Director of Sales Engineers: Roles, Challenges, Leadership & Strategy

[00:00:00]so you got the job and now you're a sales engineer congratulations now that you're in the inside you have a new set of challenges coming your way from hitting individual to team goals and making sure you're growing in your role and to top it off you'll have a direct manager that will be assessing your journey and progress what about your manager's manager the director level what do they think about what do they care about what are they assessing well in this episode I get to speak with Lee Johnson sales engineering leader and chairman of diversity Equity equality and inclusion for the pre-sales collective and organizational Network that helps aspiring newly made and seasoned pre-sales professionals to grow in their careers and we get to talk about the day in the life of a director of sales engineers and how you can be successful the Tony Mosey podcast hey Lee you know thank you so much for coming on the show so the question I like to ask is you know could you talk about your journey into pre-sales like how did it start you know what were the series of events that you know LED you there and like did you think you would be in this specific role like what was the inspiration that said heck let's get into pre-sales well it wasn't a situational incident where you know it wasn't that I had a chartered path that was going to bring me here into pre-sales right it was more of a situation where I had applied for a role that was asking for a solution architect in an area where I had expertise so a little bit of background about me up until that point I had spent the last 15 years of my career implementing sap Solutions all around the world so you know for I would say probably 10 years the first 10 years of my career I had implemented sap uh all around the United States and then probably I think it was 20 2008 no probably 2009 2010 I I got an opportunity to travel to South Africa and Implement sap and I was there for about two and a half years I met my wife there got married there but then we left there and we went to Singapore we spent more time in Singapore eventually when I left Singapore I came to the United States and I was in Seattle Washington helping Costco to implement their sap solution and spending time between there in Europe so I had a lot of expertise in this area called sap and there was a job role that had said hey I'm looking for a solution architect who has strong sap technical skills and I applied for that position lo and behold that position turned out to be a solution uh pre-sales position didn't know what the term was but eventually I came to know what the term was and ever since then up until now and I've been you know just working in in pre-sales trying to find out everything that I could find about it and and that's my journey to this point and I heard you say sap I mean I heard that's like a behemoth type of system I mean like could you like tell you know what what is sap and why is that maybe important today well sap is important because I I think they say uh about 80 of the world's transactions go through an 80 of the world's business transactions go through an sap solution so many of the largest multinationals have implemented sap to run their business now what's different about sap is it's most critical to that organization as a whole when sap is down the application and the business is also down so it's very critical that the sap solution is not only online but also that it is performant to meet all of those transactions that are occurring through it right so that's what sap is it's an Enterprise resource planning application or Erp for short and I've been doing that ever since 2000.

[00:04:21]and so how long from when you first got into this you know pre-sales position you know and and until you got into management like you know how many years was that until you got into management well um I would say I I became a manager at um at the company um probably after my third year could have been my fourth year but it was my third or fourth year where I was promoted from an individual contributor uh into a management role awesome uh and of course I want to talk about that later too to let people understand the difference between the two but you know from here on out now you get into this management role like what got you into management like what was the inspiration the activities at work etc well I had always been in management roles but sometimes when you make a lateral move you have to make a lateral move where uh you're no longer in management you're in an individual contributor role as you learn that company as you learn that business so when I left Accenture right I was a senior manager and one of my projects I was response for managers in a team of 160 people uh another project that I was on I was responsible for managing 30 people so I had already been in management is just that during this particular time it was a role that I wasn't necessarily familiar with I took an individual contributor role so that I can learn the business without the responsibility of managing a team right in order to to to learn the business the director role manager role or anything below perhaps Executives considered middle management is that like the correct term yeah I would say up to director then you go into Executives with the vice president level so you could probably say you know from manager up to director senior director is going to be middle management vice presidency vice presidents Executive Vice Presidents those are going to be the executive tier okay but you know that it's probably going to be different depending upon who it is that you're having a conversation with right everyone would probably have a different conversation based upon that organization there's no hard and fast rules per se as to what do people consider Executives versus management right so there's like no like yeah harder fast discreet like areas but like what about this whole idea between you know individual contributor versus manager like you know like what's the difference between those and is that still like a general like term like you know how do you look at both those those are rules for me an individual contributor is