How did I get a job in sales engineering?

I hope that by sharing my story on how I discovered sales engineering it will help you as you start exploring this new role.  I do want to highlight a few things that I believe helped me in being “discovered” as well as prepared me in this role.  The first experience that helped was my focus on a single product and the opportunity to own it and deploy it within Deutsche Bank.  This helped in understanding customer pain points (why the product could be a fit to other customers or “vision creation”), and building a depth of knowledge on how to use BI and data visualization products.  Leveraging this knowledge, I was able to push the product to do things there were outside of its core function and learn to think creatively on how to apply the product to a problem for a better solution.  These two experiences helped build my personal brand both within the Qlik community and through blog posts, speaking engagements and industry conferences.

So what is my advice for those that is interested in starting a career in sales engineering?  If you are currently using a vendor’s product, dedicate time in learning the product in extreme depth.  Check to see if the vendor has a certification program and if so, get certified in it.  Anything that helps demonstrate that you have a deep understanding on the product.  As a sales engineering manager, this is appealing as it eliminates part of your ramp up which translates into helping drive deals sooner.  The second piece of is be an active member in the vendor’s community.  In other words, if the vendor has a user conference, meet up, etc., ask if you can participate in some way at one of these events.  The importance of this is because as a sales engineer part of the role is doing presentations, live demos, tech talks or webinars in front of customers and prospects.  Getting comfortable with speaking in public about these products is paramount.  Trust me, I know that public speaking can be scary however the more practice the better.  Below is my first presentation I ever did in-front of a handful of Qlik partners (while working at Deutsche Bank).  This experience was hard but so so important to help differentiate me in the market and build my profile as someone a company would want on their sales engineering team.  

Please let me know what you think?  What are some of your advice for new candidates?  What type of questions do you want me to answer when it comes to landing a sales engineering job?