A colleague of mine likes to tell a story about an SE and sales rep who had finished an hour long pitch. The sales rep talked for 10 minutes about the company and its financials, and the SE spent the rest of the hour running through a demo.

At the end of the demo, the key decision maker said, “Ok, now I have a few questions for you…” And looking at the sales rep said, “…and you can leave now!”.

The SE is the “credibility side of the sale”. In many cases, it is the SE who customers really want to talk to. That credibility is a powerful weapon for the SE to leverage.

The SE can leverage their credibility to better understand the true qualification of the opportunity. Early in Sandler’s sales methodology book he says, “Customers lie”. True, but they tend to lie more to sales reps than SEs. What the sales rep hears from their business constituents will be very different than what the SE hears from their technical constituents.

The SE can leverage their technical credibility to get closer to the truth. In doing so, the sales team can compare notes on the stories they hear, identify discrepancies, and act to resolve them.

Expanding on this example, the SE has a strategic role to play in the entire sales cycle — Qualification, development, and closure. A strategic SE owns all aspects of achieving the solution decision, what we call Solution Closure. The empowered SE project manages Solution Closure, owns their schedule, and has an equal say with the sales rep in the account strategy.

As a result, the empowered SE decreases their time to solution closure and helps grow deals having a direct impact on the bottom line. The case study on the web site provides a living example of the significant impact an SE can have on the business.

Good SElling!