Six Habits of a Rockstar Sales Engineer
I’ve been surrounded by some impressive individuals over the last decade, I’ve worked in Sales Engineering for some time myself, this is what I’ve learnt from the best Sales Engineers;
1. Add Value
The best SEs I know Add Value all-the-time, the kind of value that makes a difference, not the type of mundane value expected of you from your job title! As an SE you are very likely to own a wealth of experience in something, be it networking, server, storage, aws-vpc architectures even Windows XP (yep. I did the whole mcse-xp thing), whatever it may be, the point is you have skills, you’re a complex problem solver whether you know it or not and by helping a perceptive client navigate a difficult problem without directly selling is where real value is felt, the type of value people don’t expect BUT always remember! The best SEs always, somehow, in some way ADD VALUE.
2. Curate, Curate, Curate
After a few years in the game it’s unlikely an SE would sit through mundane, prescriptive, canned, lifeless content, so don’t expect OTHERS to sit through monotonous material. Create something real, a story, a journey, the best SEs make their content irresistible and the best place to start is by simply re-arranging the stock company slides until they work for YOU, practice the delivery everywhere, in the shower, train or plane, just curate and deliver how you’d like to be delivered to. I’ve witnessed the best SEs build awesome bespoke content delivering a story that resonates, they almost never use stock slides.
3. The Echo Chamber
Get out of your unconscious technological echo chamber, the internet wants our attention and she knows how to get it, our preferred stories and news feeds are ready for us to consume instantaneously, without any warning, our timelines, notifications, rss-feeds drag us through a Data-Supernova filled with content that fuels our biases and preconditions which ultimately make us feel safe, following influencers and consuming different content from the likes of Tim and Michaela honestly pushed me to put this post together. The best SEs I know regularly consume stuff they’ve never tried or even thought about, a Rockstar SE I know went on to become an Atlantic sailor by following nothing more than a curiosity.
4. Read Non-Tech Stuff
I CRINGED at my reading habits from a lost and found kindle, on long haul flights I was consuming CLI reference guides, BGP best practices and half written white-papers on optimal high availability designs! Don’t be that SE, I’ve witnessed the best SEs consume material way out of their comfort zone… some game changing material I’ve read lately is work by Dale Carnegie and Nathaniel Branden, the best SEs I know hardly ever consume technical material in their spare time, personal growth is essential, which introduces the next topic nicely;
5. The Comfort Zone
Find things that make you uncomfortable and do-those-things-at-least-once-a-week, for me, this was presenting with purpose and effectiveness, I still have a long way to go, this time last year I could faint at the prospect of presenting! The best SE’s I know are always self-improving, we all have hidden skillsets within us, with some nurturing and polishing, us techies can revive skills we never thought we possessed. The most successful SEs I know practically live outside their comfort zone.
A great quote I recently came by;
In the world of networking, skills are important, but only as a qualifier. Beyond skills, you need to have a reasonable personality, a strong listening ability, problem solving capability, and communication skills. You also need to be presentable. In other words, I’ll pay more to hire a person that can interact effectively with the world around them.”
6. The ‘Why’
My all-time favourite, the Rockstar SEs I know don’t just ask why, they embody the question, WHY. Why do things the way we do, Why embrace this type of technology over another type of technology, Why implementing control x costs much less yet provides better cyber security ROI vs control z. Why, Why, Why. We should be asking this of everything we do, it’s not What you do, it’s Why you do it! Over the years I’ve witnessed the Best SEs always start with WHY.
