As a degreed design engineer with 20+ years of sales/marketing experience, this article is right on track. One of my good friends is a Dean of the Graduate School at a major university, and he constantly discusses the challenges that engineers (who are the largest number of MBA applicants) face when trying to understand principles/concepts that don’t have direct correlation to an ROI (let’s say “marketing”). I’ve been in the high tech sales industry in the CAD/CAM/CAE markets, and while it helps to understand the “features” of a product, selling is not about those features…it is about following a process, understanding psychology and business, and demonstrating to the potential customer how this product will help their business. Salespeople need to understand how to ask the “business” questions – not discuss features. That’s what the engineers or pre-sales technical staff can help show.

Unfortunately, many software companies have run through reps who are tired of dealing with the pessimistic attitudes towards them, when product creators/developers all seem to believe that given the right features, the product should sell itself lol. I have seen very good sales executives leave high tech for no other reason than they are tired of dealing with the mindset. Too bad we don’t have more articles like this to help owners in the high tech industry.

There are no absolutes in sales–it’s all about effectiveness. I’ve seen weak technical people (what we call “relationship reps”) succeed with technical products. Remember, PEOPLE buy products from PEOPLE. I’ve also seen highly technical folks with few sales skills also succeed. More often than not, though, both of these scenarios lead to failure. What is best for selling technical product, imo, is good sales skills with enough technical knowledge to be conversant with the customer about your particular product. And yes, I would be concerned about a rep that are afraid to talk on the phone because of their own lack of technical competence. Unless, they were effective in spite of it. In some cases, a product category is just so complex that you need really highly technical people selling it. But in most cases, if you hire smart people you should be able to train a rep so that he/she is competent on your PRODUCT, even though they couldn’t step on the other side and do the customers job. Have you given them adequate product training?

My question, though, in looking at the two extremes, is that wouldn’t you want to have someone more technical trying to sell a product like this? It would seem that in order to effectively communicate, the person would need to be very technically oriented. As it is now, the person I have just sends E-mails because they are afraid to talk on the phone due to their lack product knowledge. Is this an acceptable situation? What else does a salesperson bring to the table besides this skill? Note that all of our leads come through product downloads via the web-site and PPC advertising, so they aren’t dong anything to acquire new leads.

You nailed this one on the head. Sales people and engineers are definitely cut from different fabric and the ability to ask questions and communicate is essential to building a functional team that can make and SELL a product or service. Developing a sales process that engineers can understand and that sales people can execute is a challenge that many companies don’t do a great job with. I highly recommend that engineers read “Customer Centric Selling” before they set about hiring a sales team. This book does a great job of demystifying the science of selling in terms that engineers can embrace. For developing or improving the effectiveness of a sales organization, I would suggest that companies should contact John Flannery of http://www.Drive-Revenue.com. I’ve seen John help many companies improve their sales function.