to look for the right balance of technical knowledge, personality traits and sales savvy, a tough combination, indeed. And SEs need to clearly understand that their job is to sell and to change the perception of value and risk for the buyers.

Here are some essential questions to ask SE candidates and the responses to look for:

Customer Savvy

• How do you work to understand customers' problems?
• Find out what kinds of questions candidates ask to get customers to open up. Make sure they're open-ended so
• What kinds of customer problems have you worked on? Ask them to be specific in their responses. This will give you a feel for the depth of candidates' industry experience.
• Demeanor
• Start high level, and then ask detailed questions you know they can't answer.
• See how candidates respond in an uncomfortable situation. Do they try to cover up their ignorance or do they admit they don't know the answer? You want individuals who are cool under pressure and treat customers with respect,no matter what.
• Ask how they deal with contentious individuals.
• Role-play a scenario of dealing with an argumentative potential customer. See if candidates take a confrontational or neutral approach in their roles.
• What do you do when there aren't enough hours in a day?
• Winning candidates will give revenue-generation and customer-referencing activities first priority.
• Communications Savvy
• Ask candidates to give you a short technical talk on a topic of their choosing.
• In their discussions, do candidates come across as credible? Do they command attention? Do they speak loudly enough? Would you want them representing your company? Throughout the interview, you want to hear thoughtful responses. Do candidates listen well, or are they always interrupting? They must make good eye contact, and their responses should be concise and crisp, not loaded with fillers ("ums" and "ands").
• Sales Savvy
• How do you approach selling?
• Are the candidates consultative? Do they ask questions? You're looking for people who identify the prospects' problems and then identify the services and features they need, creating a solution geared specifically to
• that prospect.
• What would you ask vendors whose products you intend to resell?
• Prospective SEs need to understand how they can succeed with vendors' solutions. They should ask vendors to explain their sales strategies regarding positioning, lead qualification, objection-handling and value establishment. With that information in tow, SEs can refine their sales pitches.
• How do you know if a customer is worth your time?
• Are candidates aware of sales qualification,pain, need, solution fit, an accountable owner, a compelling event and budget? A star candidate will identify that a compelling event is required.
• What is involved in identifying technical fit?
• Successful candidates should include presence of measurable success criteria, architecture plans, designs, availability of the account's technical skills, proper organization and project management, and solution fit.
• How do you establish the value of your solution?
• SEs need to first focus on the "qualified features" prospects would pay for to solve their business problems. The best features are competitively differentiating. If candidates indicate the benefit value statements should be quantified, make them an offer on the spot.
• You Get What You Pay For
• Remember, good SEs come at a premium. Typical base and bonus compensation can run into six figures, but good SEs are worth their weight in gold. It is advisable to weigh the bonus components heavily because these directly motivate revenue generation.
• Finally, ongoing technical training is important in the development of SEs, as is professional-skills training. Be warned that vanilla sales training does not focus on SEs and will be insufficient for their specialized needs. Few vendors provide skills training and productivity tools specifically for SEs, so search carefully for experienced sales engineering training vendors.
• The consequence of a poor SE hire can be significant. An ineffective SE will lose business, reduce sales productivity and increase your cost of sales. A good SE, however, is money in the bank.
• To be sure, hiring the right SEs, the credibility side of the sale, is well worth your investment in time and resources.
• Phil Janus ([email protected]) is a former sales engineer and founder and CEO of TechSellEnts, which provides training services and productivity tools for sales engineers.