I have worked with terrible managers and have worked with a few that were remarkable. Those that were remarkable brought out a work ethic and creativity superior to those that weren’t in every case. Long term relationships were built and loyalty attained. What made them different? What management skills did they have that a bad manager didn’t?
As I was watching my son practice wrestling I overheard his coach say something quite profound. He stopped the match and demanded the attention of my son’s competitor and said “smile, this is supposed to be fun, remember?” Wow! Inspirational and for me motivational.
Years before it was penned crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe in Wired Magazine I was involved with this concept and watched it work quite well. A friend’s small car dealership was looking for a new jingle for their radio ads. Instead of hiring a marketing company (or using an internal employee) they put the word out that anyone in Austin could submit a jingle and the winner would receive $1000 bucks! The response was incredible and the jingle is still being used 20+ years later. A key ingredient to this success was the location as Austin TX was/is packed full of singer songwriters. We’ll talk more about that later.
Sales engineering is truly an art-form. To be awesome, a sales engineer needs to invest effort into the technology, the business opportunity, and most importantly their personal style. I like to say they need to be left and right brained. Technical, creative, personable comes to mind. They also need to gain the trust of those they are partnered with and presenting to. Here are my 5 points of discussion of becoming an awesome sales engineer.
