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Sales engineering is a hybrid of sales and
engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
that exists in industrial and commercial markets. An engineering degree is not mandatory for a sales engineer, as long as they have sales knowledge and sufficient technical knowledge of the service or product they are called sales engineer. Buying decisions in these markets are made differently than those in many consumer contexts, being based more on technical information and rational analysis and less on style, fashion, or
impulse Impulse or Impulsive may refer to: Science * Impulse (physics), in mechanics, the change of momentum of an object; the integral of a force with respect to time * Impulse noise (disambiguation) * Specific impulse, the change in momentum per uni ...
. Therefore, selling in these markets cannot depend on consumer-type sales methods alone, and instead it relies heavily on technical information and problem-solving to convince buyers that they should spend money on the seller's products or services, in order to meet a business need (that is, to satisfy a
business case A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also come in the form of a short verbal agreement or presentation. The logic of the business case is that, ...
). A sales engineer is thus both "a salesperson that understands and can apply engineering" and "an engineer that understands how to sell engineered systems". They thus not only sell but also provide advice and support. They provide this service to various internal or external customers, and they may work for a manufacturer (servicing its industrial-account/
business-to-business Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when: * A business is sourcing materials for their production process for output (e.g., a ...
customers), for a
distributor A distributor is an enclosed rotating switch used in spark-ignition internal combustion engines that have mechanically timed ignition. The distributor's main function is to route high voltage current from the ignition coil to the spark plu ...
(which in turn services the industrial-account/
business-to-business Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when: * A business is sourcing materials for their production process for output (e.g., a ...
customers), or for a third party such as an engineering
consultancy A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...
or a
systems integrator A systems integrator (or system integrator) is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as system integration. They also sol ...
. Sales engineers are a critical sales team member in many companies and industries around the world. They are more than just 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, building customer relationships, developing an engagement strategy, and having a thorough understanding of the targeted industry. Many companies have difficulty finding people who possess these qualities, plus have extensive technical knowledge. The essence of the sales engineering role can be called by various names. Which name is most apt can even depend on which industry it is used in. Some common job titles that involve the essence of sales engineering include sales engineer, solutions engineer, solutions architect, systems engineer, customer engineer, pre-sales consultant, technical account manager, applications engineer or field applications engineer. The term
systems engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking ...
has various shades of meaning, however, as it is often more or less synonymous with
industrial engineering Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information an ...
; but in any market economy, industrial engineers will often end up providing some sales engineering as a necessary portion of their work. Service technicians in industrial fields may also find that their work challenges them to provide some sales engineering, to whatever extent they are capable of providing it, because they interface with customers having problems with equipment (or lacking the right equipment) and seeking solutions (anywhere from diagnosis and repair, to identifying entirely different systems that could be used instead).


External functions


Sales and consultancy

The purpose of the job is to help potential customers understand, compare, and contrast the solutions that are available for purchase (the pre-sales role); to troubleshoot problems with their implementations—that is, to help ensure that the solutions work successfully once a purchase is made (the post-sales role); and to maximize sales for the sales engineer's employer by providing help to customers (the aspect of the job that puts the "sales" in the title sales engineer).


Conflict-of-interest management and return-on-investment demonstration

It is understood in the market, by both the sales engineer and his or her wary industrial client, that the sales portion of the sales engineering role inherently involves a conflict of interest (COI), because it is always possible that the ''ideal'' solutions could involve recommending a competitor's products or services. However, the sales engineer is under pressure to steer the customer towards their employer's product. Thus, customers are generally wary of advice given by sales engineers. Nevertheless, sales engineers do usually provide real value to customers, which is why the role endures despite customers' apprehension. The customer's only motivation to participate in the encounter is to achieve
return on investment Return on investment (ROI) or return on costs (ROC) is a ratio between net income (over a period) and investment (costs resulting from an investment of some resources at a point in time). A high ROI means the investment's gains compare favourably ...
(ROI) in one way or another. Toward that end, sales engineering increasingly relies on any information technology that can help quantify ROI. This is summed up in the aphorism that "at the end of the day, the customer just wants to know for sure that they will gain A dollars over the next B years (via reduced expenses or increased sales) if they pay C dollars up front for product D."


Application development

Another function of the sales engineer is to introduce modified, improved, and/or advanced technology to potential users who may have an application but who have not yet acquired knowledge of the material or technique in question. The sales engineer may conduct training sessions or demonstrations to accomplish this. The task of seeking out industries, firms, or business models that do not yet use a certain product (for example, a CAx system or a CRM system) and causing them to adopt a new approach using that product is what puts the "applications" in "applications engineering" or "application development" (not to be confused with another common sense of that term, which refers to
software development Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
and programming). The task is to seek out and develop new applications for the product, in order to increase sales. The customer's only motivation for adopting it is "what it can do for me", such as same-output-lower-costs, more-output-same-cost, etc. Thus, when things work out correctly, both firms profit from the application development. This result also has broader economic implications, as it is a mechanism by which
economic efficiency In microeconomics, economic efficiency, depending on the context, is usually one of the following two related concepts: * Allocative or Pareto efficiency: any changes made to assist one person would harm another. * Productive efficiency: no addi ...
increases,
productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
grows, and
economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of ...
is encouraged. Inventors and R&D people create new tools and processes; but they do not disseminate into the business world (to do any economic good) without some amount of applications development, teaching (from exposing decision-makers via
trade show A trade fair, also known as trade show, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and c ...
s to providing workers with training), and sales.


