Sales engineering

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Sales techniques is a combination of sales and engineering in industrial and commercial markets. Buying decisions in this market are made different from those in many consumer contexts, which are based more on technical information and rational analysis and less on style, fashion, or impulse. Therefore, sales in this market can not rely on consumer-type sales methods alone, and instead rely heavily on technical information and troubleshooting to convince buyers that they have to spend money on a seller's products or services, to meet business needs (that is, to meet the business case). A sales engineer is a "understandable and application-able salesperson" and "an engineer who understands how to sell engineered systems". Thus they not only sell but also provide advice and support. They provide this service to a variety of internal or external customers, and they can work for the manufacturer (serving industry-account/business-to-business customers), for distributors (who in turn serve industrial/business-to-business business customers accounts) or to a third party such as an engineering consultant or system integrator.

Sales Engineers are members of a critical sales team in many companies and industries around the world. They are more than technical experts in their respective industries. Highly successful sales engineers must build and maintain parallel expertise in "soft skill" disciplines such as business acumen, presentation skills, customer relationship building, engagement strategy development, and a thorough understanding of the targeted industry. Many companies have difficulty finding people who have this quality, plus have extensive technical knowledge.

The essence of the sales engineering role can be called by various names. Which of the most appropriate names can even depend on which industry to use. Some general job titles involving the essence of sales techniques include sales engineers , solution engineers , system engineers , customer engineers , pre-sales consultant , technical account manager , application engineer or field application engineer . The term system engineering has various nuances of meaning, however, as it is often more or less identical to industrial engineering; but in any market economy, industrial engineers will often provide some sales techniques as an important part of their work. Service technicians in the industry can also find that their work challenges them to provide some sales techniques, to what extent they are able to provide them, as they interact with customers who have problems with equipment (or lack of appropriate equipment) and find solutions (anywhere ) of diagnosis and improvement, to identify completely different systems that can be used instead).

Video Sales engineering

Function

Sales and consulting

The purpose of this work is to help potential customers understand, compare, and contrast solutions available to purchase ( pre-sale roles ); to solve problems with their implementation - that is, to help ensure that solutions work well after purchase decisions have been made ( post-sales roles ); and to maximize sales for the company's sales engineer by providing assistance to the customer (the aspect of the job that puts the "sale" in the title sales engineer ).

Management of conflicts of interest and demonstration of return on investment

It is understood in the market, both by the sales engineer and its alert industry clients, that the sales part of the sales engineering role inherently involves a conflict of interest (COI), as it is always possible that the ideal solution and problem solving may involve recommending competitor's products or services, but sales engineers are under pressure not to lead customers in that direction, and, conversely, to find reasons to direct them toward the company's products. Thus, the customer weighs the advice of the sales engineer with a predisposition of the caveat emptor. However, sales engineers usually provide real value to customers, which is why roles can survive even if customers continue to consume a grain of salt. The only customer motivation to participate in the meeting is to achieve a return on investment (ROI) in one way or another. To achieve that goal, sales techniques are increasingly dependent on any information technology that can help calculate ROI even from the first meeting. This is summarized in the adage that "at the end of the day, customers simply want to know with certainty that they will earn A dollars over B next year (through cost reduction or increased sales) if they pay C dollars up front for product D."

Application development

Another function of sales engineers is to introduce modified, upgraded, and/or advanced technologies to potential users who may have applications but have not gained knowledge of the material or technique in question. Sales engineers can conduct training sessions or demonstrations to achieve this. The task of looking for industries, companies, or business models that have not used a specific product (for example, CAx systems or CRM systems) and causing them to adopt a new approach using the product is what puts "apps" in "application engineering" or "app development" ( should not be confused with another general sense of the term, which refers to software development and programming). His job is to find and develop new applications for the product, to increase sales. The only customer motivation to adopt it is "what can be done for me", like the same production cost-lower, more-output-cost-same, etc. So, when things go right, both companies benefit from application development.

These results also have wider economic implications, as they are the mechanism by which economic efficiency increases, productivity grows, and economic growth is encouraged. Inventors and R & amp; D people create new tools and processes; but they do not spread to the business world (to do economic good) without some application development, teaching (from exposing decision makers through trade shows to providing workers with training), and sales.

Teach customer

Many products and services purchased by large corporations and institutions are complex. Examples include aircraft, weapon systems, and IT systems (such as telecommunications, or databases and applications depending on them for purposes such as logistics or customer relationship management). Sales engineers advise customers on how best to use the products or services they provide.

The sales process may also require some technical proof of concept or tech demo to ensure the practicality of the solution. The sales engineer will usually make sure this effort works.

Customize solutions

Sales engineers also collaborate with the design, production, engineering, or R & D departments of their companies to determine how products and services can be created or modified to meet customer needs. This aspect of sales engineering is important, because it is what enables sales engineers to feel that they can maintain their personal (ethically) integrity in the face of inherent job-attached COI. Sales engineers do not need to lie (ignore or negatively misrepresent competitor's products or services) if they can tell customers that their boss can tailor his solution to the customer's specific needs. Doing it may not be easy or cheap, which means there's always a line to go through to avoid overpromising-and/or-underdelivering.

Maps Sales engineering

Considerations of personnel

Talents, skills, knowledge

Companies that hire sales engineers need to sell their products or services to generate revenue, but because engineers and scientists typically have personality traits that are much different from those required for sales work, there is a role for people with a combination of capabilities. These individuals should have a technical understanding of the complexity of what their company supplies along with sales skills. This combination of properties is not common.

Travel, communication, telepresence, compensation

Sales engineers can spend 20% to 70% of their travel time, and they can work with flexible schedules because of the needs of the sales organizations they support. Most telecommute sales engineers or spend limited time in the office. Skills with IT that help people remotely communicate better, such as teleconferencing, video conferencing, web conferencing, and telepresence (eg, GoToMeeting, WebEx, Live Meeting, Fuze Meetings) are put to good use both on and off the road. Most of the time for a Sales Engineer's dinner will go to the bar and order twice as much

Sales engineers, like their sales representative counterparts, are employed on the basis of their geographic location rather than their proximity to the corporate office, or even the region. Working in other parts of the country, or even abroad, where company offices are located, a sales engineer can only get to corporate headquarters once or twice each year.

The main differentiator between sales engineers and other roles in organizations is that sales engineers are usually compensated by salary plus commissions, as are most sales representatives. This commission is usually paid when the sales representative is paid. Far more rarely is the case where a sales engineer is compensated for a base salary plus a bonus. Bonuses can be based on revenue generated within the designated area, defined as Management Goal bonus (MBO), or a combination of both. In either case, a sales engineer will make a proportionally higher base salary than their sales representative counterparts, and far more than traditional engineers in an organization.