A three-part plan that helped me get a promotion as a sales engineer
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When applying for a sales engineer role, you will see the job titled as either sales engineer, senior sales engineer or principal engineer. Each title is more senior than the previous one land when I started my career in this field, I came in as a sales engineer. My first promotion came after two years working as a sales engineer where I was promoted to a senior sales engineer. I remember my first meeting with my manager (Nik Boman) at the start of the second year where I sat down with him to present a plan on how I see myself getting promoted. The plan laid out how he can measure my success and included touchpoints along the way to keep monitoring if I’m doing all the right things. The plan that I developed focused on the following:
Activity tracking
My manager managed eight sales engineers across various levels and in order for me to stand out I had to demonstrate my value in the field. I looked at my first-year stats (revenue impact, activity vs forecast, close rate etc) and defined metrics that demonstrated what a senior sales engineer looks like (e.g. impacting $1mm+ throughout the year). By defining these metrics it helped me be responsible for ensuring accurate activity tracking which in turn made it easier for my manager to validate my work.
Engage in a global sales engineer project
The next area I wanted to focus was making an impact at a global level throughout the sales engineering organization. I worked with my manager to find one initiative where I can get involve. The goal here was to ensure that I could work with other parts of the sales engineering organization as well as expand my network.
Develop your brand
The last area of my plan was demonstrating that I can work with cross functional teams across the company (e.g. product marketing, product management, field marketing etc). I worked with my manager to review all my best practices that I have created during my initial year and we agreed on working with field marketing to scale a customer workshop I created (Getting Started with Qlik Sense) across the east coast. This helped me create and develop my own brand in the company to ensure that more than just my own team and manager felt I had earned the promotion.
Overall when thinking about your next promotion, start planning how you will help your manager see that you stand out against your peers. Also, define how you see success a year from now and commit to that plan throughout the year. What does your plan look like? Let me know.
