Latest / The High-Performing Technical Leader / Ep. 31- The Core 4 Skills Every Sales Engineer Needs to Own the Client Conversation with Rew Dickinson

Transcript

Ep. 31- The Core 4 Skills Every Sales Engineer Needs to Own the Client Conversation with Rew Dickinson · The High-Performing Technical Leader

• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everybody.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the High Performing Technical Leader podcast and LinkedIn Live.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Arvikarkanji.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: And as a reminder, this podcast is intentionally live and unedited with our guests.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super excited to dig in today.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually joined by Rue Dickinson.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: He's the founder of CEO or founder and CEO of Alpha Go to Market.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so ready to deep dive with you.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I honestly want to bombard you with questions.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm more than happy to get started.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I do appreciate you joining me today.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's wonderful to be here.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Arve.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh looking forward to this ever since we started chatting about it a couple months ago.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let's do it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know we we've had some crazy months of both you and I, and then we finally made it happen.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm ready for it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: But Rue, I honestly wanted to start with just a little bit of your background.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: How did you even end up in this like wonderful world of pre-sales and sales engineering?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I got uh people will ask, uh, how did you get into sales?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm an engineer by by trade.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my first job was in a manufacturing plant, literally trying to figure out how to make the assembly line go faster.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I was absolutely miserable.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Worst job of my career, and I've done a lot of fun.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was brutal.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh right after that, had a little bit of a uh early life crisis, if you will, and realized I needed to do something else.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I ended up getting into consulting, did that with Deloitte for a while, and then made my way through both pre-sales and sales.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got a good good kind of foundation from both the buyer side and the seller side.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that has been really helpful for me in my career.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I just love the uh I love the world of sales of pre-sales.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I'm an engineer at heart, so it kind of speaks to uh to that and the people side for me.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what something that's interesting, at least on my end, I've seen you I think two or three events at this point, and I've seen you also give a lot of presentations.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the most fascinating things to me that you mentioned on one of them is that you surveyed 50 plus pre-sales leaders on how well their teams do storytelling, and the average score was a 4.6 out of 10, which honestly sounds brutal.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, why do you think the gap is like so massive between where leaders think their team is and where they actually are?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a lack of awareness.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I get this question a lot.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's no one, I mean, uh ask anybody who's listening this have you ever gone through storytelling training before?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And almost no one in technical sales has.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I sure didn't.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get it when I was in consulting, I didn't get it through pre-sales, I didn't get it through sales, and so it's really just a lack of awareness uh and a lack of training because for SEs specifically, the training is pretty much the exact same.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I work with hundreds of SEs every year, it's product, product, product, product, product, product, and then you get some demo training, and maybe a little bit of you know, occasionally improv is thrown in there, but there's no storytelling training.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, how are you gonna be good at something that there's literally no training for and it's not naturally in your wheelhouse?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you feel like storytelling is like always at the bottom of the list?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: For sales, I'm not sure.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: For pre-sales, I will say that because the most important thing is your product and your technical expertise, because without that, you really aren't any different from the sales rep.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're talking about B2B sales, we need the SCs to be very competent on the product and on the buyer, so it makes sense that there's all that product enablement, but no, why it's so um it's so under trained.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I I'm not sure.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, very interesting.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd love us for you or me, I'd love me for you to walk us through the core four.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: What is that is?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: How did you even come up with these?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like you just pull them out of nowhere, and you know, why the four and not like five or six skills?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's um when I was in SC, one of one of the most valuable things that I did was I moved from SC into sales, and in so doing, um it's kind of like a parent when you see your child going and doing all the things that you used to do wrong as a kid.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you get to sort of see yourself in the SCs that are now you know working with you.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I took a look at that and I had a lot of experience there.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then actually in developing the core four, I spoke with one of the mentors I have at McKinsey, who was trying to hire me a number of years back for McKinsey Solutions.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we were working on the capability model, and it's like the McKinsey has done a lot of research on pre-sales, like a lot, and they found huge value to the pre-sales team, which uh frankly is just underrepresented in the market.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we landed on the core four, and the core four are the four skills that drive sales.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're different from just standard soft skills, which are what you need for consulting.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So consultants often make great sales engineers or solutions consultants, but it's a slightly different skill set.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where we got the core four from.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then whenever I'm doing an evaluation of a of a team, I'm looking at that skill set to see where the team excels and where they don't.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, very fair.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Can you walk us through like what those are and then we can start kind of diving into each of those buckets?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's four things.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, first is just the knowledge of the product and the buyer.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's there's there's two components that are really important.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we get the product enablement.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're selling to IT, most people hire engineers out of um or hire SEs out of like the engineering ranks or the consulting ranks.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they have that kind of technical prowess.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: If uh, for example, I work with companies that sell HR, they'll hire former HR professionals who have maybe used the product.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm talking about knowledge, that component, there's the product expertise, but there's also understanding your buyer, which is just so critical.