basically responsible for them and themselves alone whereas the manager is responsible for the team right so as a manager what you have to do is you have to get a group of individuals right to basically sometimes put down their own personal Ambitions for those Ambitions of the team right so what you need when it comes to being a manager is the manager needs everyone who's on the boat rowing in the direction at the same time so if you've ever seen a crew Event right you see that when the ore comes out of the water it typically goes back in in a certain Cadence that's what you're trying to get as a manager is you're trying to get all the individual players all on the team rolling in the same direction at the same time with the certain frequency that's the real difference whereas that individual he's just rowing he's just doing his one job yeah right and if he does his job and everyone else on the team is doing their job right you can have you can be in competition to win I love it when uh uh I I I I don't know if it was a Tom Brady which you could have an appreciation for or if it was just the Patriots but uh in their football life one of the things that they had as they were running out of the tunnel is a poster that was on the wall that just said just do your job right so the individual components they're just worried about doing their job and the manager is at a another level that maybe a thousand foot level looking at the individual players understanding how does that collectively come together so that we can meet the overall business unit or business objective yeah okay so you know you use the analogy of rowing a boat but you know I'm I'm thinking about the day-to-day you know uh if we're just looking just you know within the you know director versus executive versus first line manager is that what you would say like the person who gets out of the individual contributor role and gets into their very first management job is that considered first line management yeah that's going to be a first line manager where they are responsible for the individuals who are doing the in work that probably directly touches the cusp customer right so when I think about management I think about it as an operational tactical and strategic types of levels right so if you were to say that the executives they're dealing with things that are strategic for the business right that middle management they're doing things that are more tactical maybe at even a business unit level right whereas the line managers they're responsible for the operational and they're looking at their resources to make sure that they have enough and that they have enough so that they can meet whatever they business goals and objectives are set for that Department per se or that team per se so these are the differences between the director versus executive versus first line manager um now if we're looking exclusively just at the directors like what do you and your peers you know your director peers you know that level what are you you guys care about well the the the thing that you care about is meeting the objectives for the Department per se for instance in pre-sales if Dakota is let's say 150 million dollars right the the leaders of that department are responsible for ensuring that we have a clear path in order to achieve that quota okay now everyone else is going to every individual on the team is going to have their own um Gaff report right goals achievement form but those individual gaffs should lead up into everyone hitting that overall Department to a number when it comes to a team you don't win as an individual right so just if that account executive who's aligned with an sc if they are able to hit their number right and be successful but the other portions of the team are not hitting their number and unsuccessful did you win them did you lose right at the individual level they would say yes we won we hit quota we we got our accelerators and our modifiers but when you look at it as a business level right you actually lost because the the business unit didn't hit its objectives okay um and and you know for those people who are you know perhaps considering you know uh leveling up or just you know I mean obviously there's the individual contributor there's the you know management role but even there you know within the individual contributor you could level up into there you know versus in likewise with management um how do you know you know how does one know if you know being an ice you know individual contributor versus a manager is a good fit for them well they they will take on certain roles and responsibilities within side of the team to see if management is for them I would say one of the reasons a lot of individual contributors are promoted into management roles just because they were good as an IC I would say it's a totally different role that you're playing when you are a manager than when you are a very good IC and I think that that is a deficit that we don't account for enough as people are being promoted into management you got a whole different skill set in the fact that as an IC I have my objectives and my goals which I have set with my manager I only need to look out for that one individual hit in his or her goals right whereas a manager you have five resources 10 resources 50 resources right and you're trying to ensure that the goals that the individuals have set up for themselves are going to be in alignment with what the overall Department goals are so for instance you can't have someone on a tangent right otherwise back to the crew analogy that one person who's off by that split nanosecond or millisecond is going to draw off the whole team and the objective is not going to be met so how do you as a manager have these conversations I would say the biggest challenge as a as uh operational manager is being in the position where you can find what motivates that individual to bring them their best self to work right because if you have a highly motivated team player that team player is probably going to be more performant because they're happy about work they're excited about work etc I have you know those are the things that are differences between being a manager versus being an individual contributor and so you