6 ms·

I'm in technical presales and have been in and out for about 10 years. It's a very rewarding career, if you like socializing and are particularly interested in

I'm in technical presales and have been in and out for about 10 years. It's a very rewarding career, if you like socializing and are particularly interested in tying your individual/team efforts with your pay (vs. the RSU/option lottery). These are all good articles, though I'd particularly point to the a16z articles and Ben Horowitz' book "The Hard thing about Hard Things" for an appreciation of what sales brings to a company that needs enterprise customers. Also, sales can be learned by anyone. Some of the best sales people I know (earning $400k most years to upwards of $1m in a year if they hit a home run) are deeply technical.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
quickpost 11y ago
Do you have any suggestions for what approach someone who's "deeply technical" should take to move into something like technical presales or enterprise sales in general? It's a potential career transition that definitely interests me, I'm just not sure where to start. Getting to talk (& teach?) potential customers along with tying pay directly to performance are both very appealing elements of the field. Any additional advice appreciated! Thanks!
- devonkim 11y ago
  I've done pre-sales despite not being on pre-sales pay before for a short time after all our pre-sales guys quit pretty much (long story). But the biggest thing I did to get to that position is to be involved and care about what your customers are doing with your product. Be indispensable to your sales demos and POCs. If you become the go-to guy in your engineering team, you have an edge already because most sales and engineering orgs are so divided from each other you'll be in the know rather soon. I started down this way because while I love technology, I was getting pretty bored with the typical engineer personality types in every company I went to, and I was starting to get a little heat for being too customer focused. This makes sense when your company is at risk because they're drowning in features while engineering is light years ahead and into YAGNI territory. But simply caring beyond your engineering duties of ship stuff on a schedule is a huge step in mentality.
  - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
    > I was getting pretty bored with the typical engineer personality types in every company I went to I know what you mean, but I haven't given up yet. I still can't believe that a field this dynamic and intellectually challenging is so devoid of... personality and wit? Its probably different in the valley, but this has been my experience in Europe. After 7 years, I still don't get it.
    - pbowyer 11y ago
      > I still can't believe that a field this dynamic and intellectually challenging is so devoid of... personality and wit? The stereotypes, as usual, do seem to have some truth behind them. I've lived with, worked with and hired engineers who behaved like machines, treated conversation and pleasantries as a waste of time, and some who existed in their own subculture. Perhaps they were full of personality and wit in their subculture, but in my experience... no. This is Europe too.
    - scribu 11y ago
      From my experience, engineering is intelectually challenging in a very narrow sense - you tend to use a few core skills over and over. Even when you learn a new paradigm, like functional programming, it's still within your comfort zone. It takes serious psychological effort to peek out of your hole and be willing to learn about a truly foreign subject, such as sales. Besides that, I'd bet that a lot of programmers suffer from social anxiety (I used to be one of them), which severely limits your ability to express any personality that you might have.
      - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
        Yeah, but! You could say most of these things about sysadmins, and some of them were the funniest guys I've ever met. I think the fact that these stereotypes even exist means that there could be a biological reason behind it. Levels of dopamine and serotonine in the brain, the amount of muscles, a lean or a broad frame, social anxiety,... These things interest me a lot, mainly because they affect me as well of course, so if there is a place to discuss them I'd love to hear about it. Actually I'm surprised this isn't a regular HN topic .
- icey 11y ago
  I was a developer for 17 years and switched into enterprise sales a couple of years ago (with a short stint as a technical account manager in between). The upside of the transition is that sales is still a job for problem-solvers, although you'll be much less hands on. The downside is that there are expectations for performance that come along with the upsides of being paid based on that performance. I still hack on stuff in my spare time, but that time seems much less abundant now (certainly less time to surf HN, for example ;)). If this is something you're interested in, many organizations are in need of sales engineers (pre-sales technical folks) who have real experience from the trenches. If you are comfortable talking with technical and non-technical people alike, sales engineering is probably the best place to start. The challenge with getting into a purely sales role is that many places expect a level of experience before hiring people. Negotiations and proposal building can be surprisingly complex, and there aren't many organizations interested in training-up sales people. Sales engineering would serve the purpose of giving you exposure to the pre-negotiation piece of the sales process, as well as introducing you to a lot of people with deep experience in the negotiation / closing process. I'd be happy to chat with you offline about my experiences as well -- my email is in my profile.