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: That, like without that, it's just really hard to be an effective SC because when you have it, you can empathize with the customer.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know exactly where they are and where you need to take them to, which is you know, leads to one of the other skills, which is leadership.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it's harder when you're just the product expert, when you're just the technical resource, if you will.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's the baseline.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, there's three skills that I would consider sales skills, not just soft skills, if you will.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is storytelling, discovery, and leadership abilities.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what really separates sort of a consultant from a from a great SE.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Have an opinion who can be out in front of the customer and can help go and guide them to where they need to get to.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it requires some serious leadership skills.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, really quick before we move on, I want to clarify something.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like a lot of leaders will sometimes put soft skills and sales skills under one bucket.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Can you quickly explain why they're two completely different things?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is uh oh man.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: RV, I can't tell you how many leaders I talk to, and they they say this exactly.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, well, we hire for the soft skills and the personality.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm like, great, but because just because you have a personality and you have soft skills doesn't mean you know sales.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Take me as an example.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I came from consulting, and everyone told me, like, you should go into sales, you're really convincing and persuasive, and you're really good at uh talking to people, but sales is not talking to people, it's helping people make a purchase.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I look at soft skills, we want to hire for the soft skills the empathy, the ability to go and have a conversation, the ability to listen, like standard for NESC.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm looking at sales skills, it's something that has to be taught.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody teaches you how to go and do discovery to uncover pain that's going to help the deal move forward.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody teaches you how to communicate in the form of a story because that's the most compelling way to demonstrate value.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody tells you that it's a horrible idea to show up and tell the customer it depends.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you say it depends, now you give the customer 15 different options, they're confused and they don't want to move forward.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So these are all sales skills that are so different from soft skills because every consultant and every empathetic sales engineer has those soft skills, they just don't have the sales skills, and it takes time and training and practice, and so that's the huge difference between these.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so happy we clarified that because I honestly hear from leaders a lot is oh, I need them to be with soft skills because they they'll be natural at sales.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'm like, that's not how it works, but I'm so happy that you clarified that because I feel like somebody understands my point of view now.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: You put it really, really well.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or if, like, if there's a leader right now listening to this or somebody looking to scale or founder, looking to scale their first SE team, is there like a priority from your end of like which of the core four skills they should focus on that maybe moves the needle faster?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's gotta be the the knowledge and the subject matter expertise of the product.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like knowing your buyer and what your product does to serve the buyer is so critical.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that is the number one thing I would do.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with training your company and your SEs on the product, but more importantly on the buyer and where they're at in their journey.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the number one thing I would do.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not gonna hire directly from the industry, then teach that right from the start.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's the number one.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: From there, I would go into leadership as the next skill.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you get better at that, you get better at discovery, you get better at discovery, you can tell a clearer story because you know what the customer's problem is.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it all kind of cascades from that.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: But fundamentally, you got to understand your customer.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually wanted to dive a little bit more into storytelling because even from your own survey that you did, that was like the lowest rated skill.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Can you define for us what is good storytelling look like for SEs in 2026?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe what is it not?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So storytelling is, I mean, it's a buzzword right now, let's be honest.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is true.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: The the challenge with storytelling is I go and I see these posts on LinkedIn all the time talking about the Disney storytelling formula or the Pixar storytelling formula, and it's just wonderful.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do I apply this to to being a sales engineer in a one-on-one conversation, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, yeah, we're not making movies here, and frankly, we're not going for entertainment in our sales meetings, we're trying to solve a problem.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the mistake that I see a lot of SCs make is that we are so darn good at talking about our product versus putting our prospect at the center of the story that we are going and telling.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: The product is more of a side piece.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing that we teach when we do alpha pre-sales training is we'll talk about audience, annoyance, and afterward.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the product is the vehicle that's going to get your customer from the annoyance to the afterword.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I rarely ever go and see SEs speaking in that way.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way to be compelling and go through storytelling.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, in terms of where it looks good and where it looks bad, is if you look at the meetings that you're you're having with the prospect, if you look at your SE's demos and they are all about the product, that is not a good storytelling bit.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: If it is all about the prospect and the journey that they are taking, that is good.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you can get into details and all the uh specifics on storytelling.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: We teach a lot of different types in the training workshops, but at a high level, just ask yourself is this more about the product or more about the prospect?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the ways that you've broken storytelling is like three main buckets prospect stories or customer stories or solution stories.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you also said that most teams aren't doing all three.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can you walk us through what each of those means and maybe give us a real life example on how you tell um through a deal or something along those lines?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got um when you look at makes the most sense, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Tell a customer story just to give proof that you've done this before.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: The bad version is the uh five-page marketing white paper on uh on a customer story that's plastered on the website that doesn't give the SE any credibility and doesn't give the customer any confidence.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there's one type of story.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: The other story that's really, really valuable that's not even in the solution phase.