The importance of sales is something that doesn’t need to be emphasised to any business owner. But when you are supplying the platforms and solutions that affect an organisation’s ability to function and communicate, it is essential to have a sales engineering team in place.
“Moving organisations to the cloud can be a very technical sale” said Darren Smith, SVP Service & Solutions at Vonage.
“It’s not always the case, but when you are trying to address the needs of an organisation across multiple cites or multiple geographies, there can be a lot of functional requirements that need to be understood and tested against your own capabilities, especially when the business is moving away from an on-premise solution"
“There are also the more technical aspects such as handsets, network requirements, number porting and domestic and international call flows that you need to understand when creating a successful bid and winning business.”
Engineers in the selling process
Sales engineers take responsibility for the functional and technical aspects of the sales process. This could include contributing to requests for proposals (RFP) and other technical queries around response documents, product demonstrations and solution architectures.
They will help define the solution and differentiate your organisation, with Smith adding that Sales Engineers play the role of a trusted technical advisor and managing the technical relationships you have with your customers.
“Defining the right solution that meets a customer’s needs and expectations is obviously key for their success today and into the future. This is where having a great team of experienced sales engineers is absolutely key in the UC market, where it is increasingly a solution sell with upside in areas many customers haven’t considered yet, such as contact centres, online experiences, omnichannel and APIs.
Sales engineers bring a lot of technical curiosity as part of their DNA, so their understanding of not just your product capabilities but also emerging trends around the industry like AI, digital transformation, bots, and customer relationship management, all help paint a winning picture of a wider set of possibilities beyond basic product capabilities.”
