Consider a scenario: your AE calls you excitedly and says Prospect A is qualified and ready to talk further about your solution. Maybe you’ve chatted in passing about the prospect, or maybe you’ve seen the prospect’s name in a CRM report. But, up until now, your AE (and possibly a BDR/SDR before that) was prospecting and qualifying largely on their own. Now though, it’s “show time”. You prep with your AE, read up on their discovery notes (or maybe you participated in discovery alongside the AE), and present your solution – tailored to the prospect’s needs, of course. The prospect likes your presentation, so you move forward into a demo or POC, and parry  the inevitable technical questions and objections like a pro. You hear the second best sentence a SE can hear: “Wow, I get it. I understand how this can solve XYZ problem. I have no more questions.” (the best sentence, of course, is “we won the deal!”). You pat yourself on the back, and “pass the baton” to your AE to take the deal the rest of the way – a formal quote, negotiation, and finally closing. Or do you?

SEs typically disengage from an opportunity as it gets to later stages…

All sales cycles and sales processes are different, but for the purpose of this exercise, let’s consider a fairly typical 7-stage process, and separate it into three “super stages” as follows:

 Super Stage 1: Early Cycle

            Prospecting
Discovery & Qualification

Super Stage 2: Mid Cycle

            Solution Presentation
Demo/POC
Objection Handling

Super Stage 3: Late Cycle

            Proposal Evaluation
Contracting & Closing

Most SEs are lightly involved in “Early Cycle”, do the bulk of the work in “Mid Cycle”, and rapidly fade  out once the opportunity reaches “Late Cycle”. The scenario from the beginning of this post matches this flow. Graphically, the level of involvement from both the AE and SE, plotted over the lifecycle of an opportunity, typically looks something like this:

Once the solution has been presented and all objections handled, it’s easy for the SE to pat themself on the back, celebrate the “technical win”, and leave the negotiation and closing to their AE. It’s easy to understand why this might happen – we as SEs are responsible for the “technical win”, after all – but it’s actual wins, not technical wins, that retire quota and make it onto the commission report.

 …But, it’s at these later stages where there is the most to lose.

Our AEs are great at what they do, but anything can happen late in the sales cycle – competitors slinging mud, dropping their price, or both; blockers materializing inside the organization; unexpected steps in the approval chain, and any number of other unforeseen obstacles. And, this late in the sales cycle, the margin for error is at it’s smallest. Forecasts have been made, sales managers are counting on deals to close, not to mention the opportunity cost spent to get this far. So, why would the SE invest the majority of their time in mid-cycle, only to fade away later in the sales cycle and hope their AE can close the deal by themselves?

Late in the sales cycle, AEs are maxed out and could use a hand…

Towards the end of the sales cycle, the AE is likely juggling legal teams, procurement teams, sales managers demanding updates, and more – it’s no wonder they often don’t have time, or forget, to stay top of mind with the actual decision maker. The SE, on the other hand, is only minimally involved with these last hurdles. While the AE is stuck navigating the mechanics of getting the deal to the finish line, the SE can step in to continue delivering value to the prospect. Remember, it’s the actual win – not the technical win – that counts, so why not pinch hit for the AE if it helps deal across the finish line? This often doesn’t come naturally, because this behavior is more closely related to “sales” than to “engineer”. The tendency to look instead towards a sales manager is dangerous – these individuals often know little about the customer, and can’t add much more than standard pre-canned actions at this stage.  

…And who better to lend that hand than the SE?

Unlike a sales manager, the SE has been involved in the opportunity almost as long as the AE – they know the people involved in the deal, the business and technical requirements, and the motivations and buying criteria of the prospect. This makes the SE much better suited to step in and help close the deal. Not to mention, the SE is a “known entity” to the prospect, and has hopefully gained their trust (or at least their attention), which is not the case for a sales manager coming in relatively cold.

So what can the SE do?

What exactly the SE can do depends on what their solution is and who they sell it to, but some general topics include:

·       Staying top of mind by reaching out with case studies, notable product updates, or industry news that could spark a conversation with the prospect.

·       For technical buyers, facilitate a technical reference call – it’s likely that the rolodex of reference customers the AE keeps are more business-minded, while the SE keeps more technical relationships. Depending on the buyer persona, a technical reference introduction may be more beneficial.

·       Introducing product and other leaders from the SE’s organization to the prospect to explain the product/solution roadmap, to give the prospect confidence that your solution will continuously improve.

·       Having conversations with people other than the primary decision maker (often technical influencers) to build wider consensus within the prospect organization to help create a “groundswell” of organic support for the solution being proposed.

·       Laying a foundation for a smooth onboarding and implementation by engaging appropriate teams both within the SE’s organization and the prospect.

Anything that gives you a reason to talk to the prospect (as long as you have something of value to say or share), or gives them a reason to think about your solution, is fair game.

 In Summary

The SE should always be a partner to the AE, but this partnership is most critical (and most often neglected) later in the sales cycle, when it matters most. SEs can step in to help fend off competitive sabotage, keep prospect interest, and keep the ship pointed towards the ultimate goal of a closed sale – while the AE works “below deck” getting all the machinery and paperwork in place. Because, at the end of the day, a technical win without an actual win isn’t much of a win at all.

Author Bio: Alex Boccio is a Director of Solutions Architecture at eSentire, where he leads a team of SAs focused on helping customers discover and address gaps in their cybersecurity controls & architecture. He has worked as an individually contributing SE and SE/SA leader in firms focused on cybersecurity, systems and network infrastructure, and collaboration. Alex in based in NYC, but dreams of some day roaming, living and working out of van, if he can convince his bosses to let him work off a cellular connection!