- parasubvert 11y ago
  Sales engineering is definitely the place to start, the requirements are (a) technical ability balanced by (b) an ability to communicate clearly and (c) listen to customers and/or get them to talk about their problems, and be able to map them to your software's capabilities (or to know right away it isn't a fit and point them elsewhere). A good sales engineer is a "glue player", in that they do a combination of: - Presenting the company, or products, or concepts/architectures to prospects customers and partners - Demoing products and concepts that illustrate some kind of meaningful benefit for the audience rather than just "this button does X" - building technical champions in your accounts - taking people out for tea/coffee/libations , lunch and learns, listening to them, white boarding with them, basically teaching them to sell on your behalf at their companies because their jobs are easier if they have your product - Qualifying and scoping opportunities with your wingman, the account manager. This is figuring out what the customer needs, if you can fill that need with your software, and what is missing. - Scoping and executing a proof of concept, which is half engineering , half performance art. Basically it's about validating to a customer in a time boxed project that they can achieve their goals with your software - On site customer support, when the support line isn't enough - On site architecture / solution support, when post sales consulting isn't enough - Sometimes crafting quotes, deals, and proposals though often this is in the account manager's wheelhouse Good books on solution selling (ie. Focusing on customer success rather than "dumping the license keys and running") include "Let's Get Real or Let's not play" by Khalsa and Illig or "Insight Selling" by Schulz and Doerr. I also recommend a course or book on building good presentations such as from Mandel Communications. If you can demonstrate technical and presentation skills in an interview and give a good demo (record yourself to practice), you'll likely get an SE job. Your comp will usually be 70/30 or 60/40 fixed/variable and you'll be comped based on your region's sales performance. From there, the next step after a few years is to sales specialists (basically a sales account manager specialized in a product area) or account manager (general sales rep). These pay more variable comp (60/40 or 50/50), lower base pay, but strong accelerators after you hit your quota (this is where you hit $400k+). This requires knowing sales processes and building relationships with sales management that you'll gain as an SE. Some companies aren't great at growing their SEs into reps, some are - jump elsewhere after a couple of years if you're stuck in a "hey geek give us a demo" transactional relationship with your sales team. Once you get into pure sales, it is way more about deal structuring , relationship building , managing your support network (SEs, consulting, support, proposal building, field marketing) to focus on your accounts, and relentless repetitive discovery and qualification of needs - and being able to be rejected a lot without getting depressed. Technical stuff takes a back seat though still is helpful for credibility and bullshit detection. It's not for everyone (I don't think I can do it, but never say never). But the upside if you're good at it or at a growth company can be high.
johnward 11y ago
As someone on the implementation side I have a sour taste for Sales and Sales Engineers. Always selling features we do not have or things we cannot do. Then they mock it up and leave and I have to break the news to the customer.
- otoburb 11y ago
  You may wish to consider your sour taste to be less targeted at Sales and SEs and more around (broken) company-wide processes and (lack of) clout the implementation teams wield. I'm also on the implementation side (sometimes referred to as professional services), and two immediate thoughts jump to mind: 1) Unless you're a practice manager directly responsible for maintaining a targeted book-to-bill ratio or other quota metric (which usually entails account and long-term customer relationship management), your management should not be throwing you under the bus and exposing you to break that news to the customer. Nothing destroys a booking pipeline faster than customers with mismanaged expectations. 2) This type of behaviour from Sales teams is usually indicative of misaligned incentives. A concrete example of this type of situation could be company in an early "hyper-growth" phase where they only comp on new bookings, and don't comp Sales on contract renewals.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    Much of the time sales' over-promising comes as a result of some management or client services functionary that's not a technical product manager but thinks they are insisting that $requirement definitely will be possible once $feature is in place, which definitely will be on time, so no need to communicate with the dev team at all on that. (It's often the same middle management that omits to let the dev team know the system is supposed to work on IE8 until the client complains.) Sales commmonly direct their sour taste towards the developers...
  - johnward 11y ago
    Is it common for managers to actually get involved in projects in other organizations?
    - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