Teaching customers

Many products and services purchased by large companies and institutions are highly complex. Examples include airliners, weapons systems, and
IT systems Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...
(such as telecommunications, or databases and their dependent applications for purposes such as
logistics Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...
or
customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a r ...
). Sales engineers advise customers on how best to use the products or services provided. The sales process also may require some technical
proof of concept Proof of concept (POC or PoC), also known as proof of principle, is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has prac ...
or tech demo to be assured of the practicality of the solution. Sales engineers normally will ensure these efforts are successful.


Internal Functions


Proposal preparation

The sales of systems and solutions delivered by these companies are complex and usually require extensive documentation that describes what is being proposed and what the company commits to deliver. The sales engineer is in charge of preparing technical proposals, or scopes of work (SoWs), which are usually subject to technical negotiation with the customer prior to the provider being able to submit a commercial proposal. In order to prepare the commercial proposal, once the scope of the proposed solution is finalized, the sales engineer is typically also in charge of gathering all the inputs from internal stakeholders (product, R&D, delivery, services, finance, legal, etc.) so that profit and loss (P&L) can be calculated, pricing can be established and final commercial proposal can be approved and submitted to the customer.


Tailoring of solutions

Sales engineers also collaborate with the design, production, engineering, or R&D departments of their companies to determine how products and services could be made or modified to suit customers' needs. This aspect of sales engineering is important, because it is what allows the sales engineer to feel that they can maintain their personal integrity (ethically speaking) in the face of the inherent COI of the job (explained earlier). The sales engineer does not have to lie (ignore or negatively misrepresent the competitor's products or services) if they can reasonably tell the customer that their employer can tailor its solutions to the customer's particular requirements. Doing that may not be easy or cheap, which means that there is always a line to be walked to avoid overpromising-and/or-underdelivering.


Personnel considerations


Talents, skills, knowledge

The companies that employ sales engineers need to sell their products or services to generate income, but since engineers and scientists usually have substantially different personality traits than those required for sales work, there is a role for people with a combination of abilities. These individuals must have technical understanding of the complexities of what their company supplies together with sales skills. This combination of traits is not common.


Travel, communications, telepresence, compensation

Sales engineers may spend 20% to 70% of their time traveling, and they may work a flexible schedule due to the needs of the sales organization they support. Most sales engineers telecommute or spend a limited amount of time in the office. Skills with IT that help remote people communicate better, such as teleconferencing, videoconferencing,
web conferencing Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars (web seminars), webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-l ...
, and
telepresence Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance or effect of being present via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location. Telepresence requires that the user ...
(e.g.,
GoToMeeting GoTo Meeting (formerly GoToMeeting) is a web conferencing software by GoTo. It is an online meeting, desktop sharing, and video conferencing software package that enables the user to meet with other computer users, customers, clients, or collea ...
,
WebEx Webex by Cisco is an American company that develops and sells web conferencing, videoconferencing and contact center as a service applications. It was founded as WebEx in 1995 and taken over by Cisco Systems in 2007. Its headquarters are in Sa ...
,
live meeting Live may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Live!'' (2007 film), 2007 American film * ''Live'' (2014 film), a 2014 Japanese film *'' ''Live'' (Apocalyptica DVD) Music *Live (band), American alternative rock band * List of albums ...
,
Fuze Meeting Fuze (formerly known as ThinkingPhones) is a cloud communications and collaboration software platform designed for the enterprise. Fuze was acquired by 8x8. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Products Fuze's main product co ...
) are put to good use both on and off the road. Sales engineers, like their sales representative counterparts, are hired based on their geographic location rather than their proximity to the corporate, or even regional, office. Working in another part of the country, or even outside the country, where the corporate offices are, a sales engineer may only make it to corporate headquarters once or twice each year. A key differentiator between sales engineers and other roles within the organization is that a sales engineer is usually compensated by salary plus commission, as most sales representatives are. This commission is usually paid out when the sales representative is paid. Far less common is the case where a sales engineer is compensated with a base salary plus bonus. The bonus can be based upon the revenue generated within an assigned territory, set up as a
management by objectives Management by objectives (MBO), also known as management by planning (MBP), was first popularized by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book ''The Practice of Management''.Drucker, P., ''The Practice of Management'', Harper, New York, 1954; Heinemann, London ...
(MBO) bonus, or a combination of the two. In both cases a sales engineer will make a base salary that is proportionally higher than their sales representative counterparts, and significantly more than the traditional engineers in an organization.


Sales engineering resources

Sales engineering is often different from traditional sales roles. The systems, products, and technology that a sales engineer sells are often complex and expensive. Traditional sales strategies, especially "hard closing" techniques, may not work and in some cases can even hurt a sale. As technology advances, so must the sales strategy of a sales engineer. Th
North American Association of Sales Engineers
has done much to advance awareness of the field across all industries and has further resources available.


Consultative approach

Sales engineers and technical sales reps must perfectly understand the product or service they are selling; they should be able to explain in detail how it works, what business value it offers, and the results that customers will achieve. They also have to sell the idea of why customers need to make a change to move forward to the solution offered. Sales engineering uses a lot of discovery questions to uncover the challenges that customers have in their business or the outcomes they can't drive.


References

{{Reflist


External links



* ttp://careerpedia.in/2013/03/detailed-description-on-field-application-engineers-job-profile/ Field Application Engineer's Job Profile
Seviour, Robert. Can an engineer make a good sales professional?
Sales occupations Engineering occupations