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hello and welcome to the engineering career coach podcast in this episode I'll be talking to Ramsey marjaba a senior sales engineer and founder of we the sales Engineers we'll be talking about sales engineering and what some of the skills and qualities are that you need to become a great sales engineer or just engineer in general now I'm your host Jeff Perry I'm the founder of more than engineering and the creator of the engineering career accelerator program I do a lot of work helping engineers and Technology professionals with leadership and career coaching to create meaningful careers and lives and this is the engineering career coach podcast brought to you by Emi the first podcast dedicated to helping engineers and Technical professionals with both their personal and professional development now it's time to jump right into the main segment of this episode today I have the pleasure of having Ramsay marjaba join me he's a senior sales engineer and the founder of we the sales Engineers Ramsey thanks so much for being here with me thank you and thank you for assuming it's going to be a pleasure I guess you'll find out sooner or later uh We've we've talked before I I enjoy it so so Ramsey excited to have you on the show love to have you introduce yourself to the audience in your own words tell them a little bit more about who you are a little bit about your career journey and what you're up to these days sure I studied engineering Communications engineering at University and I worked as a support engineer and network design engineer at a company called alcata Lucent and I stumbled into sales engineering didn't know what it was most people don't and turns out I enjoy it I like it and I sucked at it so I started a podcast a website to get better and I've been doing that since so I'm a I'm a coach as e-coach and SE so active SE or solution specialist we have different names for different things and I've been doing that since and enjoying it okay excellent so you mentioned you kind of stumbled into sales engineering you didn't know what it was and maybe most people don't so maybe now that you've got a whole podcast and website about it you can you can share with us a little bit more about it so can you explain to people especially those who might not be familiar what exactly a sales engineer does okay so let me start off with sales engineering the process of sales engineering is solving business problems through technology okay what a sales engineer does and it it differs greatly from industry to Industry from company to company but in general our job is to meet with customers understand their problems and we do that through the process of discovery where we ask a million questions it's like going to a doctor trying to figure out what like my knee is hurting and trying to figure out why and then we try to convince them in the nicest way possible that we have the best solution for them and then you have sales people who either found the customer to begin with and then closing the deal at the end so doing the negotiation and uh and asking hey when are you gonna buy when are you gonna buy you know those annoying questions that a lot of Engineers don't enjoy asking or receiving okay so it's interesting so talk to me a little bit more about the relationship and the separation between a sales engineer and a sales person and how Okay the responsibilities are divided but the opportunities to kind of collaborate as they're working with a potential client right so in terms of uh sales engineering and sales in the mechanical and civil world so people who study mechanical engineering civil engineering it could be one of the same the salesperson could be the sales engineer who's doing all the work from finding leads building relationships with the customers and prospecting all that and then doing understanding the problems and then solving them and then asking for the purchase order um and the computer it networking SAS world those rules are separated where the salesperson's job is to the salesperson owns the opportunity owns the customer the customer relationship it's their job they're on the hook to close the deal and they're they're on the hook to find Opportunities and then get the sales engineer involved to help them with understanding what the problem is because it's a fairly technical problem and then the sales engineer will have to do their own Discovery do what we call a demonstration a demo a customer demo where we show the customer how we can solve the problem uh manage a proof of concept so where the like it's taking the car for a test drive if you if you ever bought a car you took it for a test drive that's a proof of concept and then providing that information back to the salesperson what went well what didn't go well do we add any value to this customer do we solve their problem and then the salesperson will then do the negotiation and ask for the purchase order and we're always doing that against somebody else like there's it's not just one vendor it's not just Honda it's Honda Toyota Mazda whatever you want so it's always competition against other people yeah I I think so I think you know we're talking about how different Industries kind of organize these different roles differently right and so a sales engineer may or may not be the one eventually asking for that final sale depending on how an organization decides to organize those those different responsibilities but either way a sales engineer will be involved in kind of creating some of that technical Outlook and trying to help show a potential client that they might be able to solve the problem that that they have am I understanding that right like that's a big piece to what a sales engineer tries to help do that's a major piece that without that the salesperson generally speaking cannot cannot sell I mean if I'm trying to sell you like if the salesperson is trying to sell you a car and I don't understand why you need it how you're going to use it then you might not be able to actually close the deal in the end and that's where the SE comes in for more complicated uh Solutions now it's interesting that you bring in the example of like selling a car because usually when people think of car salesmen you know we start to cringe a little bit right yeah but you're you're maybe talking about this semi-positively but but I'm curious like as you've been working through this and been a sales engineer for years now and talking to plenty of other sales engineers in the industry through uh your