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{"id":720,"date":"2018-10-18T01:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T01:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wethesalesengineers.com\/?p=720"},"modified":"2018-10-18T01:00:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T01:00:58","slug":"the-confusing-job-titles-in-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vertexdimension.com\/wethese\/the-confusing-job-titles-in-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"The Confusing Job Titles for Engineers in Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Confusing Job Titles for Engineers in Sales<\/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
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By 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
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Pre-Sales Vs Post Sales Vs Professional Services vs Application Engineer vs Field Engineer. If you’re in sales, you have probably heard of these terms before. If you are just breaking into a sales role, being an Account Manager, Sales Engineer, or any of the titles mentioned above, you should know the difference between all of them, and more importantly, who does what.<\/span><\/p>

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I’m so confused<\/figcaption><\/figure>

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The purpose of this blog is to discuss what these terms mean and how the roles can merge.<\/span><\/p>

Pre-Sales Engineering:<\/b><\/h2>

A Pre-Sales Engineer, otherwise known as a Sales Engineer, Applications Engineer, Systems Engineer, Solution Engineer, Solution Consultant and many other terms, is the person responsible for helping an Account Manager sell the products that are in their portfolio. The Sales Engineer is also the person who helps the customer understand what they are buying and what problems they are looking to solve. <\/span><\/p>

A Pre-Sales Engineer is usually involved in pre-sales activities. This includes prospecting if the Account Manager requires the SE\u2019s help, discovery calls, demos, proof of concepts and getting a technical close. Generally speaking, the Sales Engineer would not be talking about budgets or asking for the purchase order; however, depending on your relationship with your customers, they might freely give you that information in an informal setting. Informal could mean taking the customer out to lunch, or simply dropping by to say hello and help them with a problem.<\/span><\/p>

Post-Sales Engineer:<\/b><\/h2>

As the title implies, a Post-Sales Engineer comes in after the sale is done. They are not actively participating in trying to sell to a customer. Their job is to help the customer get the most out of the solution that the sales team already sold. Lots of post sales work ends up leading to a pre-sales opportunity since the Post-Sales Engineer is entrenched within the customer’s environment. They get to ask questions which the Pre-Sales Engineer would not have been able to. The Post-Sales Engineer also gets to observe the customer\u2019s environment, what they are struggling with and what other potential products can help them. <\/span><\/p>

Some companies have these two roles pre-sales engineer and post sales engineer separated. There is one human being doing the pre-sales role, and another that doing the post-sales role. This allows the Pre-Sales Engineer to really focus on helping the sales person find new opportunities, preparing for Discovery calls or demos, for answering technical questions or whatever it is that the Pre-Sales Engineer does, which I already mentioned above. It also allows the post-sales to get really in-depth with the product and build a different relationship with the customer other than just selling. <\/span><\/p>

Other companies have the Pre-Sales and the Post-Sales Engineer position blended. That means one person is doing both jobs. As with everything else, there are downsides and upsides to doing this. The downside to this is that time is taken away from the pre-sales engineer who now needs to do post sales. Instead of looking for new opportunities or trying to close an existing deals, the SE is now working with engineers on fixing problems. However this allows the sales engineer to become more technical and also is giving more trust from the customer as he’s not only trying to sell but also helping them within their environment after they had bought.<\/span><\/p>

Some organizations have pre-sales as part of the sales department and post sales as part of support. Other organizations would have both the post-sales and pre-sales as part of the sales organization.<\/span><\/p>

Professional Services:<\/strong><\/h2>

Professional services is the service that is usually provided after a purchase of a solution or product. It’s usually sold to the customer either as a separate service or as part of a larger deal. For example, a customer wants to buy a thousand routers for their Network. Once the customer purchases all these routers and they are sitting in the their loading dock, what are they going to do with it<\/span>? <\/span>In some cases, they have their internal team figure that out. However, in addition to the routers, the sales team might have sold the customer some additional services, usually referred to as Professional services. These services can be for a network design, deployment services, or Resident Engineers. <\/span><\/p>

Applications Engineer:<\/strong><\/h2>

Applications engineer is just another title for Sales Engineer, Pre-Sales Engineer, Solutions Engineer or even a Systems Engineer. Whatever your title is, the role remains the same: supporting the Account Manager in selling and also supporting the client in providing a solution to their problems.<\/span><\/p>

However, Applications Engineer and Systems Engineers are two titles which are used for engineers who are not in sales. An Applications Engineer can be someone who designs and write codes for applications. Similarly, Systems Engineers can also be engineers who design systems. <\/span><\/p>

Field Engineer:<\/strong><\/h2>

In a lot of cases, a Field Engineer is similar to the Post-Sales Engineer. If a customer runs into a problem that they need solved promptly (which is always the case), the first line of defense is usually at Field Engineer. They are called Field Engineers because they are in the field, and visit customer sites whenever required. A customer runs into a problem, a Field Engineer goes on site and helps them fix that problem as fast as possible. Mainly, their job is to get the customer back to a running state instead of trying to figure out what the root cause is. He\/she can then open a support ticket and provide the information needed for support to reproduce the issue and get it fixed. <\/span><\/p>

I hope this provided a small ounce of clarity to the different roles that we work with as SEs, at least for those who work directly with customers. If there are any other roles that you think are pertinent to this discussion, please add them in the comments.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t#207 Mentorship Sucks, How to Overcome it?\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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When an employee joins a new company, they are assigned a mentor. My experience has not been positive with assigned mentors. So I will be talking about why Assigned mentors suck, and what we can do to overcome that.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/article>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t4\/1\/1 Building Trust is Hard, Losing it is Easy\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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4\/1\/1: 4 Random Thoughts from me, 1 tools to help Sales Engineers, 1 quote for motivation 4\/1\/1 Weekly   4 Random Thoughts, 1 Tool, and<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/article>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t#206 Building Trust Through Genuine Care for the Customer\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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Anyone who works in sales knows that trust is not easy to come by. It\u2019s easier for Sales Engineers than salespeople due to the \u201cEngineer\u201d in the title, but we are still working with people who we may have not met before …<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/article>\n\t\t\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

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