know they have the different levels within the individual contributor and you start off maybe as an associate then the standard SC level than the senior then the advisory then principal and obviously it could all vary between organizations you could be considered a lead or a lead principal or whatever uh different facets or names they come up with uh but they say that I've heard that the difference between an IC individual contributor and a manager is that one manages people the other one manages the product is that true is that how you would say you know if you go and search on Amazon you'll find that there are there are more titles under leadership I think you know there's always a constant battle with leadership titles versus cooking right there's always different titles that are there that will tell you well this is what a leader should do a management course that I took foundations of leadership basically says that um machines need to be managed people need to be led right machines need to be managed and people need to be led right and my wife and I as we were exercising yesterday we had a little debate about a boss versus a leader and the bosses as she sees it someone who is is just laying down the rules of this is how it's supposed to work etc and my definition of a leader is you know you're leading people is when you look back and you see people following that's my unofficial definition for what a leader is and you can be a servant leader you can be any kind of leader but my definition of a leader is when you look backwards you have people who are following you and they don't have to be right no one has put a gun to their head and said you must follow Lee or or or or or you know it's going to turn out really bad for you I don't think that that's leadership that's more of a autocratic or you know type of leader and and I I've worked with professionals and in doing so and working with professionals I believe that the professionals can figure it out but they do have to understand that we're trying to achieve this overall larger objective right and they need to make sure that their personal objectives are aligned with that larger objective at the same time yeah I mean you know after serving in you know in the Army you got to see the examples of leadership whether you know leadership or just managers or bosses if you want to say uh good and bad ones of course uh I you know I got to see that even just like starting off my Army time uh and I wanted to ask you that question I think you answered some of it you know I guess to ask even your in your experiences throughout any of the SE careers throughout any of your endeavors like you know just looking at your superiors like you know over time bosses managers above you what would you say are the qualities of a good leader or a bad viewer a bad leader like is there a difference like what like what would you say about them well the thing is my management style has always been I would want to I lead as I would want to be have as I have wanted to be led before right and you know there's one manager who comes to mind that was very he was he led by example right and he would always say the right things and do the right things at the right times Etc to almost to the point where you know the Mantra that I took on is one I didn't want to let him down but two I learned a lot by following in his footsteps how he conducted himself how he carried himself how he dressed his his Persona when he was in the meeting and having a negotiation all of those things were character traits that I picked up on in those character traits or things that are still with me today as I continue to lead you yeah yeah so you know I had a side thought again on this one too like my time when I worked and uh you know when I worked in Psychology and then even all the way to this time I noticed that I've had a first line manager if not several of them and then I'd have our director and something about these directors even a captain in the Army who's supposed to be in a sense of director level for the company uh I noticed how they would say the quote um they kept their ear to the streets I guess I could try to like talk about a little bit better but like meaning like they were really like glued they they knew the pulse they felt the pulse of their subordinates like they were they knew the names they knew exactly where they were from I'm like wow these are directors levels a couple steps above me and they have taken their the the humility to want to learn who they're working with I don't know in my experiences I've seen director levers though I know they're a couple levels above still being able to have you know you know still having that tactical grasp that day-to-day grasp as a lower member um and I I kind of think that's pretty cool so I don't know I guess that was just a side thought but there's some peace to it like if you were I was in the military I was in the Army as well and if you think about it um uh a lieutenant first lieutenant second Lieutenant they're going to be at the squat level right and then they report into a captain who's going to be at the company level right you typically have to go to um Lieutenant Colonel or major and they would be responsible for the for the Brigade right and the Brigade would feed into something else when you think about line management is pretty much the the same but the grand compromise that I believe that managers have to do is they remember a lot of managers were promoted because they were very good eye seeds right but when you get promoted into management the skill set that you need in order to be a better manager is probably I would say 99 not what it was the skill set that made you a good individual contributor right you got to be a good listener because you have to hear people right as an individual contribute you only need to motivate yourself as a leader or manager you need to manage and motivate others and get others to buy in and how how are you going to do that in the military just because I'm a captain and I give an order someone has to follow my order right but in the public sector if I tell someone to do it that person doesn't have to do it right they could resign or they can do it slow there's other things but literally in