podcast and other things what are some of the common skills and things that you found that that sales Engineers need to have and and also think about how some of these skills might actually apply in ways that non-sales Engineers other types of engineers might also benefit from you know even if they're not directly involved in the sales process so let me ask answer the second question first perfect generally speaking the sales skills are needed in every aspect of life whether you're an engineered doctor whatever you are you need some sales skills if you're interviewing for a job the product you're selling is yourself sure the service you're selling is yourself and you need to be able to actually go through the sales process where you're the salesperson you're the salesman you're everything and the customer is your potential employer what helps with that in general whether you're an SE engineer whatever uh the most important skill that a lot of people lack is being able to ask the right useful and hard questions asking the right questions that will help you understand if you can help someone solve a problem is very important and another skill that people don't tend to work on is the listening to those answers and right now you're asking me a question and I'm immediately thinking of an answer instead of taking the time to actually listen to your complete question and that's just an example I'm actually listening to your questions don't don't think I'm not listening to it but generally speaking when we're talking when someone's talking we're immediately thinking of an answer to that question and not taking the time to listen respond like oh are you asking this what you mean are you asking this question what do you mean what you're saying is this so asking the right questions and then listening to the answers are very important and then because we're sales Engineers we have to have the technical skills to solve the problem otherwise we're glorified salespeople sure so how do those technical skills really come into play and where do you plug those in into that process is you're trying to ask those questions understand things where do the technical skills come into play for a sales engineer every step the technical having technical product knowledge informs the questions that you're going to ask okay if if you don't know what your what Pro what problem your product solves you're not going to know how to ask it and then then figuring it out like how I can actually solve that customer's problems with my set of tools maybe I should combine a tool here a tool there to figure out how to actually solve that problem that that requires a big technical skill set we may not be the people like if you think of an engine we not we may not be the people building each part of the engine but we know how the engine works as a whole and then we can actually discuss that with our customers to help them like hey you need 15 horsepower you need 100 horsepower you need it to not use as much gas you need to use too much gas or diesel all these and I'm just giving simple examples when we come to like the networking world and the SAS world there's a million options and million Integrations between one product or another because like right now you can buy an engine from Lockheed Martin and you might buy a transmission from another company you need to integrate them together that's the technical know-how that you might have to have and I'm using mechanical examples I don't have a lot of civil examples the audience isn't mostly civil engineers or everybody it's a mix across all engineering disciplines so so we've got some of some of all of them well hopefully the the examples I'm providing are are being useful to some people but there's a lot of technical knowledge that we need to know and we need to know how to build that engine although we don't need to tell the customer how to build it okay so how could someone if they were interesting and interested in learning more about sales engineering maybe start to explore that as a potential career path what are some of the things they might try or learn about or explore within or without their current organization like how do they see hey maybe this is a fit or at least just figure out how they can bring in some of these skills we were just talking about listening asking those questions doing that Discovery process which they could then apply those skills to the other work that they're doing where would they go thinking within their own work they can start doing it and maybe I'm generalizing specific people have different options but if there's something within your work that's pissing you off you're seeing a problem within your organization within your problem try to figure out a solution for it right so that's step number one now now that you've figured out a solution for it you have to convince other people that it is a problem okay and that your solution is the best solution for that problem that that's basically sales engineering there is no money involved usually with sales engineering there's someone paying for it but you're basically convincing someone to allow you the time just to spend on solving the problem so there's money there if you want to think about it and then you try to sell it to the bigger organization like hey [Music] someone did this solution and now we can use it all over they solved our problems so you just even if you don't want to go into sales engineering that just adds value to your career in general and it gives you a taste of sales engineering okay so just this process of recognizing a problem asking the questions to understand it better creating an opportunity to have a solution and presenting that in a way that helps other people see that solution the connection to the problem they have and the solution that you have to bring to them which by the way in different respects Engineers do this all the time right as Engineers they're solving problems that's what we're talking about here a sales engineer is just more directly tied to the sales process of bringing a potential product solution to a client where other types of engineers might be bringing those Solutions within the products that they're creating at their company to other ways they might be presenting things to clients or even in just the the salt the problem solving skills they have within their teams they're trying to convince hey I have this idea we're going to discuss and brainstorm different options but in in some way you still need to sell your idea if you wanted to get adopted in