Continuous Improvement for Sales Engineers<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t![\"By](\"https:\/\/vertexdimension.com\/wethese\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Ramzi-Pic.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Ramzi Marjaba<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe world is a-changing. Every day a new technology pops up from somewhere or another. Every day, I find out about a technology that has been around a while, but I\u2019ve never even looked at it. Some would say that the rates of changes are faster than the rates that our brains can keep up. Luckily we live in an environment where the workload can be divided amongst people you don\u2019t know, and still, the knowledge is shared, either through blogs, podcasts, and paid services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>A huge skill in the SE skillset should be the ability for continuous learning. SEs, more than any other kind of engineer, need that ability on a wide scale of technologies. Don\u2019t get me wrong, engineers, in general, need to continue updating their knowledge. But most can focus on one or two areas, whereas SEs, they need to spread that over as many areas as the products they sell. Let\u2019s take a look at a Cisco Generalist SE. Their knowledge has to include routing and networking, security, SD-WAN, Datacenters, Collaboration tools, network monitoring, system administration, and more, much more. On the other hand, the software engineer working on routing, they usually focus on 1 aspect of routing, for example, BGP only, not BGP, OSPF, ISIS, MPLS, Segment Routing, EVPN, Optical Switches, OmniSwitches, collaboration tools\u2026 you get the point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Even great thinkers like Warren Buffet are all into continuous learning. According to a CNBC, Warren Buffet spends 80% of his days reading. Yet Sales Engineers, from my experience, spend 90% of their day helping Account Managers, visiting customers, and working on Demos. No time for intentional self-improvement, more of a learn on the job situation, and it is reactive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>How much is enough?<\/strong><\/h1>Now the question I hear is how much self-improvement is enough self-improvement? Or better yet, how much self-improvement is not enough self-improvement? The answer is, there is no such thing. In the book <\/span>Atomic Habits<\/span><\/a>, the author Jame Clear talks about the 1% rule. This means that every day, you have to try to be 1% better than you were yesterday.<\/span><\/p>Charles Poliquin, the late strength and conditioning coach for Olympic champions, bodybuilders, and strength athletes said that every night he asks himself what 3 new things that he learned that day. Keep in mind that Mr. Poliquin was at a point in his career where he did most of the teaching, yet, these incremental improvements (3 things per day) were important to him, and should be important to us. They don\u2019t have to be huge either. They could be small, like learning when a feature was added to a product or learning to overcome a system upgrade that went sideways. As long as we are getting better every day, and documenting our learnings (I use <\/span>Evernote <\/span><\/a>for that).<\/span><\/p>What to focus on?<\/strong><\/h1>Being a generalist SE, we have so much we need to learn, so little time to focus on learning. We can spend all day learning and be experts in everything that we sell, but if we\u2019re not out selling, then we are not successful Sales Engineers. So we need to choose 1 topic at a time and focus on that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>I really like the concept of just in time learning. This is when you are like Jon Snow, and you know nothing about a specific topic, and then you have a meeting coming up about that topic. You could either get the specialist involved right away, if you have one or if they have time, or you can go ahead and research and learn about it. It\u2019s a good excuse to give an Account Manager saying \u201cHey, I need to learn this so we can sell\u201d. The issue I have with this is if we don\u2019t keep up the learning after the meeting, it would be like cramming for university and forgetting everything afterward.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Just in time learning could be also for technology or feature coming down the horizon, if it makes sense for your customers. For example, 5G is all the rage in my domain, however, my customers are not really working on 5G in my geographical area. So should I spend time learning that? Probably, but it is not a priority since all my customers are interested in RestAPI and Python today. So that\u2019s where my focus goes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Another way to pick what you need to learn is if we go to customer meetings and there are always the same 1 or 2 questions that I have the standard response to \u201cI\u2019ll get back to you on that\u201d, well maybe it\u2019s time to dig into that and learn it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Finally, you can a self-assessment, or work with your manager to come up with a learning plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>
\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tBy Ramzi Marjaba<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe world is a-changing. Every day a new technology pops up from somewhere or another. Every day, I find out about a technology that has been around a while, but I\u2019ve never even looked at it. Some would say that the rates of changes are faster than the rates that our brains can keep up. Luckily we live in an environment where the workload can be divided amongst people you don\u2019t know, and still, the knowledge is shared, either through blogs, podcasts, and paid services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>A huge skill in the SE skillset should be the ability for continuous learning. SEs, more than any other kind of engineer, need that ability on a wide scale of technologies. Don\u2019t get me wrong, engineers, in general, need to continue updating their knowledge. But most can focus on one or two areas, whereas SEs, they need to spread that over as many areas as the products they sell. Let\u2019s take a look at a Cisco Generalist SE. Their knowledge has to include routing and networking, security, SD-WAN, Datacenters, Collaboration tools, network monitoring, system administration, and more, much more. On the other hand, the software engineer working on routing, they usually focus on 1 aspect of routing, for example, BGP only, not BGP, OSPF, ISIS, MPLS, Segment Routing, EVPN, Optical Switches, OmniSwitches, collaboration tools\u2026 you get the point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Even great thinkers like Warren Buffet are all into continuous learning. According to a CNBC, Warren Buffet spends 80% of his days reading. Yet Sales Engineers, from my experience, spend 90% of their day helping Account Managers, visiting customers, and working on Demos. No time for intentional self-improvement, more of a learn on the job situation, and it is reactive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>How much is enough?<\/strong><\/h1>Now the question I hear is how much self-improvement is enough self-improvement? Or better yet, how much self-improvement is not enough self-improvement? The answer is, there is no such thing. In the book <\/span>Atomic Habits<\/span><\/a>, the author Jame Clear talks about the 1% rule. This means that every day, you have to try to be 1% better than you were yesterday.