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you think about storytelling, those three types are prospect story, customer story, solution story.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: The customer story you only want to bring up after the customer is interested and they just need proof.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: But before you even get there, you got to show the customer that you understand them.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where prospect story is so helpful.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the example I'll give is let's say you're talking to somebody in, let's say you sell a supply chain management platform, all right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Complicated thing, a lot of people involved.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Supply chain's a messy process.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: What most SEs will do is they'll go in and they'll just start talking about the product.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what they don't realize is, yeah, you and five other SEs are also talking about their product, and they all look almost the same.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, what you want to do is go in with a prospect story.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, I was talking to a prospect last week that had mentioned to me that they've got to go and the buyers want to go and get the best products, the uh suppliers want to go and make sure that they get their parts there on time, the uh uh fulfillment team is looking for XYZ, and procurement wants the best price on something.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And trying to navigate those four different uh buyer groups is really difficult for them.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: How's that compare to what you guys are experiencing?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Oh my gosh, this person understands me completely, and now they should start vomiting all their problems at the SC.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, most aren't good at that because a lot of times we don't get a discovery call before the actual meeting, so that's hard, but that's why the prospect story is so valuable.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're not trying to solution, you're trying to just develop that rapport so that you can do deeper discovery.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you with me on customer story and prospect story.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: The next the last bit, yeah.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: The last bit is the solution story, and that's where we get into solutioning it, and that's where I want to see the product, not talking about what the product does.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want the product to be the vehicle that gets the customer from where they are to where they want to get to, and that involves that's part of your demo story.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you would introduce the problems that customers are going through, you would introduce the annoyances, that kind of thing.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: You'd get into the solution, and then you'd align that to the afterword that you're bringing the customer to.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when done well, that is an incredibly compelling story, and you can do it throughout your demos.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Again, most prospects aren't or most SEs aren't doing that as well because again, we haven't been taught how to do this.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: We get taught how to go and show a capability or a workflow and then align it to the benefits or value or outcomes of the customer, not how to do it through story.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really good.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one other mistake that most companies make is they try to sell themselves as like the best, you know, solution for this product out there or for their pain point.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And one example that you gave was that uh the Tim Grover example where you said like he doesn't have to say that he's great, he just needs to say that he's trained, you know, athletes like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryan.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: How should leaders coach their team to stop making it about the company and start making it more about the prospects outcome?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the big thing is a lot of SCs, like you have to get to the individual motivation of an SC.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most SEs like giving demos.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them don't love doing POCs.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what you're gonna find with SCs is that we, because we are so good at product, try to go and prove everything with the actual product.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there's another way to go and prove something, and that is through story because a lot of times customers will ask for the POC because they're afraid it's not going to work.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've got 300 customers that have been successful, why the heck are you doing a POC?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make any sense.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to bring up those stories and a true situation that happened.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the example I gave, which is you brought up right here, is most people have not heard the heard of the the person Tim Grover.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: If I if I asked the average person on the street, have you heard of Tim Grover?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: They'd say no.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if I told you that Tim Grover is the trainer who trained Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, you've probably heard of those two people.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're in the market for basketball training, you probably want Tim Grover to be doing your training for you.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same way where a lot of customers they'll ask for a POC because they just want proof.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it may be better just to go and show them a customer story of hey, this is someone who is in the exact same situation as you, and this is the outcome they do they got.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Does that work for you?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, can we just try it integrating with our systems?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: That'll take an hour versus three weeks to go and prove everything out that you've done 17 times with other customers.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different story with AI and and other things, uh, you know, for deployed engineers and actually having to build out a specific custom use case for that customer.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: But in many cases, a story is another form of proof, it should just be another tool in the SE's toolbox.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually gonna ask you that, and I was gonna say, let me play devil's advocate here and say, well, my product, the product that we sell is to enterprise companies, and it's you know, multiple seven figures ARR every time we sell a product.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think like this could apply to that, or is that a different type of sales process or pre-sales process?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's both.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Most answers for most things is not either or, it's both.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not advocating telling a customer story and avoiding POCs.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying when it's the something that would be better served by a customer story, then you should do a customer story, but usually you want to do both.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Here's them, and by the way, if you want to talk to them, you know, let our account executive know and they can set up a meeting there.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I'm gonna ask you another question on that.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I've personally worked with some clients where or companies in general, where they tell me like their sales process is very technical.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: So for that reason, for example, they need to hire somebody that's very technical, uh, whatever the vertical or the domain is, uh, very knowledgeable in that specific domain.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like when, or I don't know if you've encountered this in the past, but maybe some of your clients say, well, it's a very technical product, so we can't include that much storytelling because each use case is like unique or different.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is there anything on there that maybe you've worked with before they can train or help them kind of balance it out a little bit more to not just it be technical?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's such a good question because I always get pushback from from two groups, uh, Germans.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, no, that's just a joke.