the military when you say when a when a a superior whether that's an NCO or Co right when they say do something it gets done right because there's just different dynamics that are uh available there that you have to appreciate just a little bit differently whether it's right or wrong right in this new age or where we are and the Dynamics of the cultures that we're working with the generational differences is you can't be autocratic in what you say to your resources you got to think about whether or not if they're happy here that's the real difference that I've seen in my 24-year career is that before it was a very hierarchical structure right where people dressed to come in to work a certain way Etc and nowadays if you were to go to the generation that's coming into America Who coming to work in America they're more about the gig economy they're they're not really as focused on their career now this you know you can't paint with a broad brush right but that's something that you have seen uh uh in in today's Talent resources as they're coming on board is that they value things differently than what were valued by previous generations before them okay um so la last you know last uh question for this segment of the show uh maybe we'll get through just maybe one out of him or or all of them but you were talking earlier about you know um ICS and managers and assessments and whatnot but let's look at just lower members you know uh individual contributors like how do lower members you know get assessed by managers and pre-sales well for for me right uh I'm all about okrs right objectives and key results and that's a conversation that we're having for my resources who reported into me we did that at a quarterly level right we would talk about what it is that was going to be done at an annual level we would dissect and break that down into quarters and we would set objectives and key results for each quarter right and then we would have one-on-ones discussions to just to check in to see how progress is happening but at the end of the recorder we would have a self-assessment as to well these are the objectives that you set for yourself did you hit the key results that we had said right because then that means that either if you didn't hit what you needed to hit you were going to bring some of those objectives into Q2 or the subsequent quarter and that would impact how you would manage right what you were going to do for the remnants of the prior quarter objectives plus what you had to set for yourself for uh the subsequent quarter because all of this leads into what you were looking to do at that annual level that makes sense to me right that makes sense to me but you know in the book measure What Matters by John doerr okrs is something that have been practiced at some of the leading companies so many of the fan companies they I think he pushed it out at Google as well as Facebook at the same time and of course you know those are the the biggest name companies that we have today so it works for me it's a way that I would like to be managed I see a lot of times people get this anxiety towards the end of the quarter or well end of the year when they have to have their performance review I believe that's nonsense right those are conversations that should have been had throughout the year right and also documented throughout the year such that when the end of the year comes everybody is already aligned to what it is that they were expecting to see it's a technical win so this is like a new thing people always wanted to know how to you know brand new or just individual contributing uh or just say yeah Essie's get assessed uh there's this thing called technical win like what is it like what are the items on that list as examples that you look at you know from your perspective from from a managerial perspective and is that part of an okr or separate no the technical win is not going to be a a part of the okr I would say that the technical win is more going to be something that's a part of the job role if you wanted to set an okr you would say how many technical wins would you would you like to have achieved in a quarter that would be an objective and then you you must Define what the what the key result of that is going to be you see what I'm saying Okay and like what what like what is a technical win what would Define that as one well the technical win is when your customer tells you that your your solution is technically Superior to any other vendor that they have seen right and there's things that you can do with that and there's things that you can't do with that for instance if your customer tells you that yes you have a technical win right so you're you're Your solution is superior to any of the other ones that they have seen right that's going to give your account executive an opportunity to um to um to to know what levers that they are going to pull in order to get the contract signed right if you have the technically Superior Solution right this they they should want that right so they should want to pay a premium for it if it matches the uh the requirements for their business however if you do not have the technical win right there's still an opportunity for the account team to go in with different incentives to help that customer to sign right they might have to do discounting and other bits and pieces they might have to throw in uh some additional services or things of that sort in order to get its signed right because although the the the the SE has secured the technical win that doesn't mean that you have signed a contract right so you can't go you know dancing around that oh I have the technical win that doesn't mean Jack right you have to have a signed contract in order to be in order to say that you have Revenue that's going to be coming in right yeah okay uh and this is good because I'm I'm saying this in a way that you know people who don't know necessarily what a technical win is you know so I want them to know about that but like how about this like if the SE got a technical win that's good on their part all right like you can say okay this person got the technical win like like excluding it being closed I thought the difference between it being closed would be more for the AE the