Earlier this week I was a part of a conversation where a group of Sales Managers and business owners were lamenting the fact that there sales engineers were struggling with the Sales part of their job. These leaders admitted that their employees were great engineers, but marginal sales professionals at best.

Below is my contribution to this discussion.

Sales skills are certainly not taught in the institutes of higher learning and often times snubbed by engineers at first. Most of the SE’s I’ve worked with in the past 15 years are great technically however they have little or no understanding of the anatomy of the sales process. The Sales process is just as technically challenging as any technology or solutions we may be waving in front of our customers. Skip a step and you may lose the sell or worse, lose the customer altogether.

Gaining Attention / Discovery / Solution Building / Proposal / Closing / Post Sales review

You can gain attention through a lot of varying avenues, but successfully gaining the customer’s attention will almost always include some form of relationship building. It’s not enough to just show up with something cool, you need to be likeable too. Customers buy from people they like and feel connected to.

Discovery is an area that is most often overlooked, rushed through or just poorly executed on. Discovery is about asking questions and listening to what the customers says and perhaps more importantly what they don’t say.  Asking open-ended questions is an art and must be modeled and taught. It’s not enough to just ask questions, it’s all about asking the right questions. Teach your SE’s the right questions, model for them how they should ask the questions and most importantly, teach them the power of the pause. If the customer doesn’t immediately answer the question the SE does not need to fill the empty air with his voice. Wait and let the customer fill in the blanks first. Often good discovery not only helps you truly learn your customer’s real needs, but also helps the customer better define those needs. Good discovery can be a great value to your customer and it shows the customer you truly care about their needs and not just about their wallet. Even if you do the best discovery ever if you done capture the information it could be a wasted effort. Part of good discovery is capturing the information so you’ve got to take notes.

Most good engineers can build a great solution if he has done great discovery. Poor discovery though……..you know where that leads….. Incomplete Solutions, Lost Profit, Lost Opportunity, Lost Customers….it’s not a pretty sight.

The proposal phase should include a well written Scope of Work that communicates your SE’s understanding of the customer’s needs, how your company intends to meet those needs and clearly defines the responsibilities of both your company and the customer. Managing the customer’s expectations is very difficult if those expectations haven’t been documented and discussed both with the customer and with your team. Everybody needs to be on the same page or someone is going to get disappointed.

Some SE’s aren’t always in the position to ask for the sell, but most are and this is an area that even Sales Professionals with years of experience still struggle. If you’ve done good discovery, have a great solution, have communicated all this effectively to the customer then you’ve earn the business. Ask for the Purchase Order; more than once if you must. Close with Confidence.

And finally go back after the job is completed. Review the project. Ask the customer what went well and where you could have done better. This builds relationship, shows the customer that you care and teaches you how to be better at what you do. The Post Sale review is important to your future sales.

Follow the steps of the sales process and you will be successful. Skip a step and you’ll know it sooner or later.

If your SE’s are struggling give them a process to follow. What engineer doesn’t love a good process?