It happens countless times in most pre-sales interviews that the candidates are grilled with questions ranging from sales acumen to technical ability to coach-ability and collaboration and left with just five or ten minutes at the end to have their turn at asking questions. The job market in the US has been competitive post 2020 pandemic therefore many folks who are eager to get jobs usually ask simple questions to their future employer mostly in order to appear less demanding. There is nothing wrong with that strategy. However, in the world of sales engineering, this might not be the best strategy if you want to join a company you would be passionate to go sell on behalf of. Also, there is a shortage of experienced pre-sales engineers (referred to as SEs from now) and the job is growing higher than average according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This translates to one thing - if you are interviewing for an SE job, don’t be shy to interview your interviewer.

Since summer of 2018 when I left AppDynamics which was my first SE job, I have interviewed with at least 10 companies resulting in many offers until I landed a role at my current employer a year and a half ago. During this time, I found that it was tough to understand how to pick the best role for you unless you got answers to certain questions. There is no magic rule here but I built a series of questions to ask to determine what challenges a new SE at the company would be facing and whether that role would be for me.

Before I list out my questions to ask, I must put a disclaimer that this list is based on what matters to me and the fact that I have had the luxury to ask questions to most employers I have had the chance to interview with. This is not always the case, so I encourage you to make your own list of things that matter to you, but do not hesitate to ask for additional time if you need your questions answered. Sometimes, it is even better to ask some of these questions until after you have been offered a role and you are yet to accept.

Most SE job interviews will have you speak to various folks ranging from the sales team (regional directors or account executives you’d work with) to presales leadership team (SE Manager, Director or VP of Presales) and your technical peers (current SEs and/or product management). Sales Engineers are evaluated on three primary skills when it comes down to making the hiring decision:

1. Do you have the technical ability to be able to carry presales motions for the product (demos, POCs)?

2. Do you have the sales acumen to handle customer questions and earn their trust?

3. Are you coachable and willing to work together on a team?
   

Now, let’s turn the tables a little. What do YOU as an SE need from your employer to be successful? Here’s my list:

1. What is the sales process at the employer’s org and is the product selling?

2. Is the product actually any good and will I be given any training/enablement on it?

3. How would I be measured as an SE?

I use the above list to make sure I ask the questions I need to ask to the relevant interviewers in order to make the best decision. I direct the sales questions to Account Executives and their managers, the product questions to peers/ current SEs and product managers and the SE measurement questions to my hiring manager and their boss. Here is my list that you can use:

Sales

• How do you measure ROI today?

• Can you explain your current deal cycle and sales process?

• What do you find as the hardest part of the product to sell? What is the easiest?

• How are accounts broken down in this org (commercial vs enterprise)?

• What are your expectations from your SE?

• What should the ideal Account Executive (AE) and SE relationship look like?

• Do you need help with product enablement from your SE?

• What do meetings with C-level folks in your accounts look like?

• How are you PGing into accounts? How far are you from goal vs your achieved quota?

• What do you foresee as the biggest challenge to sell in <your region>?

• How can an SE make it at <company name> in <region>? 

• How do you recommend an SE make their biggest impact in the first 90 days

Product and Enablement

• Can you explain your current on-boarding and training process for SEs?

• What previous technical experience would directly help with on-boarding with this product?

• What is the hardest technical portion to convince customers?

• How is bug reporting handled? What is the turnaround time for bugs?

• How does the post sales handoff take place and what is an SEs involvement? 

• How satisfied are you with the product documentation?

• Who measures and prepares ROI/ BVA (business value assessment) ?

• Who delivers the final POC presentation for an enterprise deal?

• What is the most challenging technical hurdle you foresee in selling this product today?

• What would your advice be to me to best get on-boarded with the product?

SE Measurement and Career Growth

• What would my first 30/60/90 days look like?

• How long did it take <your peers>  to close their first deal?

• What does the partnership between your SEs and AEs (account executive) look like?

• What is an SEs perception in the company?

• How are conflicts between AEs and SEs resolved?

• How is an SE measured, what are the KPIs (key performance indicators) you are tracking today?

• What’s not working today? What do you foresee as the biggest risk to the business?

• What is the average time taken to complete a POC?

• Which portion of the deal takes most time from an SE perspective during the deal process? 

As you can see, the above list is very exhaustive. By no means have I asked each and every question on this list, but I have certainly asked at least a couple from each section. In my personal experience, it is best to ask these questions after you have established evidence that the employer is interested in you. When you do your due diligence and ask the right questions, it does not come across as demanding, rather the interviewer will understand you are a top SE and have been in the industry long enough to know what you want. If anything, these questions will put you ahead of your competition. 

There are some startups and mid-sized companies that may ask you to talk to the founder or CEO. I have had two such interactions and I can tell you it is best if you do your research before and write down your questions in advance. Some good ones to ask are:

• What do you see as the biggest risk to success/ your business / market fit you see today?

• Where do you think the SE org in your company ranks today?

• What do you think might be the biggest obstacles to a path to an IPO?

In conclusion, I hope the next time you are indecisive or unsure about which employer to pick, take a look at the answers you received to some of these questions and I hope that it will make your SE career journey a little better. Good luck interviewing!

Author Bio: Akshat Srivastava is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) working for the enterprise pre-sales team based in New York City. Prior to AWS, Akshat has worked as a sales engineer and solutions engineer at AppDynamics, Cisco and mParticle. Akshat started his career as a Java developer at Vision Service Plan and worked as a senior developer at IBM. Later, he worked as an IT consultant in New York City before transitioning into sales. In July, 2018 Akshat realized the need for a dedicated community for pre-sales individuals and founded Sales Engineers of New York (SENY) which has become the largest SE network in the east coast today.