The Trusted Advisor Sales Engineer

Firstly, you need to establish control of your time (calendar) and your inbox, as it is far more likely that lack of time, rather than lack of desire or talent, will hurt your reliability. Secondly, you need to be realistic and not always follow the SE instinct of automatically pleasing the customer or the salesperson.

The downside is that once an SE loses their credibility with a customer, it can be challenging to regain it. Giving vague or misleading answers to a question or being factually incorrect are classic examples.

issues, as (to foreshadow the next chapter) the #1 thing most mid to senior-level executives expect from a vendor’s presales organization is someone who understands their business.

Yes, I do mean “decrease”! Remember that high S is bad. You want the relationship to be about the customer, not all about you. Feelings. As well as going for hard data, try asking the client, “how do you feel about that?” It’s that touchy-feely area that SEs hate – but it can reveal a lot about what a client is honestly thinking. It’s an excellent

had exhibited extreme reliability to me, I would assume their response would always take 50% longer. I would also assume that customer and internal issues would erode the big block of time I had reserved for myself tomorrow, so I would only have 50% of that. Maybe that is a pessimistic view, but I feel that is life in the corporate world, plus it g

Interrupting the customer. Because you know the answer! Constantly trying to add value and participate. Because you can fix the problem! Answering questions quickly. Because you are smart and know the answer! Not wanting to say, “I don’t know.” Because you don’t want to admit that you don’t know the answer! Proposing a solution too early. Even thou

Credibility is probably the easiest of the five factors for an SE to achieve and even over-achieve. As techies, we tend to pride ourselves on our technical ability to be accurate, precise, and knowledgeable. That pride shows in being able to answer

Six Ways To Decrease Your Self-Orientation Yes, I do mean “decrease”! Remember that high S is bad. You want the relationship to be about the customer, not all about you. Feelings. As well as going for hard data, try asking the client, “how do you feel about that?” It’s that touchy-feely area that SEs hate – but it can reveal a lot about what a clie

Listen. Listen really hard. Pause for a second after the client asks you a question to imply thoughtfulness and to ensure that the customer has finished their question. Using non-verbal cues makes the customer feel you have listened and understood. See Chapter 18: The Listening Sales Engineer. Use I Don’t Know Wisely (Again). If you don’t know, the