What are the best lead generation and qualification practices for sales engineers?

Host a Customer Appreciation Day. This allows for customers to learn from each other, share best practices, and build a peer network. Once they start to share with each other, opportunities to expand your relationship will quickly surface. There is nothing more powerful than customers 'selling' each other.

Knowing your ideal customer is very important for SE's. One needs to be able to know what challenges their prospects are facing, where is the industry going , what are the future trends etc. You need to master your domain to be able to win the trust of your future customers.

1. Find leads through online/offline channels, such as social media, webinars, referrals, etc. 2. Score leads by their interest and fit, using a system that gives points to leads based on their actions and attributes. 3. Qualify leads by their readiness and need, using a framework that asks questions about their budget, authority, challenges, goals, etc. 4. Nurture leads by building trust and providing value, using different ways of communication i.e., email, phone, video, chat, etc. 5. Transfer leads to the sales team with all the details and insights, to close the deal. 6. Move leads through the sales pipeline, which is the process of turning leads into customers, and use a tool to track and improve your sales performance.

Understand what sector to focus in. Know which customer you need to focus. Understand what is their application and business unit. Host a introduction and understand their issue, provide solution. Build relationship & bond between you & customer. Knowing your ideal type of customer to build the trust. When propose your own product, knowing their pain point & what is their final goals is very important.

This for sure works, through profiling of customer, SE will know who to go and filter the customer and do a mapping for target customer.

One often overlooked opportunity is to ask for introductions from your current network. They might not know the right person or audience but having a warm introduction and then navigating within the organization versus a cold call or interaction is wildly more successful. Look at your connections connections and use that to your advantage, but you better repay the favor or they won’t be in your network for long!

Multiple Channels open more doors to reach the right customer, but it is very important to hit the right channel. With new trends, the channels have changed as well from phone to Social Media.

While Sales Engineers aren't usually involved in sourcing new pipeline, it doesn't meant that you can't! If you understand your product, the narrative of the problem area, and the people (audience) that typically buy...there is nothing from stopping you from engaging with those potential buyers. Posting on social media, writing a blog, creating a YouTube series...any form of content creation and be used both for push (outbound) and pull (inbound). Doesn't mean your primary objective is to source deals, but the ability to contribute to the overall pipeline as an SE will absolutely make you stand out from the pack.

As SE's, we have are in a unique position because we understand the technical value our product brings as well as the problem it is solving. With that knowledge, we can be very lethal when it comes to sourcing deals. Whether we are on the conference floor, explaining to prospects how our product can solve their problems or posting engaging content on LinkedIn, we can leverage our ability to easily understand pain points and paint our product in a light that allows the prospect to understand how purchasing our product will ultimately make their lives better. Sure, it's not in the 'job description' but I would argue that SE's are in the best situation to help find deals because we know and understand what to look for.

Never underestimate the word of mouth. In my previous and current role, the responsible video or event managers at different companies know each other or at least have seen other video town halls, webinars etc. So if your customer is happy with your solutions and talks about it in a positive way, it might trigger the interest from other specialists in that business field for your solution too.

BANT has a bad rap these days because we've trained everyone to use it as a qualification tool by reading from a script. No buyer wants to sit there and be peppered with qualification questions before they've seen a demo or had a conversation with a real person. As the SE, you can work on weaving the elements of the BANT framework into your demo narrative which allows you to qualify someone in or out without the interrogation tactics. It does require a little more onus on the SE to do more demos, but it also helps solidify the information needed to qualify someone out much faster.

Lead qualification should be done before a SE gets involved. An SE is responsible for speeding up the middle leg of an opportunity so it can close faster. A BDR or AE should be qualifying before engaging a SE

The BANT idea works well of you we are able to make an assessment by the availabile engagement opportunities on particular lead rather than puting it in a form of formal questionnaire in written or rigid back to back questions in a discussion.

Target on the problem mainly the "Why Change Now" part to evaluate and qualify the lead. If the need is strong then the timeline and budget can/will change.

BANT is a good framework but that's all it is, a framework. Its up to you and your AE to gather the information needed without badgering you prospect. You must do it in a way that is natural so the prospect doesn't feel interrogated. To do this, you and your AE need to be in lock step. You need to understand who is responsible for what. The AE should understand the Budget and Authority while the SE can understand the Need and Timing. As an SE, you can gauge these two things throughout your demo. By asking questions about their process and their pain, you can easily identify the need. By asking question like "When do you want this solution to be live?" you can use the answer to backtrack into an appropriate timeline.

Leveraging sales engineers beyond demos can result in faster and more lucrative deal closures. Here's how: *Connect directly with critical stakeholders on LinkedIn, opening a 1:1 line away from sales chatter. *Utilize strategic video content for added value, relationship building, time savings, and potential meeting prevention. *Attend meetings with your Account Executive (AE) to provide a non-sales presence and voice. In the evolving landscape of complex sales, collaborative team efforts are essential for success, as most opportunities now demand multiple touchpoints resembling enterprise-style cycles. Value contribution should be distributed across the team for optimal results.

I believe this is extremely Important to Nurture because a Lead who is not Qualified Today would get interested when getting Nurtured. Nurturing is also a good way to keep Connect with Prospects with Enhanced Recall Value. Nurturing Contents play a key role as well and this has to be an Effective Role of a Marketing and Communication Team Supported by Sales a colleagues as a Team.

Once qualify, building a strong relationship is very important. It helps to bring more business and build that layer of trust. Nurturing should be more like seeding.

CRM are designed for sales reps to help nurture clients. As SEs, we need a purpose built tool to help us nurture. One that I've come across is called Homerun Presales. This tool give you one place to put all your relevant information from a deal. From what integrations to they use to their specific product requests to an area for 'fun facts' about the client that you can use for increasing rapport, Homerun is the SE workspace. Having this information in one place can and will help to nurture your leads as you can appraise them when a new product feature comes to production that they were waiting on or you noted they are fans of a certain TV show and you can send over latest new on the characters. People buy from people.

Sales funnels work. Qualifying a lead is just the beginning of a relationship that grows over time. Part of building that relationship is providing unexpected value over time. Nurturing prospective clients you've already spent time and money to get into your funnel is a good investment. For me, many led to multi-million dollar projects years after providing an initial, relatively small solution.

Part of the fun of being a sale engineer is being the internal project manager for your external client. Having a coordinated plan with the entire team drives regular communication which builds the strength to deliver on your promises.

As a marketer, I know how important it is to align with the sales team. That's why I'm proud of the collaboration we achieved in the last quarter. We shared insights, feedback, and goals, and created a unified message that resonated with our prospects. The result? A 25% increase in revenue and happy customers!

Sales engineering teams now have 'presales data' that no one else has but everyone wants, especially if they are using a purpose-built presales solution. This data shows you what is working and what is not. Codify what is working into sales engineering 'evaluation plans' to guide sales engineers step-by-step through their deals.

No one single sales method or procedure is bulletproof, adapting and adjusting via mentorship and experience is important to keep on your A-game as an SE

1. Offering Partnerships & Collabrations 2. Strategic Follow up for enquiries 3. Building Relationships with clients 4. Data Collection & Background Work

For me as a service-based business founder, the 4 principal strategies to get more leads are: -cold reach out. -warm reach out. -ads. -content. Always based in the adding value principle as the most important goal of any campaign.