account executive and the technical win would be more for the SE if the SE got a technical win can he or she just get go you know walk away and be like look I I did I did my job I mean like would that be basically would that still allow them to be employed as technical wins as an IC right I would say yes they would in theory be able to walk away but in reality right having the technical win doesn't mean that you've secured the business right so this is a team sport so everyone would have to contribute until you get ink on paper once you have ink on paper right then you can say we have secured the business and everyone can go out and dance yeah so you know you segue into this idea you know about success success on the SC and the AE and also securing that deal you know uh a win for everyone a success for all how about this like I noticed in a lot of SE organizations like the level of enablement seems like a new thing you know where resources are limited and scarce or they don't have a system a standard or protocol for training essays of all levels you know I feel like I don't know why I mean I don't know priests how long pre-sales has really been like when was the Inception of pre-sales but like still we're still functioning in this day where there's really like you know resources are scarce and or limited there's no necessarily a system or standard or protocol for training for SE of all levels like why why is that well the thing about it is when you get onto calls different SE leaders are are struggling in certain instances to be able to justify their resources and the value that they're bringing to the business so there's two parts to that question as I hear it the first part to that question is um from a complexity perspective right the the complexity of the solutions are getting that much more sophisticated right before it was that you only had the known of peace and parcel of what that could that solution was going to be right but now today the complexity of the solutions in my opinion have increased drastically right so so the SE is under extreme pressure to constantly stay ahead of the curve as to what's happening with the product right because the product is evolving right so who's going whose responsibility is it to stay ahead of the product that's the se's job to stay ahead of the product and to answer those technically difficult questions so that the AE in my opinion can deal with uh closing out the business and and working with marketing Etc to ensure that there are leads coming into the funnel at the end of the day you this is a sales process and you have to look at the sales funnel and do qualifications and things of that sort to make sure that you know at the top of your funnel you're always going to have a hundred leads but those hundred leads are going to turn out to be maybe two three four contracts that are actually going to be signed so that's a lot of rejection that the account executive and the marketing team all of them have to deal with in order to be able to finally get that piece of paper done but remember all this is happening with inside of that 90-day window and that's where the stress comes into the entire process because you you have a quota that you need to meet otherwise there are consequences to that and that's one of the things that I like most about sales is and certain other verticals of the business right you may or you may not know but what is your impact to the business in cells every single quarter you're going to know how good you did and everyone else in the business will know how well you did or didn't do that's why I like about well that's what I like about sales the most is because I can quantitatively measure how well I did or did not do for the business so the perspective I had on this question too was you know my experiences working at a company you know of 600 employees but you know an SE team of I think maybe 20 to 40 versus a company that had a hundred thousand employees with an SE team of uh I could say a hundred you know and I just noticed a disparity between the two uh you know you had a small company of course and I could be answering the question myself but I noticed in my experience smaller company very limited scarce resources larger company a lot of resources and of course both companies have uh products that are constantly evolving you know the the previous technically I had was a very large portfolio of different products versus the more recent company I was in had a very large portfolio of products as well uh and I just found it very interesting uh especially talking with other se's that are uh working at a technical company that has the same makeup of SCS where the team is about anywhere between 20 to 50 and they're talking about how like you know we don't even have a set process for that let alone even managers guys who just got into you know ladies and gentlemen who just got out of a senior SE role and this is their very first management role and they're talking about how you know basically my manager just threw me a few documents and just said hey just like go have at it versus a formalized systematized way of training uh their SE and SC managers so that was where the the question was based from well the thing about it is a larger company has access to more Capital so that it can invest in doing singular track or singular Focus items whereas a smaller company a startup right is going to be scarce on resources because it's scare storm Capital so the difference that you have is that you're going to have to wear different hats at a smaller organization right as the SE you might be in in helping to write the sow you might be in there helping to write the MSA right you may be working with marketing and you may be working in product with more of a unstructured process right in order to get certain things done that's what happens at a smaller organization at a larger organization there are certain departments that are responsible for that function right the thing about it is that a small organization is agile and can move very quickly whereas with a much larger organization then you have all of these bits and pieces that you have to move and it takes more time so while people are listening well I heard you say MSA and sow uh what