do's & don'tsfor everysales engineer

MohammedAbusalamehEmail: mohdabusalameh@gmail.com

Mobile: +971 50 767 6024

don't do'sfor everysales engineer

non effective follow-up

Follow up could be so easy, it’s the matter of picking up the phone and calling the

customer and saying “I just wanted to follow up” but that is not effective and not

professional at all, and customers might lose their interest dealing with you. Don’t

forget to follow up and make sure when you do it, to do it in a professional manner.

So make your follow up effective with these steps:

First:Make sure that the customer knows that you will follow up, don’t make it as a

surprise, and the preferable way is to tell the customer “I will call you….” defining

time of the follow up call and providing a time line for a next steps.

Second.You must set the end in your mind and knowing what specifically you want to

accomplish on a call.

Third.Taking control of a call. Don’t hang up without agreeing on the next step, even if the

customer said “I will call you later/back” because he/

she is busy or whatever, you will take the control and

will reply “Thank you. If I don’t hear from you, I will

call you on…”and set a date to call back.

don't do

not educating customers

As your title is a sales engineer which means you will be the customer’s consultant

and his direct technical support. Not investing time to ensure the customer

understands the product and its benefit is a major “Don’t Do”.

The customer will be expecting you to be ready to explain any technical feature he/

she asked about the products. So you must note here even at the meeting if you don’t

answer some of the questions, you have to get answers for these questions and contact the

customer to deliver these answers.

To educate customers you must first educate yourself in the beginning and be up

to speak with all the technical information about the products, this will make you

more confident and sound professional with customers which will lead them to

trust you.

don't do

lying

Honesty is the best policy and lying is a major “Don’t Do”. When it comes

to this practice it transcends not only your job but also the general ethics

and the way you live your life. Yes it will help you to say “This product does

everything” but you are betraying the customer in that way, and a complaint

to your manager about you lying will get you fired. Not to mention that if you

are lying to people it will reduce your self esteem and erode your character, two

important traits you will need if you want to be a success.

If you are using this practice, you must work on two things.

1. Core values and job ethics. Customers will never trust you and deal with

you again after discovering that you have not been honest with them.

2. Sales skills. Lying to a customer means that your you are not confident in

your skills as a sales engineer are not strong enough to reach a point where

you can handle the customer and convince him/her to buy the product. You

are trying to compensate for your skill gap by lying, which is a major “Don’t

Do”. You are better off investing your time to develop the requisite skills to

do the job properly. Work hard, develop yourself,

operate with integrity and you will be a huge success.

don't do

must do'sfor everysales engineer

networking:

To many this practice is the most important one. Successful networking will help

the sales engineer to expand his territory and will make a great visibility for him/

her between the customers.

Two of the most effective ways of networking:

EVENTS: Networking in events start one month before the event because there

is nothing worse than missing one. You have to check the guests/speakers lists,

check their profiles and backgrounds and then start your own target list of who

you need to meet to grow your business. After that you have to find the nexus

between you and the targeted person and send him/her a note or an email that

you are looking forward to meet him and mention that nexus in the note. This

will be a lot better than attending and start networking on the spot without

knowing what to say or who to talk to. This preemptive approach helps break the

ice and will make the other person interested to meet you and this method is

applicable before meeting a customer.

CUSTOMER RELATIONS: Customers are humans; humans are social creatures,

so you must as a sales engineer treat them as a consultant or unpaid team

member, and understand that they will always have

in mind “I don’t care how much you know, until I know

how much you care”. To do this you have to listen and

understand their needs to provide them with the best

solution possible, which will lead to their trust in you,

and if they do, they will recommend you to a new

one, which will result in expanding your territory.

must do

continuous learning

I believe that the “future belongs to learners”. Is it hard to wake up early and read

a sales book for an hour every morning? Is it accepted for you to stop listening to

music or a radio show while driving and start listening to audio sales book?

If you want to be a successful sales engineer and among the best, well in these

questions your daily learning practices. Attending what you can from sales training and seminars is also an effective way to keep up to date with the

latest. To know yourself that you are a successful person or not, a question will

help you out. The question is “If someone asked you for a help to improve his/

her sales practices. What will answer be?” A successful person never says “no”.

Actually he/she will be more than happy to share, as they say the best way to

learn something is to teach it.

My personal approach to learning will be to watch the top performing sales

engineers in the company very closely and then I will adopt their successful

habits. It is most likely that the most successful sales engineers are the most

willing to share their experiences of success and to help me develop my skills to

make a positive contribution to the company.

must do

organize and use your time well

“What can’t be measured can’t be managed”. It is important to keep detailed track

of your time. Setting goals at the beginning of the week and reviewing your

progress on a daily and weekly basis. You must ensure you are balancing your

time properly between prospecting for new clients and servicing your existing

client base effectively.

You have to make time to meet customers, time to follow up with them and

whatever you are doing during the day and I prefer to do this organizing on a

weekly basis, so you will be able to manage not to waste time while driving to

customers. Now after organizing in the job you must apply it to your life as well

because if you can’t have a balance in your life you will never be a success in

your field.

must do