some way or another is that right yeah that's by the way that's a perfect example of uh listening right you just repeated everything I said to me in your own words and that's that's great and that's something that engineers and sales Engineers need to work on the the big distinction that would make between sales engineers and Engineers is and this is my experience is that for engineers someone tells them we have a problem show us how to fix it as sales Engineers we have to go find the problem and then use whatever the engineers like the people who are working on the products use whatever they did to solve my the customer's problem so that would be the distinction that I that's only a distinction that I see and when you're an engineer if you start looking for problems and convincing people that it is a problem or maybe just double checking is it a problem like am I the only one seeing this no other people are seeing this okay great let's solve it together now you're adding leadership into this and then you can go to your management we saw this problem this is the solution convinced them present it to whoever you need to present it and try to get it adopted across the company it might not work it might not be easy but guess what as sales Engineers we lose a lot more than we win and so it's part of the job interesting interesting so not every idea even if it's a good idea is going to be adopted whether that's a sales pitch that you're trying to make or just an idea that you have in your company and being willing to to accept that along the way that's just part of the process and some of the things we need to deal with in our lives and our careers right we don't win every time I mean but maybe we lose more than we win in some respects we can still learn from each one of those experiences along the way 100 I mean the goal when we solve a problem is to actually solve a problem not cause new ones and also save someone like money time like generally speaking the problems are money time risk so if your solution costs more than the problem that they're trying to solve it's a bad solution or if not even worse if your Solutions cost less but you are not able to show the value of your solution to your your prospective whoever wants to buy it internally externally then it's not going to go through and that's part of our job is to show the value of our solution and if if a Honda Civic costs a million dollars no one would buy it because it the value it brings is a lot less than a million dollars right okay makes sense so we were talking earlier about about how sometimes sales engineering is separated from the sales people so I'm curious about the the stress on a sales engineer is their compensation tied to commission and actually successfully completing sales is that sometimes yes sometimes no what does that look like as far as compensation for sales engineers most mature companies provide commission to the sales engineers it's much less than the sales people so let's say in the SAS World software software world people are selling AutoCAD for example I don't know if anybody still sells all account but hey uh Autodesk um they're the sales people can get paid either 50 50 as in they get 50 of their salary as base and 50 of their status commission or 60 40 60 as base 40s commission or it could be zero Basin 100 commission uh I I haven't talked to anyone who does that but I've heard stories of people who have that sales Engineers are usually 80 20. so 80 of their salary is based and 20 of their salary is commissioned so most SES that I've talked to see their base as their salary and the commission is just cherry on top and this this allows the sales engineer to kind of pull back if the salesperson is going too fast or they're doing the wrong things which happens the sales engineer is now will act as a the checks and balance for the salesperson so it's not as trustful for SES as it is for sales people because we get we usually get a larger base but we do have incentives to sell sure so how do sales Engineers where maybe most people are sort of thinking about engineers is mostly base salary maybe there's a bonus involved depending on how the company does but now we're directly tied some of our compensation at least to the performance of completing these sales and different things when maybe you don't have full control because someone else has to make a decision you're working with other people and things like that so that can be kind of stressful for some people so for for some people might think of that as stressful what are some of the things they might do to reduce that stress or or deal with that cycle and some of the disappointment we were talking about earlier when they might not win all those sales and you know that's going to affect our compensation and things like that that's something that I felt when I first got into sales or sales engineering and the way I got over it was I negotiated a base of my new company that's higher than the salary in my old company and that immediately alleviated stress like I don't have to sell to survive sales people on the other hand usually their base is not enough to cover everything and so they need some commission but as sales Engineers usually we're well compensated the base covers most of our life expenses even investing for the future and the commission is just cherry on top that's one thing another thing I want to remind people that even your bonus is not guaranteed sure I worked for I worked for a company where they they had this most ridiculous formula to calculate the bonus and it's based on how your department does and how the company does as a whole my department killed it the company lost money I got zero bonus right I I was not in control and the thing about sales and sales Engineering in general is it teaches you about negotiation next time you try to switch jobs with a different company you know how to negotiate a better salary so I would think of it even if you're worried about like maybe I'm not making enough money it's an investment it's an investment in some life skills that you're going to use I use it to buy a car to buy a house to make sure my wife is happy and doing the things that I would enjoy doing so there's some negotiation that goes on there you know it's you have to make sure that you learn a lot of things it is it is an investment it might be stressful you're working long hours but I work long hours as a network design engineer and I never got paid any bonus on that as Engineers I don't know how it is in the States but Engineers don't get