what could you tell them what that means oh statement of work is the sow right the MSA Master Services agreement is the larger contract that you have with your customer that basically calls out all of the t's and C's right now there are going to be certain bits and pieces of work that will be done underneath that MSA and each one of those would be a statement of work that has to be signed right so you in a smaller organization yes you're going to be responsible for working on those items whereas if you were an scse that's not really within your wheelhouse that's really the responsibility of the account executive to to to to to take care of that okay cool um so you know we're talking about you know just before segue into this idea too of uh you know essay I mean se's uh sales reps you know we were talking about pre-sale sales but now looking at the other department we got post sales as well and you know there's you know once a customer has purchased the product you know the deal has been closed and now it goes into customer success or post sales like how you know they talk about this term the handoffs like you know uh you know how you know I wanted to actually talk a little bit about like what the handoff is but like how well do you think the handoff is like what have you noticed between organizations like how well do you think the handoff is between pre and post sales like you know what do you think will ensure success and why is this important well I can tell you that the handoff is usually not going well and that's to the detriment of the customer right I'm a developer by training you know I I have a computer science degree and in my developer mind I think that the handoff between depart sales and customer success should operate at like an API right or a programming interface in the fact that I can call that API and I know exactly what I need to send it in order to get back a certain bit of piece of information from it what I have found the handoff between cells and and post sales or customer success is that that API isn't well defined between the two departments and everyone is clear as to well what is supposed to be handed over in order for that next Department to be successful right it's usually um well this is what I have and I'll give it to you right but that process isn't complete that there's no real feedback loop so that the process a business is a living into a a living structure that is moving and changing at all the time and even though you might have what you believe is a clear handoff document from sales to post sales it's going to iterate because the product is changing so that handoff is supposed to be a constant feedback loop between the Departments to say let's change this right so that I give you what it is that you need but in my experience it has always been you know although we're supposed to be working as a team we tend to work as silos and then it becomes US versus them type of scenario and that just doesn't that doesn't bode well for the business nor does it bold well for the customer and at the end of the day what matters the most is what's happening for the customer the customer is the Crown Jewel right in my opinion this is the way I look at business because from a sales perspective especially how I've been selling is I've been selling a subscription right since I've been in pre-sales right so with a subscription there's always going to be an opportunity to renew right and when I renew in three years I want that customer to have had a great experience such that when I come back to them in three years right they will be excited and motivated to sign again with me because one we we did everything that we said that we were going to do for them and they feel as though that they've been taken care of at the end of the day like customers are people and at the end of the day I believe that they just really want to be heard right and that someone is listening to them and if you can do that with a certain amount of respect right that customer should be willing to do more business with you in the future so yeah so having that communication between uh you know the customer and then of course internally I'm also thinking about uh pre-sales and post sales you know customer success and of course the sales Engineers uh do you think that the sales engineer should continue like have a close line of communication with post sales within the entire the entire life cycle of that customers um yes you know um experience yes yes yeah yeah remember the business is evolving there are people that are changing inside of it right that's where you really have someone who is acting as you know like a chief operations officer right because the chief operations officer is looking at the business and identifying inefficiencies within the business and trying to figure out well how can this process work much better right how can this process make much better how can we take cost out of running the business right and that cost that's being taken out of the business can be invested in another part of the business because we found deficiencies so now that we found deficiencies as a business we should be able to beat our competition because we're leaner we're meaner we're more agile right and that's when it you you go from being uh an individual contributor and thinking about well I just need to make sure that what I'm doing is done and you're putting on that hat and you're saying to yourself is what's being handed to me am I receiving it properly is everything that I need in order to do my job there so that I can take the Baton and run my run my Sprint right so you have to look to your right and ask that question but you can't just look at your right and ask that question you also have to look at your left and ask the question of am I handing off properly to the downstream business that's going to be accepting or receiving my my outputs right so you're having a conversation with the left side and you're having a conversation with the right side so that you know you want to make sure that that piece of the business you're not the CEO who's responsible for the entire business right I believe that you're responsible for your business right and you're someone's customer right so that owner needs to