quickpost 11y ago

Do you have any suggestions for what approach someone who's "deeply technical" should take to move into something like technical presales or enterprise sales in general? It's a potential career transition that definitely interests me, I'm just not sure where to start. Getting to talk (& teach?) potential customers along with tying pay directly to performance are both very appealing elements of the field. Any additional advice appreciated! Thanks!

devonkim 11y ago
I've done pre-sales despite not being on pre-sales pay before for a short time after all our pre-sales guys quit pretty much (long story). But the biggest thing I did to get to that position is to be involved and care about what your customers are doing with your product. Be indispensable to your sales demos and POCs. If you become the go-to guy in your engineering team, you have an edge already because most sales and engineering orgs are so divided from each other you'll be in the know rather soon. I started down this way because while I love technology, I was getting pretty bored with the typical engineer personality types in every company I went to, and I was starting to get a little heat for being too customer focused. This makes sense when your company is at risk because they're drowning in features while engineering is light years ahead and into YAGNI territory. But simply caring beyond your engineering duties of ship stuff on a schedule is a huge step in mentality.
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  > I was getting pretty bored with the typical engineer personality types in every company I went to I know what you mean, but I haven't given up yet. I still can't believe that a field this dynamic and intellectually challenging is so devoid of... personality and wit? Its probably different in the valley, but this has been my experience in Europe. After 7 years, I still don't get it.
  - pbowyer 11y ago
    > I still can't believe that a field this dynamic and intellectually challenging is so devoid of... personality and wit? The stereotypes, as usual, do seem to have some truth behind them. I've lived with, worked with and hired engineers who behaved like machines, treated conversation and pleasantries as a waste of time, and some who existed in their own subculture. Perhaps they were full of personality and wit in their subculture, but in my experience... no. This is Europe too.
  - scribu 11y ago
    From my experience, engineering is intelectually challenging in a very narrow sense - you tend to use a few core skills over and over. Even when you learn a new paradigm, like functional programming, it's still within your comfort zone. It takes serious psychological effort to peek out of your hole and be willing to learn about a truly foreign subject, such as sales. Besides that, I'd bet that a lot of programmers suffer from social anxiety (I used to be one of them), which severely limits your ability to express any personality that you might have.
    - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
      Yeah, but! You could say most of these things about sysadmins, and some of them were the funniest guys I've ever met. I think the fact that these stereotypes even exist means that there could be a biological reason behind it. Levels of dopamine and serotonine in the brain, the amount of muscles, a lean or a broad frame, social anxiety,... These things interest me a lot, mainly because they affect me as well of course, so if there is a place to discuss them I'd love to hear about it. Actually I'm surprised this isn't a regular HN topic .
icey 11y ago
I was a developer for 17 years and switched into enterprise sales a couple of years ago (with a short stint as a technical account manager in between). The upside of the transition is that sales is still a job for problem-solvers, although you'll be much less hands on. The downside is that there are expectations for performance that come along with the upsides of being paid based on that performance. I still hack on stuff in my spare time, but that time seems much less abundant now (certainly less time to surf HN, for example ;)). If this is something you're interested in, many organizations are in need of sales engineers (pre-sales technical folks) who have real experience from the trenches. If you are comfortable talking with technical and non-technical people alike, sales engineering is probably the best place to start. The challenge with getting into a purely sales role is that many places expect a level of experience before hiring people. Negotiations and proposal building can be surprisingly complex, and there aren't many organizations interested in training-up sales people. Sales engineering would serve the purpose of giving you exposure to the pre-negotiation piece of the sales process, as well as introducing you to a lot of people with deep experience in the negotiation / closing process. I'd be happy to chat with you offline about my experiences as well -- my email is in my profile.
parasubvert 11y ago
Sales engineering is definitely the place to start, the requirements are (a) technical ability balanced by (b) an ability to communicate clearly and (c) listen to customers and/or get them to talk about their problems, and be able to map them to your software's capabilities (or to know right away it isn't a fit and point them elsewhere). A good sales engineer is a "glue player", in that they do a combination of: - Presenting the company, or products, or concepts/architectures to prospects customers and partners - Demoing products and concepts that illustrate some kind of meaningful benefit for the audience rather than just "this button does X" - building technical champions in your accounts - taking people out for tea/coffee/libations , lunch and learns, listening to them, white boarding with them, basically teaching them to sell on your behalf at their companies because their jobs are easier if they have your product - Qualifying and scoping opportunities with your wingman, the account manager. This is figuring out what the customer needs, if you can fill that need with your software, and what is missing. - Scoping and executing a proof of concept, which is half engineering , half performance art. Basically it's about validating to a customer in a time boxed project that they can achieve their goals with your software - On site customer support, when the support line isn't enough - On site architecture / solution support, when post sales consulting isn't enough - Sometimes crafting quotes, deals, and proposals though often this is in the account manager's wheelhouse Good books on solution selling (ie. Focusing on customer success rather than "dumping the license keys and running") include "Let's Get Real or Let's not play" by Khalsa and Illig or "Insight Selling" by Schulz and Doerr. I also recommend a course or book on building good presentations such as from Mandel Communications. If you can demonstrate technical and presentation skills in an interview and give a good demo (record yourself to practice), you'll likely get an SE job. Your comp will usually be 70/30 or 60/40 fixed/variable and you'll be comped based on your region's sales performance. From there, the next step after a few years is to sales specialists (basically a sales account manager specialized in a product area) or account manager (general sales rep). These pay more variable comp (60/40 or 50/50), lower base pay, but strong accelerators after you hit your quota (this is where you hit $400k+). This requires knowing sales processes and building relationships with sales management that you'll gain as an SE. Some companies aren't great at growing their SEs into reps, some are - jump elsewhere after a couple of years if you're stuck in a "hey geek give us a demo" transactional relationship with your sales team. Once you get into pure sales, it is way more about deal structuring , relationship building , managing your support network (SEs, consulting, support, proposal building, field marketing) to focus on your accounts, and relentless repetitive discovery and qualification of needs - and being able to be rejected a lot without getting depressed. Technical stuff takes a back seat though still is helpful for credibility and bullshit detection. It's not for everyone (I don't think I can do it, but never say never). But the upside if you're good at it or at a growth company can be high.