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but actually, I do get some a fair amount of pushback from Germans, which is amazing because my favorite favorite client was a huge German uh global uh multinational where there was we did millions of dollars of business there, uh, and we appreciated the directness of each other's conversation.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's um where where people think storytelling doesn't apply is they they wrongfully equate storytelling with fluffy.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: They they think of it as like what marketers do up on stage, and it's it's not really grounded in fact and data.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's the distinction here.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever I'm working with a cybersecurity team, which I work with a lot of them, and whenever I work with uh audiences, uh, the Germans, the Dutch, the Israelis, that are more direct in the communication, yeah, it's less about like there, there's not fluffiness.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not a fluffy guy, I don't like it.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an engineer, math and science and numbers guy.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you can work that into the storytelling.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that what is most compelling is data and proof through the story.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very applicable, but oh my gosh, I get so much put pushback from like the technical folks before they understand that I'm not talking about theory here, I'm talking about facts.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they probably associate that because they might have gotten the wrong training when it comes to storytelling, or they've probably been in sales process where the storytelling was so fluff, and you're just like, I never want to be that guy or that girl.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because it there's, I mean, you know, it's we got to be honest here.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of SCs, and myself included, we're technical people, we take a lot of pride in that.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a little bit of ego associated with that.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be known as the fluffy person that's full of hot air.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be known as the person that is delivering facts and data, and yeah, there's um the it's the image uh that we get.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Of storytelling and the fact that frankly, not a lot of technical people are teaching this.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I see a lot of them come from marketing or film or journalism, and that's great, but SEs only really tend to respect the people who have done their job before.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a different world.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, one more question on that.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like either the storytelling or the sales process that you teach could change based on the buyer's like personality?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, for example, like you mentioned, you know, if you're talking to Israeli or German people or Dutch, you know, they're like super direct.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, let's get to the point, you know, skip the rest, tell me this, this, this, what I want to know.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Would you say, like, how do you handle you know different personalities within the pre-sales process?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's great.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: We got an entire workshop that's all about that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's um yeah, it's our customer leader workshop, and it's talks about how to go and own the room and recognize the differences in people.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah, the story you tell to the uh empathetic, diplomatic, consensus-driven person is which you know, HR company, a uh uh, you know, warm and fuzzies, people-oriented person is very different from the direct, like, just tell me what you've done for other customers, show me proof, and tell me where to sign.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's yeah, it's a complete change there.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I love that.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's good.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So then if anybody needs is struggling with the personality buyer and that type of persona, obviously reach out to Jerome that end.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I meant through.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's my favorite workshop that we do is uh is the customer leadership and and recognizing that.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's actually our it's our number one rated workshop by SCP data on what they do.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's well, I mean, it's a real, it's a real, I wouldn't say problem, but you know, thing that people go through.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, I'm expected to go in and follow my typical sales process, but then yeah, wait, this is a different personality, this is a different one.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's important to know how to handle them.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: On that note, you also said mentioned earlier in the beginning of our podcast that you a lot of the seeds make the mistake of saying it depends, and they don't actually take an opinion or a stance.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit more about that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what does that mean?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: What does it cost them?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And just yeah, explain that for us a little bit.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um, I'm gonna get I get fights, I get in fights over this often.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just say a full disclaimer.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, the right answer is it depends.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: However, it depends is usually not a helpful answer from the perspective of our customers.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna explain why that is.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second that you walked into a doctor's office and you asked the pro the doctor, like, what would you recommend we do for this thing?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you just said, uh, I don't know, it depends.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you wouldn't feel comfortable, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really good point.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I started laughing as soon as you said that because that would throw me off and be like, I don't know if I trust this doctor.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not that it's it's not the right answer, but so I'll just give you a story.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've got um, I was training a team of accountants, uh, former accountants, they sell financial uh software, and uh we did a study and we actually looked, and uh there were like uh I think it was 1100 times within the past month or whatever, where the SE said it depends on sales calls.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem with it depends is I can probably draw this up here, um, is you've got the minute you get to an it depends, you basically are putting a stop in the middle of the of the meeting, and you're you're giving people options here, and now they don't know where to go.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it creates a ton of fear, concern, indecision for them.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the coaching that I do personally, like I have a little radar going on because I used to say it depends all the time.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was the king of saying it depends because I came from consulting, and the great thing about consulting is if you never take an opinion, you can never be wrong.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that's true.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: A lot a lot of SEs, they they'll just say it depends.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to do this now.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm about to say it depends, and I coach folks with this, I just tell myself, you know what, I don't have enough information to ask to answer this question, just ask a question.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times I'll ask a question to go and clarify.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what that's gonna do is it's gonna eliminate all these other options, and one clear one is gonna make make sense, and you can move the client forward on that.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's like, you know, if I ask my wife, like, oh, where do you want to go eat?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: It depends.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like great, uh is this is this helping us make a decision?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's so true.