make sure that you're you're happy right as well as you have customers and you need to make sure that they're happy at the same time yeah and it's very difficult right when you're going from a startup and you know there's cmmi which helps you to understand the maturity levels of your business right and whether or not if you're operating mean and lean right so this cmmi level five that says that you have identified full processes you have communication Loops all of these things to get efficient when you get there you're in a constant uh position of continuous innovation where you're you're getting better and you're getting better and you're getting better A lot of Industry a lot of those Concepts have come from huge manufacturing organizations right have come from huge manufacturing organizations so that's just a little bit of it but at the end of the day this is a business right and we need to be in there so that we are doing our part to ensure that our business is growing because year over year every business that especially a publicly traded entity has to be in a position where it's growing it's awesome um so like Switching gears here you know uh I know the last question to ask is for people who have already been in they already get the whole idea you know primarily the reason for the show is obviously too and you know Inspire and inform and educate those who are considering the career who are aspirational or just starting their like first month first year in the role um what would you say are some certifications you know someone must have to be considered a worthy candidate in pre-sales or for those who are already in pre-sales and just trying to level up well I don't know if there is a certification right I don't have I don't have any certification with respect to being in sales of pre-sales right um as I mentioned earlier that how I got into sales and pre-sales was because I had developed a certain level of expertise around the whole sap ecosystem right and that's how I got into into sales right but you know I would say if you're going to move into pre-sales or sales it's best to you know get a mentor or someone who is doing the role and that person is going to be able to help you to understand what what does it take to come into this business like you know you've seen many different uh businesses right if I was to be working for sap and doing pre-sales is going to be totally different than if I was working for Siemens and doing pre-sales it's going to be totally different than if I'm working for consensus or if I'm working for almost any company right there's no there's a baseline that you can be trained to so that you could start understanding the language Etc and that's what the pre-sales academy does for you it it helps someone who is coming from a psychology background to move into a pre-sales background but still in my opinion the company that you're going to will have to tool you up to be able to go in front of their customers right so you you tell me but with what you were doing at Dell the pre-sales academy helped you to have a baseline understanding so that you can be competent but you had to go through the Dell pre-sales Academy in order to be in a position where you would be able to sell their wearers and it would have been different if you had gone to service now and it would have been different if you had gone to VMware or if you had gone somewhere else right so the certification or the the training program will take you to a certain point it will help you to understand the language Etc but when I came into pre-sales there was about a year that I was looking for books and things of that sort to really figure out how to do the job good right and you know when I when I finally found you know mastering technical sales right I was like this is the book that I've been looking for and John care was on stage at the event that we had and I'll tell you he was giving away the book I took two of them right I took two of them and some other people they didn't value the book but for me I read that book twice Thrice right and it's always right here by my desk so that I can read it I'm a Kindle guy right I love a Kindle because electronically I can search whereas with a book I can't but the other day when you sent out when you sent out a post like I think you were doing a great demo in doing Discovery I was gonna say to you dude you do you need to get that book on a electronic format because there's only so many so many of these things that you can put on a book to uh to be able to reference the chat the the page that you're looking for now inside of my Kindle I'm like that I can find a bit of piece of information that I'm searching for in the nanosecond s so you you know you talk I mean I was you know certifications just the talks out there that oh you should get an AWS Cloud practitioner AWS Solutions architect gcp you know other things are there just more like are those just like considered nice to haves versus like mandatory to getting into to pre-sales or Tech I mean no that's if you're going to go and do one of those certifications it's going to be so that you can be an engineer on their offerings right so it I I would think yes if you were going to be working in one of those where the product was a Azure or the product was a gcp or the product was in AWS yes it's going to be hard for you to have credibility in launching the PLA and launching an application on those platforms if you have no idea what those platforms are you're walking into a room where you're having a conversation with a customer and if you can't tell them how to deploy the application on that particular platform I think you're going to lose credibility right but how do you get even if you were to go and get an AWS solution architect certification you gotta you gotta have some some Tool Time right before you can be an expert and tell people how it works right you got to have some experience to tell people how it works so the certification I believe I have now I'm not against certifications right I have probably 21 certifications right everything from an oracle certified DBA all the way to a toe give Enterprise architect right I even did my cissp Once Upon a Time just for giggles but those in my opinion are door