paid overtime is that accurate not typically uh not typically unless they're they're somehow hourly compensated uh on a contract basis or something like that yeah so sales Engineers is like the Pinnacle of merit-based payments you do well you convince the customer that your solution works for them you get paid for it yeah that's great that's great and and like you said it's an investment in learning other skills and by the way learning those other skills like negotiations Communications asking great questions understand those things that can apply in other areas of your life too which you can use uh to benefit you as well which is which is fantastic because I mean you just mentioned negotiations negotiations is not something that many Engineers are involved in very frequently or are ever taught in any respect but really we negotiate all the time in different ways even if it's again negotiating you know what what's the right idea that we should take in in the work that we're doing in a project that we're working on or where should we go out to dinner tonight uh or or what where should we go on vacation you know even in our personal lives like these are little negotiations that we're having in our lives and if we don't know how to do that effectively in a way that doesn't just get you what you want but also helps everyone feel like they're a winner right then and we can then we want might be losing out on opportunities in that way at a minimum you learn to negotiate a raise or a salary right if you move jobs that's at a minimum yeah perfect yeah I try to negotiate with my wife doesn't always work she's uh I'll just leave it there she's a better negotiator than you yes she is that's that's exactly thank you if she listens to this you just saved it yeah okay great um so can any kind of engineer like potentially become a sales engineer and is it hard to become a sales engineer what's that process like there's a shortage of sales Engineers so there's it's challenging because the initial thinking is most companies don't have a way to train sales Engineers hence why I started we the sales Engineers so they always want to hire someone with five to ten years of experience but we don't have many se's like that like there's a shortage of sales Engineers so now they're opening up to pretty much a lot of people who exhibit some Tendencies like who enjoy talking to people enjoy solving problems if if you're an engineer who does not like talking to people then you should not be a sales engineer if uh if you don't like being told what to do by a salesperson you might not want to be a sales engineer although you can learn to to negotiate with that salesperson so not everybody can be or should be a sales engineer some people are better like they excel at being Engineers so why would they want to change if everybody becomes a sales engineer will have no products to sell so it it is open for everybody it will require a lot of work but anybody can become it and hopefully everybody will enjoy it okay very good so so it's open there it's a possibility especially because there's a shortage of them if it's something you want to explore then you can go on and explore that and perhaps we the sales Engineers is a great place to explore that and learn more about the industry and stuff like that you know how to find me we the sales engineers.com yeah very good well Ramsey has been a fun conversation so far at this point we're going to transition into the take action today's segment of the show we'll get one final piece of actual advice from you we'll be right back now it's time for the take action today segment of the show Ramsay it's been a fun conversation so far we've been talking about sales engineering and how that applies in different ways now whether our listeners are sales Engineers or want to be sales Engineers or not what's one lesson that they can take and take action on from the world of sales engineering that can help them in some of the career challenges and opportunities they might face okay so I I think of myself as an introvert and for me I never thought that I need anybody and the thing that I learned in sales engineering is that we don't live in a bubble any everybody could use somebody else's help and could help other people so my action item I guess if you want to call it that for people is connect with five people on LinkedIn five new people on LinkedIn or whatever resources you want dig your well before you need it you never know what could happen tomorrow is there there might be a recession coming and you might need some help connect with five people connect with them deeply not just like send them a connection on LinkedIn and dig your will before you need it you don't know what could happen you might need someone's help and also you could be able to help other people who would need your help as well okay love it to to prepare and build those connections and and not just when you're job searching and other things but but always be cultivating those networking connections and those relationships uh all the time I like to dig your well before you need it that's excellent so Ramsay it's been a fun conversation people want to connect with you or learn more about we the sales Engineers are the things where would you point them to uh so we the sales engineers.com is my website I'm very active on LinkedIn so Ramsay measurable I think I'm the only one there with that name yeah I'm active a little bit on Twitter I don't like getting on there I find I get sucked into some bad discussions so LinkedIn we the sales engineers and I look forward to meeting as many people as possible I'm digging my well okay perfect thanks so much for being with us and we wish you nothing but success as you continue moving forward thanks so much I appreciate that thank you I really hope you enjoyed the episode today we would love to hear your feedback comments and questions you can go to .engineeringmanagementinstitute.org where you'll find a summary of the key points discussed in the episode as well as links to any of the resources websites or books that we mentioned and don't forget to check out any upcoming live webinars also at engineeringmanagementinstitute.org additionally for any Engineers who are struggling and need help taking the next career step I've created some free training Resources with an opportunity to join a more intensive program called the engineering career accelerator you can find more information at engineering career accelerator.com until next time I wish you the best in all of your engineering endeavors