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying ask clarifying questions before actually giving an answer.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's either that if if you can ask a clarifying question, or I'm a big fan of just tell a customer story, and you can you can say, like, look, the truth is it depends.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: However, having worked with several other customers, what I have seen work best for them is whatever, and let the customer go and push back with you on that.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can even just ask great question, why do you ask?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: That has been one of my go-to's forever.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Good question, why do you ask?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they give you more context.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, we're switching from SAP to to Oracle, so we want to make sure that this is going to work properly.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, we integrate with both, both, so it's not really an issue.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really good answer.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, very simple, too, by the way.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I'm actually definitely the type that uses that too in my or if I'm speaking to like clients, you know, obviously outside of SC, but uh clients who are candidates when they'll ask me things about the the hiring market right now and how the job market is, and I'm always like, well, it depends.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: But now I'm gonna use that and I'll report back to see how it works.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, do it.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're seeing a lot of stuff.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, why do you ask?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm having a really whole lot of trouble to actually get uh find the best candidate, whatever it is, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now you know more context on why they're asking.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you can direct the conversation better too, versus just giving a general answer.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really good.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, I wanted to move on to the discovery piece because I think that obviously that's your third skill.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: And most SCs think that it's great, then they're great at it, but really they're asking technical questions about the product.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love for you to tell us like the difference between an actual discovery call that ideally moves the needle forward or the deal forward, or one that's just asking technical questions, you know, and more like a waste of time.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple things here.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: First question is I do a lot of discovery training with teams.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the very first question I ask is, is your team getting a discovery call before they jump into the demo, or is the demo the first call that they have with the client?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Very important distinction.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Enterprise teams tend to get a discovery call, even if it's just riding shotgun with their AE and they get 15 minutes at the end of the meeting to ask questions.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Smaller teams, uh, more product-led, more faster sales cycles, more transactional, they're usually not getting it.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I did a video on this on if that's you, how do you go and make the most of it and get discovery while you're doing the demo?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: So discovery on the fly.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, where most SCs fall down is they don't really have a discovery playbook for SCs specifically.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why we do a lot of training on this.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, folks like me that came from consulting, a lot of times we'll ask maybe not even technical questions, but product-related questions.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is very much current state.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if you watch any, just watch Gone Calls.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: I watch hundreds of them every year, and you'll pretty much hear all these questions multiple times.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, so what are your current systems?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, what are some of your pain points?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of your challenges?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about like just the current state.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's incomplete discovery.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is it incomplete because you're not going and creating a vision for the customer on where they need to get to and helping them quantify the the gap there, but also you're not figuring out the thing that is gonna help advance the deal because a lot of sales reps aren't that great at this because prospects, frankly, just don't want to talk to sales reps.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I've been in that, the their shoes.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to do great discovery as a sales rep because they're gonna tell your SE way than more than they're gonna tell you.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's this golden opportunity for SEs, but I just haven't seen great discovery and good discovery playbooks for SEs.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I often see is oh, yeah, we use medpic.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, tell me how that helps an SE do their job.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to see better quantifying the pain, figuring out that, figuring out the thing that's gonna advance the deal uh from the SE.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't see that.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: I see what are your turn systems, you know, what are the integrations, uh, what are you looking for uh in a solution?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's discovery to figure out what you want to demo, not discovery that's gonna help you move the deal forward.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's very true.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I I was you mentioned that I mean I've been on some calls as I've been looking to buy systems or products or software, and most of the time I've been just asked those questions as a discovery to do the demo.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, obviously they show me like those aspects that are most important to me.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I guess it's never been deep enough.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the that's very interesting that you mentioned that.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's like, what do you what are you giving up by not doing it?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had a content problem.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm not producing enough content.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: They came up, they're like, oh, well, here, uh, you can have like content hub.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, well, I know how it works, but tell me how that's solving my problem of not having enough time for content.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I have a sales operations problem too.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: So let's fix that.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, awesome.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to ask, and one of the things that you mentioned in your presentations before is an SE that actually used to work for you, Derek, and you said that sales rep would actually ask for him on discovery calls and wanted him there because he was able to uncover pain and like advanced deals.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: What was he doing differently from the ones that were just, I guess, doing the wrong discovery?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's uh there's certain SCEs that just know how to ask questions that are going to get more at pain, and they're also know how to ask questions that are beyond just the product.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: So they have some sales sense on kind of where they're headed.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a certain degree to like impatience that they have.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's actually a good thing because very product-oriented SCs will just ask questions about the product, and then if they have to give five demos, great.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the best SEs I've worked with, like Derek was one of them, he was incredible.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, would bring him in, gladly get him a discovery call, line that up all the time.