We The Sales Engineers: A Resource for Sales Engineers, by Sales Engineers

Whether you're new or seasoned in the presales world, you would have your share of both highs and lows. In this podcast, we often talk about the wins and how to become a successful sales engineer, but in this particular episode, we're focusing on the other side of that. Along with my co-host Chris White and guests, Bill Balnave and Kerry Sokalsky, we share our very own demo and presales horror stories and the lessons we've learned from them. wethesalesengineers.com/show243

Michael Griego is a world-class sales trainer and sales effectiveness management consultant based in California. In the last 20 years, he's founded MXL Partners a Silicon Valley-based sales effectiveness consulting and training firm. He's conducted sales management consulting for companies around the world and has led sales training for thousands of salespeople in companies ranging from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 500 firms. His books are 42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness and No Excuses! A Better Way to Sell. David McCulley is the Senior Vice President of Sales Engineering at Provarity, a full lifecycle and continuous Proof-of-Value platform that provides enterprise sales and purchase stakeholders with real-time visibility, seamless collaboration, and AI-powered insights. Provarity's platform combines intelligent services for workflow management and collaboration and success monitoring to transform how businesses, partners, and customers manage the enterprise customer lifecycle. https://wethesalesengineers.com/show242

Before you can build a stellar product and launch it to the masses, you need to have a thorough understanding of what the product is. In this episode, I talk with Dan Hellerman of Saleo to find out why he chose to be in charge of Product, why he and his co-founder and CEO still do demos to this day, and why the role of Sales Engineers is so important in the sales cycle. Dan Hellerman is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Saleo, which is a demo environment platform that helps software companies create great software demos to win and retain more customers. Saleo is the only platform in the market that allows you to control your actual live software demo in its live native environment. They have worked with companies like Drift and Clary and SalesLoft, and Terminus to help them power their live demos. https://wethesalesengineers.com/show241

With me today is Kyle Brown, a sales engineer at Zscaler in the enterprise market in the Chicagoland area. Kyle is very passionate about sales engineering making the switch from a sales role. He specializes in developing new business and brand loyalty through technical discussions, product demonstrations, proof of concepts, and product training using analytic skills to discover market gaps.

James Connor McCann is a Pre-sales Consultant for CyberRes which is a dedicated business unit from MicroFocus, which specializes in cyber resilience specifically. He has been with the organization for 12 years since graduating from university. He started in support before transitioning to a Solutions Consultant which is the presales role at the same company. He's got to cover the Netherlands, Nordics, UK & Ireland and is currently based in Belfast. Shownotes: wethesalesengineers.com/show239

Cyrus Harbin is a sales engineer, Marine Corps veteran, content creator and host of the podcast Tech is the New Black. Before working in sales engineering, Cyrus was a full-time travelling poet and public event speaker. With over 6+ years of experience in sales and profit optimization, customer service, IT systems security and management, and cross-functional teams leadership, Cyrus dedicate much of his personal time to my Patreon community assisting mainly black and brown men and women (basically POCs like myself) and others from under-represented groups to consider careers in the tech industry. https://wethesalesengineers.com/show238

Sarah Halley is currently the director of solutions engineers at Ungerboeck. After she graduated, she moved to South Africa and worked as a marketing intern. Funnily enough, she fell in love with sales engineering when she came home to Germany. Sarah experienced working in an SDR position but it wasn't her favorite later on she found what she enjoys most and it helped her grow.

If you're interested in learning more about how to improve your discovery skills, then this episode is for you. In this episode, we walk you through the discovery process (Larson and I do a little roleplay to show you), mistakes most sales engineers and AEs make during discovery, questions to ask to better uncover your buyers' needs and priorities, how to know whether they are qualified to purchase your product, and a little bit of how equity works for startups. Larson Stair is the CEO and co-founder of Gondola, formerly known as Demoflow, a sales enablement solution that helps to codify the sales process – whether it's discovery calls, product demonstrations with AEs and SEs, or better ways to be working together on those two parts of the sales cycle. Before starting his own company, Larson spent 10 years in the sales environment, having held multiple roles within SaaS as an SDR, SE, AE, and SC. He is deeply passionate about entrepreneurship, software start-ups, and full-cycle SaaS sales. https://wethesalesengineers.com/show236

In this episode, we discuss what sales engineering enablement means, how it's different from sales enablement, why both can influence and improve the SE or salesperson's role, and how if you're interested, you can become an SE facilitator yourself. Also, it's good to clear a lot of misconceptions I had about sales engineering enablement and look at it from someone else's perspective. https://wethesalesengineers.com/show235

Bill Belnave has 23 years of presales gigs and now transitioned into helping folks do the job. He has been both a sales engineer and a manager for the past years working for big companies. He has degrees in both engineering and business. Rob Vanstone is currently a Sustainability Catalyst. He has worked as a consultant, director, and Vice President in sales engineering before. They both agreed that being an SE leader demands support to succeed. https://wethesalesengineers.com/show234