What are the best strategies to bridge the sales engineering skills gap?

Review your deliverables, your demos. Or even better, ask an expert to do so. Often, teams are unaware of (lack of) the quality of their demos. They do the same thing over and over. When deals are not closed, it is easier to look at other factors than to acknowledge that your demos are too product-focused, too long, too technical, and not conveying value.

To assess your Sales Engineering workforce, establish a baseline aligned with organizational goals and industry standards. Define key competencies like technical expertise, communication, problem-solving, and customer engagement. Conduct regular performance reviews, seeking feedback from stakeholders. Evaluate how well the team translates technical solutions into compelling value propositions and collaborates with sales. Use KPIs—conversion rates, deal sizes, and customer satisfaction—to measure individual and team effectiveness. Adapt the skill set baseline to evolving industry trends.

The best starting point is to assess your engineers' delivery to their sellers, demo skills, deliverables, and follow-up. Then, request feedback from the teams they support to identify any areas of misalignment. The combination of your observations and this feedback will help in identifying potential areas for improvement.

Struggling with the skills gap in sales engineering? Here are four key strategies: Expert Insight: Invite an experienced engineer for lunch and learn directly from their expertise. Observe Demos: Watch how other sales engineers present. Note unfamiliar terms and research them. Read Widely: Dive into books on sales engineering and technical topics to broaden your knowledge. Video Learning: Use your lunch breaks to watch educational videos for passive yet effective learning. Stay curious and keep evolving!

Conduct a Skills Audit: Evaluate the current skillset of the sales engineering team. Identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Set Development Goals: Establish clear development objectives based on the audit results to address identified weaknesses and enhance strengths. Review Sales Engineering Processes: Examine existing sales engineering processes to ensure they align with business objectives and customer expectations. Align with Business Objectives: Ensure that the team’s skills and processes are in sync with the broader business objectives and strategies.

Instead of trying to hire a round person, hire a round team. That way they're not competing and synergistic outcomes will occur.

Prioritize Potential Over Perfection: focus on identifying individuals with significant growth potential, showcasing a strong willingness to learn, adapt, and tackle complex problems. Seek Alignment in Fit: Beyond qualifications, find sales engineers whose values, vision, and cultural alignment resonate with your organization. A robust fit cultivates a collaborative work environment, extending beyond technical aspects. Look for candidates whose values align with your organizational ethos. Assess Through Diverse Methods: Evaluate potential and fit using a varied approach—incorporate behavioral questions, case studies, role plays, and assessments measuring cognitive abilities, personality traits, and motivation.

Always hire for attitude and appetite to succeed. Technical prowess or technical experience is about the 4+ item on the list IMO. Everyone can learn technology (albeit at different paces) but attitude and attitude are very difficult to coach or train someone in. As a hiring manager, always ask yourself "Would we be confident putting this candidate in front of our customers? Can we trust them to do the right thing?"

Hire someone who isn't you. Of course, they must have a desire to learn and to deliver. But his or her point of view will give you more knowledge. And of course look for someone who is better than you in other areas too. Diversity is the key to the big picture.

It is more rewarding to hire a mix of both potential and experience. A willing and teachable candidate brings a lot of positive energy to work and likely ends up a start in the right atmosphere. Equally important is hiring qualified candidates as they bring experience and quick returns to bear. They also provide on the job training to other willing candidates with whom they work. They can also become a source of inspiration and motivation for the newbies who are only just learning the ropes.

Teach first about industry trends and customer pain points. Talk about the product and its features after new hires have gained industry and customer knowledge. This will help them put the product in the proper perspective. Next, teach them demo skills and discovery skills (also in this order). 1. Customer and Industry 2. Product 3. Demo and Disco skills

Although most new engineers have think a piece of equipment may be the same since same model, but each piece of equipment has its own personality. Different applications / operations create a new specific scenario, even two of the same machines operating in the same service can be different. Therefore need to keep open mind and constant keep updated (learning) and become an asset! It’s a life long learning experience, just when you think you are the expert something else will show you different!!!

You should train your staff yearly and do it by assessing their weaknesses. There may be newer techniques that even the managers don’t know.

Coaching skills are a NON-NEGOTIABLE for first-line SE leaders, and should be a key factor in evaluating their suitability for the role! This ensures that the team maintains a focus on continuous skill development, which is crucial in sales. Coaching PLUS call reviews creates a positive feedback loop that leads to tangible improvements, greater confidence, and better ideas. Leaders, prioritize time in your calendars for coaching and call reviews! BONUS 1: carve out a weekly Practice Hour where the team can practice together! This can be a real game-changer in building confidence, generating ideas, and improving the quality of your sales engagements. BONUS 2: Work with your team so they get the most out of their education budgets!