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: I got another one, um, one of the clients that I work with just does an incredible job of hard helping march the conversation forward.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's because they're not looking to figure out what they need to demo, they're looking at what they need to do to get the customer to move to the next step.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not being pushy, that's helping the customer solve the problem.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because the longer they sit there and evaluate, the long they longer they're delaying or prolonging their pain.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's SEs that are thinking about the next step and where they're leading the customer to, as opposed to SEs that are just sitting there to figure out what they need to demo.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's the difference.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sales focus versus just product focus.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: And how does the the or the last core wow, that was a mouthful for me.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: The last fourth skill set or core skill set, the leadership, how does that tie into all of this?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And where you say it's really a skill set that separates the best from everyone else.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you had even like a$48 million financial services deal.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, talk us through a little bit about that and you know how that ties it all in together.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about leadership.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um when you think about B2B sales, it is not it's not about persuasion, it's not about being convincing, it's not about being charismatic, it's about leadership.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite leadership quote is Dwight D.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Eisenhower.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Leadership is getting someone else to do what you want done because they want to do it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is B2B sales.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't convince someone to do it, they've got to want to do it.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really important because you got to get a lot of people bought in in order to get the whole organization to want to move forward.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the mistake that I see a lot of sales engineers make is they don't think of themselves as the leader in the deal.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they think that their job is to just to be the support resource, the technical expert.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, most of the time, the SE knows what the client and the sales rep should be doing even more than the client and the sales rep do.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I say that not to slight clients or sales reps, but like let's think about this for a second.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: RV, you said you were looking at software.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you see a software demo, RV, do you call up a sales rep, a random stranger that you don't know, and you ask them to talk to you because you know what you're doing?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, you're never gonna call up someone, you're never gonna engage in a sales cycle if you knew what you were doing.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's clear that you need to go and lead and guide them.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of SEs don't take that.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: They assume because we've been taught this in consulting, like, oh, the customer knows best, the customer knows what they want.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: They usually don't.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look at it on the sales rep side too.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I we were just in, yeah, we were in Chicago together.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: I asked this question to the team.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: There had probably 200 people there at Solcon, and uh, this was great, great stats.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've got uh 200 people.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I asked, hey, what would you say is the average tenure of the SEs uh on your at your company?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: I said, How many are one to three years?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like a few hands go up.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: How about three to five years?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: A few more hands go up.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: How about like five to seven years and a bunch of hands go up here?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we've determined that the average was probably between about five and seven years is the average tenure of an SE.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, now answer this.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: What's the average tenure of your sales reps?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it was about two years, which would make sense because turnover is higher.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, who do you think knows what the client needs more?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: The person who's been here for five and seven years and seen hundreds of sales cycles, or the sales rep who's new and still trying to figure this stuff out.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it's hard because I've been a sales rep.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was so reliant on my SEs.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where an SE's job is to be a leader, and I just don't see them stepping into it all the time.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: They don't show up with a point of view, despite the fact that they've seen the problem a hundred times with other customers.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: They don't feel comfortable pushing back on the client because we're very agreeable and we're told we don't want to be difficult to work with.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we don't push back on our sales reps because we think they're the leader of the deal.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: But nothing would thrill me more than my SEs, like Derek, going and telling me, I don't think we should do that right now.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your job is awesome.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: So SEs need to be those leaders and guides, but it requires courage and it requires support from your leadership because as managers, that's on us.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: We we gotta we gotta be there, we gotta have their backs, we gotta let them know that it is okay.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it is encouraged for you to speak up.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really passionate about this.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is the difference between the SEs.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a sales rep, that I viewed as sort of the subject matter experts that I would put in and like I tell them the lane they had to be in were good, versus the guys like Derek and Ongott and other ones that I would bring in, and I knew that they could go and lead the client to the next step, and I could go and handle the corralling people and getting the right people in the room.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those are elite SEs.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: On that note, is there anything like maybe there's an SE watching this right now, and they're like, that's great, Rue, but like they don't support meat management, doesn't think the same way, or we're getting a lot of pushback from sales.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any tips you have on how they can navigate those conversations?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of it is uh a lot of it's culture driven.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I will say this if it's a a systemic cultural issue, it is very hard to go and change that.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a leader on this call, let's have a conversation.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Please reach out because this is one of my the things that I'm most passionate about.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: As an SE, though, if you're an individual SE, uh I've done some posts on LinkedIn about this.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, follow me on LinkedIn because some of the things that I talk about are how do you go and disagree with someone in a way that is not uh going to go and flare up their ego and and get them into the sort of the dictatorial mode.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we did some training with the women in solutions engineering team where we did exactly this.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like AE tells you to do something, how do you go and push back in a way that doesn't make them look bad?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I just did another video on this uh too.