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Sales Engineers: An Untapped Opportunity For Insights Generation

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

shutterstock_703607812.jpgWhere do most of your deeper insights and marketing knowledge reside? Between the ears of your sales engineers. Unfortunately, both VP’s of this division and the engineers themselves feel they’re above the laws of “selling” to customers.

Sales engineers see themselves akin to ninjas, drop into an account for a few hours, razzle and dazzle the customer, and jettison out in rapid fashion. “I don’t own a quota or a customer” is the often heard line.

However, having this mindset is a massive opportunity lost because your sales engineers are your company’s thought leaders! 

According to Corporate Visions, 74% of buyers choose the sales rep that was first to add value and insight.

If the majority of deals are won based on who was first to deliver value and insights then why aren’t sales engineers used for this capacity?

You should get your experts executing insights campaigns for customers to prepare for 2018:

  • What are the landmines, challenges and risk factors for next year?
  • How can you think beyond Standard Operating Procedures, and think about emerging best practices?
  • What are trends that you haven’t even become abreast of yet?

Over the next 3-4 weeks, your customers will be winding down, and take their off time to read, learn and gather information for 2018. This will most likely happen on your downtime whether it’s sitting on the couch or travelling on a plane, it is the perfect time to begin the learning process:

1. Make a video of new ideas

There are dozens and dozens of report, eBooks and articles available today and consuming all this content can be quite time-consuming.

I personally love to take multiple curated articles and synthesize the information into a video on how to “learn in 60 seconds.” Your sales engineers can humanize themselves as the rockstars of emerging best practices.

2. Develop a LinkedIn PointDrive with emerging best practices

If you want to go deeper, and provide richer insights, create a microsite of ideas. LinkedIn PointDrive will also make it easier on your sales team to “account segment” which customers are interested in which topics. We’ve seen customers organize their PointDrives to introduce “plays” and based on the customers engagement, the sales team knows where to double-down their conversations in 2018.

Get the customer aligning to your thinking. Don’t just have sales do this, drop your ninjas into the cerebral cortex of your customers!

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