Technical sales holds a unique power in the sales process. A survey from Mastering Technical Sales found that 39% of Middle Management and 43% of C-Level Executives considered the Technical team to be their most valuable resource in the buying process.
Technical roles like the Sales Engineer are more trusted by buyers because they aren’t viewed as a sales person, but as a subject matter expert and advisor. This trust gives them a unique leverage in your deals. Yet, many sales teams fail to leverage the full power of this role, utilizing the SE only as a technician who builds demos and hashes out details rather than a core influencer in the buying process.
When selling SaaS, Cloud, or other Hi-Tech solutions, there’s likely one or more Technical Buyers on the buying committee who are highly invested in the technical features and outcomes of your solution. The role of the Sales Engineer is to influence these stakeholders by communicating the features and differentiators of your solution, but also to make sure these technical components are aligned to the business problems and desired outcomes as identified by the Account Executive in discovery.
Sales Engineers are viewed by the buyer as technical experts, which provides them the unique authority to share your company’s point of view on what technical capabilities are required to accomplish the desired outcomes.
Customers often enter the conversation with an idea of the required capabilities they want, whether gathered from independent research or competitors. Elite sales teams influence the decision criteria by presenting their differentiation as a core requirement to solving the customer’s most pressing business issue. This process begins from the start of the buyer journey with the AE - all fo their conversations should affirm the SE's position and tee them up to position themselves as a trusted expert that will diagnose and triage the buyer’s problem with a customized solution. Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan shares how sales leaders can enable this ecosystem in this clip (left) from our podcast episode on Technical Sales.
While the Technical Buyer isn’t the Economic Buyer and typically doesn’t have access to discretionary funds, satisfaction of their required capabilities is a core activity to moving deals forward at a high value, as the technical win is a key step to achieving the economic win with the Economic Buyer. Failure to secure the technical win typically results in objections like “You don’t have a feature that we want” or “we don’t see the value of your extra features and chose a cheaper competitor.” You don’t want to lose on a technicality when your solution is the best option to deliver on the customer’s desired business outcomes. Sales Engineers leverage their trusted advisor role to connect those dots for the buyer and build visible alignment between the technical abilities of your solution and the business value.
Buyers often push for a demo early in the sales process because that’s what they’ve come to expect from tech sellers.
However, if you want your team to successfully execute a value-driven engagement, it’s important to hold off on giving a demo until they have sufficient evidence of the customer’s business pains and desired outcomes. Brian Walsh explains why demo timing is so crucial in this clip from our webinar Driving a Revenue Mindset.
A skilled Sales Engineer uses the demo to build towards a collective “yes” from all stakeholders – but they can’t do so without knowing what’s important to that buyer. The focus of the demo should be on tying specific technical features of your solution to the customer’s desired business outcomes. If your competitors are executing a demo-led process, taking the time to execute discovery and qualification of the buyer’s current state can provide your team with a new competitive differentiation: a differentiation of their process where the customer feels that their needs are validated and understood.