johnward 11y ago

As someone on the implementation side I have a sour taste for Sales and Sales Engineers. Always selling features we do not have or things we cannot do. Then they mock it up and leave and I have to break the news to the customer.

otoburb 11y ago
You may wish to consider your sour taste to be less targeted at Sales and SEs and more around (broken) company-wide processes and (lack of) clout the implementation teams wield. I'm also on the implementation side (sometimes referred to as professional services), and two immediate thoughts jump to mind: 1) Unless you're a practice manager directly responsible for maintaining a targeted book-to-bill ratio or other quota metric (which usually entails account and long-term customer relationship management), your management should not be throwing you under the bus and exposing you to break that news to the customer. Nothing destroys a booking pipeline faster than customers with mismanaged expectations. 2) This type of behaviour from Sales teams is usually indicative of misaligned incentives. A concrete example of this type of situation could be company in an early "hyper-growth" phase where they only comp on new bookings, and don't comp Sales on contract renewals.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Much of the time sales' over-promising comes as a result of some management or client services functionary that's not a technical product manager but thinks they are insisting that $requirement definitely will be possible once $feature is in place, which definitely will be on time, so no need to communicate with the dev team at all on that. (It's often the same middle management that omits to let the dev team know the system is supposed to work on IE8 until the client complains.) Sales commmonly direct their sour taste towards the developers...
- johnward 11y ago
  Is it common for managers to actually get involved in projects in other organizations?
  - 11y ago