<\/span><\/p>Charles Poliquin, the late strength and conditioning coach for Olympic champions, bodybuilders, and strength athletes said that every night he asks himself what 3 new things that he learned that day. Keep in mind that Mr. Poliquin was at a point in his career where he did most of the teaching, yet, these incremental improvements (3 things per day) were important to him, and should be important to us. They don\u2019t have to be huge either. They could be small, like learning when a feature was added to a product or learning to overcome a system upgrade that went sideways. As long as we are getting better every day, and documenting our learnings (I use <\/span>Evernote <\/span><\/a>for that).<\/span><\/p>What to focus on?<\/strong><\/h1>Being a generalist SE, we have so much we need to learn, so little time to focus on learning. We can spend all day learning and be experts in everything that we sell, but if we\u2019re not out selling, then we are not successful Sales Engineers. So we need to choose 1 topic at a time and focus on that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>I really like the concept of just in time learning. This is when you are like Jon Snow, and you know nothing about a specific topic, and then you have a meeting coming up about that topic. You could either get the specialist involved right away, if you have one or if they have time, or you can go ahead and research and learn about it. It\u2019s a good excuse to give an Account Manager saying \u201cHey, I need to learn this so we can sell\u201d. The issue I have with this is if we don\u2019t keep up the learning after the meeting, it would be like cramming for university and forgetting everything afterward.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Just in time learning could be also for technology or feature coming down the horizon, if it makes sense for your customers. For example, 5G is all the rage in my domain, however, my customers are not really working on 5G in my geographical area. So should I spend time learning that? Probably, but it is not a priority since all my customers are interested in RestAPI and Python today. So that\u2019s where my focus goes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Another way to pick what you need to learn is if we go to customer meetings and there are always the same 1 or 2 questions that I have the standard response to \u201cI\u2019ll get back to you on that\u201d, well maybe it\u2019s time to dig into that and learn it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>Finally, you can a self-assessment, or work with your manager to come up with a learning plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>
The world is a-changing. Every day a new technology pops up from somewhere or another. Every day, I find out about a technology that has been around a while, but I\u2019ve never even looked at it. Some would say that the rates of changes are faster than the rates that our brains can keep up. Luckily we live in an environment where the workload can be divided amongst people you don\u2019t know, and still, the knowledge is shared, either through blogs, podcasts, and paid services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> A huge skill in the SE skillset should be the ability for continuous learning. SEs, more than any other kind of engineer, need that ability on a wide scale of technologies. Don\u2019t get me wrong, engineers, in general, need to continue updating their knowledge. But most can focus on one or two areas, whereas SEs, they need to spread that over as many areas as the products they sell. Let\u2019s take a look at a Cisco Generalist SE. Their knowledge has to include routing and networking, security, SD-WAN, Datacenters, Collaboration tools, network monitoring, system administration, and more, much more. On the other hand, the software engineer working on routing, they usually focus on 1 aspect of routing, for example, BGP only, not BGP, OSPF, ISIS, MPLS, Segment Routing, EVPN, Optical Switches, OmniSwitches, collaboration tools\u2026 you get the point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Even great thinkers like Warren Buffet are all into continuous learning. According to a CNBC, Warren Buffet spends 80% of his days reading. Yet Sales Engineers, from my experience, spend 90% of their day helping Account Managers, visiting customers, and working on Demos. No time for intentional self-improvement, more of a learn on the job situation, and it is reactive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Now the question I hear is how much self-improvement is enough self-improvement? Or better yet, how much self-improvement is not enough self-improvement? The answer is, there is no such thing. In the book <\/span>Atomic Habits<\/span><\/a>, the author Jame Clear talks about the 1% rule. This means that every day, you have to try to be 1% better than you were yesterday.<\/span><\/p> Charles Poliquin, the late strength and conditioning coach for Olympic champions, bodybuilders, and strength athletes said that every night he asks himself what 3 new things that he learned that day. Keep in mind that Mr. Poliquin was at a point in his career where he did most of the teaching, yet, these incremental improvements (3 things per day) were important to him, and should be important to us. They don\u2019t have to be huge either. They could be small, like learning when a feature was added to a product or learning to overcome a system upgrade that went sideways. As long as we are getting better every day, and documenting our learnings (I use <\/span>Evernote <\/span><\/a>for that).<\/span><\/p> Being a generalist SE, we have so much we need to learn, so little time to focus on learning. We can spend all day learning and be experts in everything that we sell, but if we\u2019re not out selling, then we are not successful Sales Engineers. So we need to choose 1 topic at a time and focus on that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> I really like the concept of just in time learning. This is when you are like Jon Snow, and you know nothing about a specific topic, and then you have a meeting coming up about that topic. You could either get the specialist involved right away, if you have one or if they have time, or you can go ahead and research and learn about it. It\u2019s a good excuse to give an Account Manager saying \u201cHey, I need to learn this so we can sell\u201d. The issue I have with this is if we don\u2019t keep up the learning after the meeting, it would be like cramming for university and forgetting everything afterward.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Just in time learning could be also for technology or feature coming down the horizon, if it makes sense for your customers. For example, 5G is all the rage in my domain, however, my customers are not really working on 5G in my geographical area. So should I spend time learning that? Probably, but it is not a priority since all my customers are interested in RestAPI and Python today. So that\u2019s where my focus goes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Another way to pick what you need to learn is if we go to customer meetings and there are always the same 1 or 2 questions that I have the standard response to \u201cI\u2019ll get back to you on that\u201d, well maybe it\u2019s time to dig into that and learn it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p> Finally, you can a self-assessment, or work with your manager to come up with a learning plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>How much is enough?<\/strong><\/h1>
What to focus on?<\/strong><\/h1>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wethesalesengineers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Annual-learning-plan-1024x785.png\")
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