A few of my customers and my brother-in-law have reached out to me about wanting to make a career change into sales engineering and asked me for recommendations on how to get started.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a quick way to get-up-to speed as the role involve both a technical and sales acumen.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I transitioned into sales engineering by becoming an expert with a specific software platform and presenting at user forums.  However, I have been collecting a list of resources to help anyone that might be interested in making the transition but doesn’t have an expertise in a specific technology domain.

Sales Engineering 101

• Reading: Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer’s Handbook

• Reading: Great Demo!: How to Create And Execute Stunning Software Demonstrations

• Reading: Demonstrating to Win!: The Indispensable Guide for Demonstrating Complex Products

• Course: Technical Sales: The Role of the Sales Engineer

• Blog: We The Sales Engineers

• Blog: samuelpena (yes my blog! I plan to continue to provide my insights)

• Podcast: We The Sales Engineers

• Meetup: Sales Engineers of New York

Sales Methodology 

• Reading: The Challenger Sales

• Reading: Customer Centric Selling

Client Facing 

• Reading: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• Reading: How to win friends and influence people

Technology Knowledge

• Reading: The Phoenix Project - Great introductory book on DevOps

• Reading: The Unicorn Project - Great sequel to DevOps

• Course: Cloud Computing: The Big Picture - Great introduction to cloud computing

• Course: Machine Learning: Executive Briefing

• Course: Cyber Security: Executive Briefing

• Course: State of Blockchain: Executive Briefing

• Blog: Web Development Free Resources

• Podcast: IT Visionaries - Great resource for actionable insights, lessons learned and exclusive interviews with trailblazing IT leaders.

I hope these resources helps!  Let me know if I missed any and I’ll make sure to add them to the list.