Sales engineering is a very dynamic career, hence the need for constant reviews, upgrades, updates and trainings of industry updates. Customers' needs are also ever evolving and changing therefore continuous training and coaching is critical to keep sales engineers up to date of industry needs customers' buying journey at different times of their operations. Contemporary prospects now have access to more information unlike in the past when customers depend solely on the information provided by sales engineers, therefore it is essential to ensure that sales engineers are armed with current and beneficial information to help customers make well informed decisions.

Implementar programas de capacitación que aborden tanto los conocimientos técnicos específicos del producto como las habilidades de comunicación y empatía es esencial. Facilitar la colaboración entre ingenieros y equipos de ventas fomenta la comprensión mutua. Además, el aprendizaje continuo, la participación en eventos del sector y la mentoría interna contribuyen a mantenerse actualizado y mejorar las habilidades. La retroalimentación constante y la adaptabilidad son clave para cerrar la brecha en un entorno empresarial en constante evolución.

As a Sales Engineer, leveraging technology and tools is key to bridging the skills gap. Our focus is on making our workflow more efficient, aiming to achieve greater results with fewer resources. Essential strategies include: -Efficient Tool Utilization: Select tools that streamline our processes and enhance productivity. -Automation: Use tools like Generative AI for research and idea generation, freeing up time for strategic tasks. -Data-Driven Decisions: Employ analytics for informed decision-making, ensuring strategies are data-backed. -Keeping Up with Trends: Stay updated with industry innovations to maintain a competitive edge. -AI Insights: Integrate AI solutions for deeper market and customer insights, improving our sales strategies.

Is it the tool or user that truly makes an impact? I would suggest it’s the combination. This requires a strategic framework for identifying the right problem to solve, methods to validate the solution is correct and solves the problem, defining requirements that easily integrate with existing architecture and workflows, methods to effectively distribute new solutions to user, and validating it actually creates more value. When you do these things then everyone wins and more value was created.

It essential for Sales engineers to leverage technology and tools to provide bespoke services to customers. CRM, lead generation tools, presentation tools, AI, Data management software and others are important tools every sales engineers must leverage to communicate with their customers. They must always be on the lookout for new trends and attend sales seminars in order to stay abreast of latest tools available for them to use in meeting the needs of their customers.

Technology is constantly evolving and changing. Keeping up to date is essential, not only to keep up with partners, but also to keep up with your current day-to-day tasks. As a manager, you need to keep your tools simple, yet effective.

To foster a world-class learning culture for Sales Engineers, prioritize continuous training and development initiatives. Implement a robust onboarding process that equips new hires with foundational knowledge and skills. Encourage ongoing learning through workshops, webinars, and industry conferences, fostering a commitment to staying abreast of technological advancements, including online courses and certifications. Cultivate a culture of knowledge sharing within the team, facilitating regular collaboration sessions. Embrace a culture that values curiosity, innovation, and adaptability, creating an environment where continuous learning is not just encouraged but ingrained in the team's DNA.

Make learning part of the job (both soft skills and technical skills). Learning needs to be part of the standard working week (i.e. dedicating a set number of hours a week to learning). Sales Engineers are expected to be the experts so need time and space to continue to learn - learning never stands still, especially in the technology space! I think this can also be helped when learning objectives are part of MBOs/quarterly targets etc.

The effect on well-being alone when an employee hears: "Hey, let us train you so that you don't tread water..." increases the value enormously from a business perspective. Well-being and appreciation are a fundamental basis for good work!

As an engineer, one thing that helped my knowledge stack grow is to NOT limit my learning resources to engineering topics only. Get a life - learn music, play new sports, talk to people, explore your neighborhood, try gardening, photography, or writing. The skills you gained here can be translated to your workplace. You'll learn how to negotiate or resolve a conflict, read non-verbal cues when communicating with the customer, expand your knowledge base when trying to find common grounds with a network, and the list goes on. By learning a lot from different sources, you become an interesting person. By being an interesting person, you become the most powerful sales engineer in the marketplace.

To bridge the sales engineering skills gap, cultivating a learning culture is paramount. This entails nurturing values like curiosity, openness, feedback, collaboration, and experimentation. By establishing clear expectations, offering recognition, and creating avenues for growth, organizations can empower sales engineers to thrive. Encouraging knowledge sharing, mentoring, and embracing both successes and failures fosters an environment where continuous professional development is not just supported but celebrated. In essence, fostering a learning culture not only addresses the skills gap but also ensures a dynamic and adaptive sales engineering team.

Make cross functional work as a culture. Sales engineers who get chance to become SE after having hands on with the product will always stand out and will be able to perform well. This knowledge when combined with the experience SE may get from working with Business Development and Sales team can make SE to come up with better strategies.

Remember that SEs are the technical presence of your company to the customers. They need to take the sales collateral and make it their own. In addition, they need to work in the team where each member has their part to play. The SE also needs to know what part everyone plays. Often, even though we generally look at the Sales team as the Quarterback, often it is the SE(and other members of the team) putting in the mortar between everyone's bricks (Tasks)