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Sales engineering
Sales engineering is a hybrid profession of sales and engineering that exists in industrial and commercial markets.
Buying decisions in these markets are made differently than those in many consumer contexts, being based more on technical information and rational analysis and less on style, fashion, or impulse.
Sales engineers are salespersons that have both sales and engineering expertise, allowing them to communicate with customers about technical aspects of a product, business, and business case. They may also advise and support customers on technical and procurement matters. Employers of sales engineers may include business-to-business companies, distributors, and engineering consultancies.
The purpose of the job is to help potential customers understand, compare, and contrast the solutions that are available for purchase (the pre-sales role); to troubleshoot problems with their implementations—that is, to help ensure that the solutions work successfully once a purchase is made (the post-sales role); and to maximize sales for the sales engineer's employer by providing help to customers (the aspect of the job that puts the "sales" in the title sales engineer).
It is understood in the market, by both the sales engineer and his or her wary industrial client, that the sales portion of the sales engineering role inherently involves a conflict of interest (COI), because it is always possible that the ideal solutions could involve recommending a competitor's products or services. However, the sales engineer is under pressure to steer the customer towards their employer's product. Thus, customers are generally wary of advice given by sales engineers. Nevertheless, sales engineers do usually provide real value to customers, which is why the role endures despite customers' apprehension. The customer's only motivation to participate in the encounter is to achieve return on investment (ROI) in one way or another. Toward that end, sales engineering increasingly relies on any information technology that can help quantify ROI. This is summed up in the aphorism that "at the end of the day, the customer just wants to know for sure that they will gain A dollars over the next B years (via reduced expenses or increased sales) if they pay C dollars up front for product D."
Another function of the sales engineer is to introduce modified, improved, and/or advanced technology to potential users who may have an application but who have not yet acquired knowledge of the material or technique in question. The sales engineer may conduct training sessions or demonstrations to accomplish this. The task of seeking out industries, firms, or business models that do not yet use a certain product (for example, a CAx system or a CRM system) and causing them to adopt a new approach using that product is what puts the "applications" in "applications engineering" or "application development" (not to be confused with another common sense of that term, which refers to software development and programming). The task is to seek out and develop new applications for the product, in order to increase sales. The customer's only motivation for adopting it is "what it can do for me", such as same-output-lower-costs, more-output-same-cost, etc. Thus, when things work out correctly, both firms profit from the application development.
This result also has broader economic implications, as it is a mechanism by which economic efficiency increases, productivity grows, and economic growth is encouraged. Inventors and R&D people create new tools and processes; but they do not disseminate into the business world (to do any economic good) without some amount of applications development, teaching (from exposing decision-makers via trade shows to providing workers with training), and sales.
Many products and services purchased by large companies and institutions are highly complex. Examples include airliners, weapons systems, and IT systems (such as telecommunications, or databases and their dependent applications for purposes such as logistics or customer relationship management). Sales engineers advise customers on how best to use the products or services provided.
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Sales engineering
Sales engineering is a hybrid profession of sales and engineering that exists in industrial and commercial markets.
Buying decisions in these markets are made differently than those in many consumer contexts, being based more on technical information and rational analysis and less on style, fashion, or impulse.
Sales engineers are salespersons that have both sales and engineering expertise, allowing them to communicate with customers about technical aspects of a product, business, and business case. They may also advise and support customers on technical and procurement matters. Employers of sales engineers may include business-to-business companies, distributors, and engineering consultancies.
The purpose of the job is to help potential customers understand, compare, and contrast the solutions that are available for purchase (the pre-sales role); to troubleshoot problems with their implementations—that is, to help ensure that the solutions work successfully once a purchase is made (the post-sales role); and to maximize sales for the sales engineer's employer by providing help to customers (the aspect of the job that puts the "sales" in the title sales engineer).
It is understood in the market, by both the sales engineer and his or her wary industrial client, that the sales portion of the sales engineering role inherently involves a conflict of interest (COI), because it is always possible that the ideal solutions could involve recommending a competitor's products or services. However, the sales engineer is under pressure to steer the customer towards their employer's product. Thus, customers are generally wary of advice given by sales engineers. Nevertheless, sales engineers do usually provide real value to customers, which is why the role endures despite customers' apprehension. The customer's only motivation to participate in the encounter is to achieve return on investment (ROI) in one way or another. Toward that end, sales engineering increasingly relies on any information technology that can help quantify ROI. This is summed up in the aphorism that "at the end of the day, the customer just wants to know for sure that they will gain A dollars over the next B years (via reduced expenses or increased sales) if they pay C dollars up front for product D."
Another function of the sales engineer is to introduce modified, improved, and/or advanced technology to potential users who may have an application but who have not yet acquired knowledge of the material or technique in question. The sales engineer may conduct training sessions or demonstrations to accomplish this. The task of seeking out industries, firms, or business models that do not yet use a certain product (for example, a CAx system or a CRM system) and causing them to adopt a new approach using that product is what puts the "applications" in "applications engineering" or "application development" (not to be confused with another common sense of that term, which refers to software development and programming). The task is to seek out and develop new applications for the product, in order to increase sales. The customer's only motivation for adopting it is "what it can do for me", such as same-output-lower-costs, more-output-same-cost, etc. Thus, when things work out correctly, both firms profit from the application development.
This result also has broader economic implications, as it is a mechanism by which economic efficiency increases, productivity grows, and economic growth is encouraged. Inventors and R&D people create new tools and processes; but they do not disseminate into the business world (to do any economic good) without some amount of applications development, teaching (from exposing decision-makers via trade shows to providing workers with training), and sales.
Many products and services purchased by large companies and institutions are highly complex. Examples include airliners, weapons systems, and IT systems (such as telecommunications, or databases and their dependent applications for purposes such as logistics or customer relationship management). Sales engineers advise customers on how best to use the products or services provided.