Those of you who use an SFA/CRM product like Siebel or Saleforce.com may have noticed something. Actually, you may not have noticed something. SFA products completely ignore the SE’s perspective on deals.

Referencing the formal pre-sales workflow analysis we did years ago, it turns out there are exactly four fields of SE specific information that is captured by an SFA product. (I’ll send a copy of “Sun Tzu Art of War / Art of Sales” to the first person who can tell me what the four fields are.)

SFA products, by and large, are glorified sales rep oriented contact management systems. They usually also include some opportunity management and capture next steps — for the sales rep. Surprisingly, SFA products are passive data collectors — they do not analyze data to proactively suggest how to grow deals or close deals faster. Not for Sales Reps, and certainly not for SEs.

I like the cartoon at Sidney Harris Cartoon. A professor has complex formulas sprawled all over his blackboard, as another professor points to a step and says, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two”, the step says, “Then a miracle occurs”. That is how SFA products treat the SE’s mission to acquire the solution decision. It’s a ton of technically oriented work, work that every SFA and sales methodology takes for granted and ignores.

So what are SEs to do? What tools can SEs use to help grow deals and reduce the time it takes to acquire a solution decision? Most organizations, if they have any SE specific tools, roll their own. Some folks hack away at their SFA product — a square peg in a round hole. We’ve seen some good home-grown tools out there. Building your own is a lot of work to develop, maintain, and mature to where they complement the SFA product well, and SEs will use them. It’s not what SEs or Field Development get paid to do.

The SE community does not have a lot of options. Build or do nothing. We at salesengineering.com are the first to commercially introduce SE specific productivity products that complement SFA products — SE Applications: See for example SEplanit. We think it’s a step in the right direction.