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I have two years of automotive/aerospace manufacturing experience and am looking for new opportunities. I recently applied to a Solution Engineer - Commercial Manufacturing, Automotive, Energy (MAE) role at Salesforce, and it sounds like a great fit. Is anyone willing to offer me a referral or advice on how to move forward in the hiring process? Salesforce
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TL;DR - Sales Engineers are storytellers first and foremost. We happen to tell our stories with a mouse and keyboard. But the story always comes first.
Presales / Sales Engineering is part science and part art.
The science is the technical know how, expertise, and knowledge of real world use cases and customer successes. Sounds like you might have that from your current role.
The art is.. how, why, and when to deliver the most impactful messaging. How to understand your customer’s pains and needs, and relate that back to the “science” to drive home the actual value and outcomes they could achieve. Asking the right questions, framing statements the right way to guide the conversation and set yourself up. And how, why, and when to NOT do that all the same (you’re not implementing the solution. You’re selling it. Don’t over-engineer, and need to plan for every possibility, etc).
This is the “technical sales” side of it. Less concerned about the budgets and costs of “sales” (though that’s a good gut check as well) and more about “why should they care?”
Why should they care… about what your software can do for them, about this feature you’re going to highlight, etc. If you can’t make them care, then you’ve failed. If you can’t articulate why they should care about X, then you probably don’t need to be speaking/showing about X.
I love how your response expresses your passion for the job.
Not sure how to have a chat with you but would like to have a quick discussion with you on this!!