What Makes a great SE ?

I've been reading a lot of posts lately about the presales technical role and it strikes me that the conversations are almost always in the vein of "unsung hero" or basically how to make us more effective. I have been a part of a presales organization as a contributor or leader for almost 20 years, and I am constantly amazed at how easily organizations fall into habits that essentially leaves lots of money on the table because their view of this organization is skewed. I wanted to attempt to start some conversations in this area and maybe give voice to the broader presales community and provide a series of practical actions that I have found to help shift this mindset.

The titles always vary, but I'll use the generic SE moniker for this team of people that drive the technical part of the sales interaction with prospects. I started my career at a keyboard managing systems and writing software, and when I first learned that I could make great money talking to people about how to use software to solve problems I was hooked. Being able to use technical knowledge and people skills to connect with a variety of companies solving interesting problems is the best job on the planet. In my experience, SE's that are in the right positions for their skills LOVE their jobs. Sales reps with good opportunities like what they do as long as the money is good, and sales leaders tend to like being part of a great culture but I believe happy SE's become more passionate about our companies, our products, and our customers than any other role.

As SE's, we live right at the critical juncture of product, market, and customer. No organization in a company has more real "on the ground" insight into the intersection of these things. Consulting and support can have very intimate understanding of customer and product, product management can have insight into product and market, but the SE organization has to master the interplay of all these elements every day. Not to mention, we have a great view of sales motion, message effectiveness, competitive pressures, and the broader technical ecosystem around the product we sell. Given this basic fact, why are many SE organizations vastly under leveraged ?

I think there are a few key areas that can take an SE organization to a higher level. I will attempt to start conversations on the following ideas:

• What makes a great SE ?

• How do I replicate the Rock Stars on the SE team ? How do I scale up ?

• Does the SE organization have a "seat at the table" for sales strategy ?

• How do I help my SE's become more proactive ?

I will try to address many of these in future posts, but let's start with What makes a great SE ?

Most every company I have worked for will stand up in a kickoff meeting or QBR and a sales leader will say "The SE organization is the most important part of our sales organization, and is critical to our success". Experienced sales leaders know it is important to shine the spotlight on this team to help with morale. However, I think the actions of those leaders often align more with building a team of SE's that are designed to just show up and answer the questions and do the demo instead of being a strategic asset for the company and the customers.

Great SE's are a very unique combination of technologists, customer advocates, and sales professionals. In the best case, SE's work closely with their sales partners to collaborate on opportunities and help their potential customers understand the value of a solution, and not just show up and do the demo. I have repeated the same phrase about SE's for a very long time:

A good SE knows the all the answers to the questions. A great SE knows if the right questions are being asked.

Lots of things depend on the nature of the product you are selling, so the actual profile of the perfect SE will change, but the natural instinct when building an SE team is to focus on individuals that really know the relevant technology and will be able to answer the deep complex questions. It is super important that an SE be able to establish credibility with a prospect through their technical knowledge. There is no substitute for being able to "talk the talk" in a way to establish trust. However, an SE that can simply address the technical questions with the right answers can only deliver on half the value of the interactions with a prospect. We must be able to marry that technical credibility with a curiosity and ability to apply those answers to the actual business problem.

I took away a great concept from one of the very popular sales methodologies called "reward and reverse". When asked a detailed technical question, an SE must give a clear and direct answer first. Try to avoid answering a question with a question, it is annoying and feels like you are avoiding the question. But upon answering the question, a great SE will reverse back with a question to find out why that was asked or why it is important.

"Does your product integrate with LDAP ?"

"Yes. We have an out of box connector that has feature, feature and feature ..." "Have you had issues with LDAP with other similar products ?"

If you can use an answer to do discovery, your prospect doesn't feel like they are getting interviewed, but that you are working to get a better understanding of what is important. This skill is the key difference between a good SE and a great one in my opinion. I've worked with amazing people that know way more than most anyone within an industry, but the ones that drive great results for their customers are the ones that are skilled at getting past the "speeds and feeds" to discuss the actual customer problem, to associate features to value, etc.

How do you build a team with these skills ? Well, I believe it starts with hiring people with genuine curiosity and an appetite to learn instead of just "know". In an interview, I learn way more about a candidate by the questions they ask than the answers they give. If I ask them a question, they will almost always have a fairly predictable answer and it may reveal a thing or two, but once they start asking questions - I learn everything I need to know. And the first question I get from them tells me the most. "What would you say the travel requirements are ?" "Tell me about the comp plan ?" "What is the average deal size ?" These tell me a lot. Compare those questions to "Tell me about your customers. What problems are they trying to solve ?" "Help me understand how you compete with product X or company Y ?" These are probably extreme examples, but you get where I'm going. I really like to hear from a candidate that they are working out the value story in their head. There will certainly be time during the process to cover the important issues around making money and feeding your family - but when I talk to a company about joining, none of the answers about money will mean anything until I understand more about product/market fit, customer value, etc.

After building a team that has that natural curiosity, you have to reward and encourage these traits. I always react badly to organizations that over emphasize the idea that meeting structure and delivery should be "repeatable and consistent". Certainly the sales motion, the messages, and the value propositions should be consistent. However, I rarely find value in a consistent script for a meeting with the "perfect slide deck". For most complex, enterprise selling motions the interactions should be dynamic based on what the customer needs and how they react. SE's that rely on the "perfect deck" for a meeting are likely to just go into broadcast mode in the meeting and not listen. If I am in a first meeting, and almost no slides are presented, but I get the customer engaged and talking about their business problem - that is success. I worked with a great ESM and SE team that had an explicit goal in early meetings to "get the whiteboard pen in the customer hands ASAP". That's a great way to describe this goal. If the customer is drawing their problem and I can use that drawing to position my solution - we have a successful first meeting, and a foundation to really have a consultative selling process that can lead to value conversations very naturally. These value conversations need to start early in the sales process. I will write more about that in a later post.

So my main points here for how to build a team of great SE's:

• Define what great means for your organization beyond just the technical skills and background.

• Interview and hire for that natural curiosity and experience talking about business problems.

• Encourage the SE team to be comfortable with a more dynamic first meeting and don't hide behind "the perfect slide deck".