Becoming a sales-engineer
The story of an engineer-turned-EM-turned-solution-architect
The technical sales profession always fascinated me. I was told that to be a good CEO (as I plan to, someday), you have to pass through sales.
As this is a bit far from me right now, I decided to collaborate with Guy Menahem, a good friend of mine, and a solution architect in Komodor. Guy was my manager 5 years ago, when I was a team leader, and since then we stayed friends.
The goal of the article is to open your mind a bit.
Everyone talks about the EM vs IC career path (and a PM), but there are other options for great engineers!
We are going to cover:
How did an engineer end up in sales
Why you shouldn’t be afraid of losing your technical skills
The reality of the job - what do they do?
How would YOU know if this role will fit you?
The article is a joint effort, but is written in a first-person perspective for an easier read :)
How the hell did I get to sales
Starting as a developer
I started my career in 2011, my first job being a ‘mainframe’ developer (yes, those still exist!). It was an interesting role, focused on creating and operating large-scale complex systems.
Moving to management
After a few years, I decided that I wanted to step into a management role. It wasn’t an easy decision as being on the technical side was my comfort zone. For the next 4 years, I led a software team, and later on a software group.
Back to development!
4 years ago, I decided I wanted to go back to being hands-on, and I joined a small company as one of the first developers. After a year of hard work, the company was acquired! I stayed for a few months, and then took my biggest career decision so far.
Moving on to TECHNICAL sales
This was a huge change for me. As a manager, you do have some business connection, but being in sales is on a completely different scale. I never before had to convince someone to pay money out of their pocket, and not small sums! I’m working on 5-6 figure US$ deals, under a lot of pressure - if you don’t sell, you might lose your job.
Why I wasn’t afraid of ‘losing’ my technical skills
My coding skills are not as sharp, as I code less in the day-to-day - but when I need them, they’re good enough (and I need them now and then!)
It’s very similar to the engineer vs manager dillema, how to stay technical when you become a manager ( covered it nicely in this article!). Being technical is not about coding 100% of your time. It’s not like I’m selling cookies - I work at a company with the motto ‘Kubernetes for Humans’, you can’t avoid being technical at such a place.
To properly do my job, I have to deeply understand the technical aspects of our product, and the customer’s systems. I’m selling to software engineers, they need to see the value in our product. Demonstrating it, according to their needs - is SUPER technical.
What made me make that crazy decision?
3 main reasons:
Acquiring new skills always appealed to me. I like to take on new challenges and do something I’ve never done before. Joining a new company without any sales organization, and starting something from scratch - was an exciting opportunity.
I enjoy the fact that my career is shifting and changing all the time, who knows where it’ll take me.Being so far from the customers was hard, I’m a very communicative person and there was always something missing for me on the engineering side.
I have always been passionate about the platform engineering world, every job I had was somehow connected to it, so Komodor was a great fit.
The reality of the job
So what do I actually do?
My goal is to make sure our customers use Komodor (a tool that simplifies k8s for developers) in the best possible way, and achieve their goals with it.
This can be from the technical aspects - like planning and integrating it into existing tools they use, and from the non-technical side - such as training sessions / leading discussions around specific challenges.
My focus is on the larger accounts of Komodor - huge banks and Fortune 500 companies. The main goal is the renewal and expansion of the contracts - by actually solving problems for the customers.
Besides that, there is a lot of collaboration with the product teams to make sure we develop the best product possible for future customers, and that it fits their exact needs.
What do I enjoy about the role
Being close to customers and prospects. I’m learning about a different company and use case every day, which gives me a great understanding of the market.
There is an immediate value for the company in the work I do, much more so than as an engineer. The things I do for customers or prospects are to increase adoption or sell more, and you see the results immediately. When I do my job well, it means I solved a pain for our customers, and added revenue for the company.
I’m close to the product and marketing teams, as our work requires a lot of collaboration. This is very different from working alone on your tasks!
A word about the compensation
There is a huge variety across companies and roles. Sales roles get quotas and you get base salary + compensation based on the achievements of the quota.
For technical sales, usually, the base compensation is lower than for experienced developers, but if you reach (and surpass) your quotas it can be VERY lucrative!
The tough part
The number of context switches. Because this role involves various departments within the company, and customers, your main tasks might be completely unrelated to one another.
For me, it’s difficult but enjoyable, but it doesn’t fit everyone.
So how would YOU know if this role will fit you?
You should consider it if:
You ARE passionate about the technical side but you feel like you miss customers communication.
You want to be closer to the business side of the company and collaborate with different functions.
You care less about building the product and more about people using it, liking it, and buying it.
You understand that being an Engineering Manager / Staff engineer is not all you want from your career path.
It’s important to note that there is a huge variety of technical sales roles - pre-sale, post-sale, technical CS, technical account manager, and so on.
If selling to people is not for you, some of the other ones might still be a fit.
Why there are so many different sales roles?
Because each company is doing whatever works for them :)
In general, sales engineers are responsible for the implementation of the product during the POC/post-sales stages.
Solution architects on the other hand are responsible for designing the solution for the customer challenges, using the company’s product. It includes collecting and analyzing the challenges, building the technical solution for it, designing it in depth with the customer, and being responsible for the delivery of the solution.
Every company designs its Solution Architect organization in different ways, to optimize delivery and quality for their customers/prospects. In some companies, there are no sales engineers at all, while in others a team can be 1 architect and 2-4 sales engineers.
Final words
A few weeks ago, I launched (together with my partner Udi) a community called the Platformers.
It’s a community for engineers who care about creating amazing platforms inside their own organization. We share a lot of content and ideas about how to make the platform a key part of large R&D organizations.
Advice from Anton: if you are a platform engineer, go visit their site! Not sponsored :)
Anton here! I hope you enjoyed Guy’s story.
If your company has a technical product (aimed at engineers), you may have an easy path to a sales job. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I think that experience can be SUPER valuable for many people, and I hope to try it out someday.
And if you are interested to read more about sales, I highly recommend to check out
. The last article ‘The 71/29 Rule’ was great!What I enjoyed reading this week
How To Prepare For Leave Without Over-Burdening Your Team in
How to pick technologies for your next project in
Influential People Don’t Network, They Build Social Capital in
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Great stuff guys! There are so many possibilities inside Sales as a
Software Engineer.
I never worked in sales, but as an occasional freelancer and software consultant I had to convince my clients that they need what I’m about to build and that the money they pay for it is a good deal.
If an engineer wants to get into sales, I believe finding a freelancing client could be the perfect first task to tackle.
Thanks for the mention, Anton! 🤝
I have never been a good person for sales. I respect those who do it but it's a more outgoing personality than I'm comfortable with.