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you do when your A when your sales rep is trying to go and dictate how you demo?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you don't go tell them no, that's dumb.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: You agree, you further their point, you go and give them an alternative, and then you go and make the recommendation.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the ways of handling that, but yeah, you are a leader, your voice is is important, your your voice needs to be heard.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you mentioned something interesting, like women as sales engineers.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like there's more um of a difference between being a woman versus a man in the SE world and like pushing back?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like, well, it could be biased too, but like I feel like men might be more comfortable pushing back than women.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at times I will say this.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, gosh, it's just like unfair to women, right?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're uh they they they call you the B-word when you when you speak up and speak your mind, um, which they don't say for for men, which is ridiculous.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's that dynamic going on, but I'll say this like some of the most badass SCEs I've ever met.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I won't name names here, I don't want to call them out specifically, but I'll probably send them a note after this because I'm thinking about two right in my mind.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Their big thing is I I made this comment, they're both my a couple of my clients, and the the real tell for a leader is to ask this like, do your SEs feel like they work for their sales rep or with their sales rep?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked this one leader, I mentioned this to the one leader, and she said, I never felt that way.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that's why you're so badass.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because she didn't feel like she was subservient, she had to do what they they thought.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got another one, the other one that I'm thinking about, another client.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've got one who leads the entire SC team, and then another one that's a first line uh leader.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: So to answer your question, I don't know if I don't know if it's harder or easier.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would think it's probably harder for women, but that doesn't mean they can't do it.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen some incredibly powerful women in this profession.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my gosh, yeah, they're they're incredible.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a little bit biased on the women aspect, so but you know, that's just me.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it's super important.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like Kirsten and I were talking about this.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: She she leads customer success, and you've met Kirsten.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, we said, like, you know, what's the mission here?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's I want to help SEs go from being seen as just those technical resources that we know they can be to being what they truly are, which is strategic business consultants.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Kirsten's vision is like, I want more women to feel like they're a part of this rather than being a part of the boys' club, if you will.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like super inspiring to me.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I I love it.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's why we do some of this, uh, the training for the women in solution engineering teams and and elsewhere.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's important, yeah, yeah.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I I have it on my LinkedIn bio too, like a little bias towards women championing, you know, championing to the top.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I love it.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: I totally understand where she's coming from.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's cool.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Rue, I wanted to move on to like a rapid fire question.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: So these are fast questions on my end, but they don't have to be fast answers.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: So feel free to like respond to them however long you need to.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you get your point across.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: So number one, what is one tool that you can't live without right now?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rela.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a content, uh, it's like a scheduling tool, like a I think it's comparable to like a sprout social type thing.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: I make a lot of content on on LinkedIn.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's part of how I, you know, spread my spread my my message and hopefully empower the profession.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so that's it.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could give you like a sales engineering one, but no, I mean it I think no, that's great.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great answer.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Biggest growth lever for SaaS companies in 2026.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or you can say SD's if you wanted to do that.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, am I allowed to say anything other than AI?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know, yeah.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: When used right though.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was an interesting stat coming out of uh.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was something less uh has minimal um impact or minimal value.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um for SaaS companies in general, for SEs, um I I would I would honestly go back to the human component here.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: No doubt AI has huge, huge advantages, but it's becoming more and more obvious that most products are similar and we're kind of getting into this commodity space on the products.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what you sell, it's how you sell.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, look, I'm in this business for a reason.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've believe it's it's investing in your team.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your differentiator, if you watch any read any win loss reports, like we used to have these when I was working as a as an SE and an AE, you look at the win loss report, 90% of the time they say two things.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was either the SE team or they say this company understood my business better than the other company did.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all about the people.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so good.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I heard this saying I I don't remember who posted on LinkedIn, but they said it we're living in a time when there's like so many ways to contact somebody, you know, through obviously emails and everybody's being bombarded with emails, AI emails, you know, AI on LinkedIn messages, etc.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: And yet again it's like the the biggest time I think in our entire lifetime where we haven't been wanting to be contacted by people.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like a very interesting dynamic.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people are going back to that human component.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: We I think all companies made a huge push for like how do we AI everything in our company and now it's like okay how do we do the unscalable and use humans to sound more human to be humans and very interesting.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Bringing people back baby what is one belief that you have that most people would disagree with I don't know that people would disagree with it.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that people actually know it.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that soft skills and sales skills are two different things.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah that that's a really good answer.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that one and I I feel like I have to now start emphasizing that alongside you because I think that's huge.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: All right what is your biggest hiring mistake or what and what did it teach you or maybe you've witnessed a hiring mistake and like what did it teach you uh hiring mistake I would say not recognizing the importance of I don't know what the right word for it is humility lack of ego um that to me is like the only real red flag I have had with folks.