openers right early on in your career if you wanted to work in a particular discipline or domain having a certification would give you a leg up against someone who doesn't have a certification right and that's something that yes I prescribed to that model earlier on in my career but today what I'm bringing to the table is something different right then whether or not if I can get on the keyboard and put together a pearl script or python script and go into it like that no that's not what I'm bringing to the table today so if you're early in your career and you want something that's going to possibly open up a door and give you an advantage against another candidate I would say go for a certification all day every day but if you're more into your career you know it it's just a matter of sitting for another certification and I'll say to you well what's wrong with these 21 that I already have yeah especially with 21 certifications you can go onto my LinkedIn page and you'll you'll see that I have a number of certifications yeah so you know likely with your you know with the vast amount of certifications you have you know from developing your expertise in sap and then of course getting up to you know where you are in management like who today are you know you know what are your Inspirations today like who are your mentors you know I mean like you know where where are you normally learning from boom I'm always in the position where I'm trying to learn more about the business I'm trying to better understand my customer and how it is that my solution could actually help them to achieve their business objectives right I'm trying to open those doors and build out those relationships and that's because I've always been on the back office right and didn't have to do those things the the the the the the the the shiny object for me is being able to understand how to open up the door how to build out those uh relationships how to be an AE and AE made want to be an AE today may say oh well I want to know and understand more about pre-sales I'm the inverse and I want to understand more about what the account executive does right so I I've been exploring whether or not if I ever if I want to take on quota and and extend myself in that direction just the same I think everybody wants to know a little bit of something that they don't know and that's where in my career I think would be the next step for my journey is to is to understand what does it feel like to have quota on my on on my head and how how do I handle how do I handle that yeah in terms of like learning you know what in terms of books like what have you been you know what have you been reading you know that has been instrumental to your growth and what do you recommend for you know people reading today and those who are considering the the field and just starting so start the best sales books that I that I ever read was mastering mastering uh no mastering the complex sale so when remember when I came into this I was in a delivery function and working with all of the account Executives I said hey if you were uh just sharpening your your your your teeth in this game what book would you read and I would ask every selling account executive who I was working with that book the best one of those books that I read was mastering the complex cell but you know I like uh doing Discovery right because discovery is the essence of it all because if you can get Discovery right I believe that you that Peter says it in his book that is a competitive advantage right but another book that I picked up from another colleague was uh the evolving sales engineer right so at the end of the day you can read a thousand and one books at the end of the day there's going to come a point where you have to make something your own you have to develop your own personality you have to develop what's going to be you you can't bring Peter Cohen into the room you can't bring John care into the room you can't bring whomever into the room it's going to be you that's in that room so there's a certain point in time where you just have to dust off the all of the Imposter syndrome and you have to be in a position where you say that this is my own at the end of the day you're going to be in the room with the mouse by yourself doing a demo or speaking to the customer in in John care and all of them won't be in there you have to develop what's going to be your style damn I try to you know I try to like drape some John care books on me and and think that everything's just gonna go fine so that sucks yeah no John Kerry he's going to prepare you to get in there yeah right but at at that point in time when you are in the bubble it's you and you alone yeah yeah so you know Lee last thing uh if you can impart any last words of wisdom to someone you know who wants to get their first job in pre-sales like what would you say I would say if if you really wanted to make that transition into pre-sales put together a plan one right if you don't have a plan you plan to fail two I would start networking with individuals who are in the spaces where I want to be a lot of people don't leverage their Networks enough right so I would start leveraging those people in the spaces where I want to be in you know pre-sales Collective is where things like that happen right they have the local chapters where you can find people who are nearby you and it costs you very little to take someone for breakfast or coffee I don't don't take people to dinner because dinner can cost you a hundred and fifty two hundred dollars but coffee a cup of coffee is less than five dollars right if you take someone to lunch that can be about 25 to 50 dollars right so I personally would prefer to do that over a zoom call because I like to shake hands with people I like to look them in their eyes I like to get to know people so that's what I would suggest to anyone who's breaking into the field is for them to go out and and and meet some people who are doing what they want to do Lee thank you so much man I I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and of course hoping people got some wisdoms and some nuggets from these questions uh again thank you again I'm coming up to Boston and you taking me out to dinner let's do it [Music]