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I've had a hire that really didn't work out it has always been due to an ego that was one where they either didn't take feedback well they weren't open to coaching and they weren't willing to go and change and get better.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like if that's if that's the way you are there there's nothing wrong with that.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just in sales you've got to adapt to your client you got to get better you got to be coachable.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah it's just those ones haven't worked out so recognizing ego or I don't need you to be like super humble or or have a ton of humility.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: I just it can't be to the point where your desire to be right is more important than your desire to learn and grow.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: I will say at least from what I've witnessed too that's definitely like the biggest factor of either people leaving the team or obviously getting let go or they just turn it into a very toxic culture to be around.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah that's um can agree with that for sure.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: I uh wanted to shift your focus more a little bit like now that we're kind of talking about the hiring or the building teams aspect I will say for me personally everything that I've handled within this year in 2026 specifically domain expertise is like by far my number one rejection reason for SEs one what do you think that is and two do you feel like leaders are making a mistake like kind of prioritizing that at the top or what's your like opinion on that?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's not having the expertise on the industry that you sell to or the domain that you're you're selling into or the product or give me more on that.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: So basically for example if I'm working with a cybersecurity company they want it to be from the cyberspace or even more niche down depending if it's like network security versus like identity like they want it from you know network security within cyber their last five years etc yeah and it's I actually posted about this on LinkedIn uh I believe it was like this week and there was like obviously leaders going back and forth on it but at the end of the day whether you like it or not I mean that's just been my experience this year.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah domain expertise has been just huge.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and my personal opinion is that there's a mixture of their leaders can be very picky right now.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously they will start with domain a less time for ramp up in their in their opinion and then they go for all the other skill set that you know you and I mentioned a lot through throughout this podcast.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah on the cybersecurity one specifically uh I think it's completely valid reason um to want that and here's here's for anybody that's actually job seeking right now I think this will be helpful as a hiring manager what's most important to me right now like where the growth is in my company and when I was an SE like when like hiring as an SE um team when you look at that I'm looking are you going to be a project for like am I going to have to put in to get you there because every every leader knows this you hire someone and you don't get more productive you get less productive for a while and then they come in and they bring you you get way more productive over time.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's that J hook where I'm trying to figure out how much time do I got to put in in cybersecurity to teach domain expertise takes a really long time.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a lot easier to build some of the other the sales skills and that kind of thing than it is to get those four or five years in the trenches and try to teach that through some coaching and some training.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's tough.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: So no I don't think it's a bad move um but if you're a job seeker go to areas where you have some domain expertise.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah that would be my exact advice honestly it's and then usually like the bigger the companies get the more they realize that okay we do have to start training some domain expertise within our company.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it can't just be all you know from whatever cyber or network security or Martech et cetera yeah um but I do agree especially for startups I mean it's it's big and I think that candidates now I try I actually talk about it a lot with candidates because I don't think that they fully they kind of like reject that reason in their head and they're like no they I still have the expertise and the skills like I just need to understand cyber security or network.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah I agree.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: And in your opinion is there like something specific assuming you know somebody hasn't gone through your core core already but what would separate somebody that is like an a player S E versus just good leadership.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: How do they showcase that yeah it's having an opinion and uh communicating taking an opinion and communicating why you think it's it's uh valuable it's conviction yeah that's good and a lot of leaders I will say and I'll I'll end with this question as well but they inherited they inherit teams right that maybe they didn't hire without the framework that you have right now how do you coach an existing team up in these skill set without either burning them out or creating resentment within the team so this is good timing.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: I we have been putting out a lot more content on specifically how to um coach up your teams in these areas uh the bit you mentioned about like you know resentment or just pushback that kind of thing believe it or not I was expecting a lot more pushback uh from sales or from SEs in terms of training but we've seen this with a ton of our our our own training most SEs are learners they like learning new things they like getting better and they like improving so you don't really get like the resentment the pushback you have some that are stuck in your ways but that goes back to that like poor hiring mistakes is when the ego is so high like oh I can't learn any better I my my don't stink if you will um you know that that has been less of an issue but uh we've got some we might even have some some um some uh links and stuff where and some YouTube videos that you can run in your weekly team meetings to go and improve on these skills the storytelling the discovery the leadership uh they're all linked up check out YouTube checked out um uh LinkedIn for that we're putting out more and more of that yeah and actually you also gave me a link for the audience which I'm gonna put here on our uh live and then I'll put it in the show notes as well yeah but you basically have like a workbook that walks pre-sales leaders through assessing you know where do they stand within the core for yeah so let me put that link here yeah it's good I I talked to so many pre-sales leaders that they come in with the exact problem statement that you were mentioning uh RV like oh we need to get better at the soft skills I'm like I'm not sure that you do I think can your people have a conversation they're like yeah can they listen yeah it's like okay they're probably gotta work on sales skills here's the core four this is how you diagnose which ones you need to work on.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah very true I already put it in there and everybody this is also going to be on the show notes so feel free to go through and click it take the assessment or give it to your leadership team to take the assessment as well.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Rue you've been awesome thank you so much for joining me live before we head out where should people follow you I I know you already mentioned like the channels what is there like one way that's like the best way or the easiest way for you?
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah link LinkedIn if you go there you'll get most of my content uh there and then uh if you just click on the link and join the uh the pre-sales leader newsletter um then you'll get emails with usually like wrap ups and LinkedIn and comp content and uh other things YouTube videos all the stuff that's helpful for the SE leaders that's our goal serve there love that any last thoughts before we we head out thank you this was this was wonderful to be here I'm glad uh we got to do this especially after chatting at Solcon and finally getting to put it here so I appreciate you absolutely yeah and there's honestly so many good notes here like if I was a leader I would just go back and use this as my teaching and like pause it and write it down or use an AI note taker at this point I guess you can do it too.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah awesome thank you everybody yeah absolutely um and yeah thank you again uh everybody see you on the next episode