The Sales Engineer

I would like to tell you a short and very true story. It was a pivotal moment in my sales engineer (SE) career and I believe it sets the stage for the fundamentals that Jay and I want to share with you in this chapter. These fundamentals, I believe, will elevate your success as an SE and, therefore, your career.

In October of 2008, I took an SE position at RSA, headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts. It seemed, in many ways, to be just like my previous company in that it was well-structured and took its pre-sales seriously. I was placed into a role as an SE specialist focused on our data loss prevention (DLP) solution. Sadly, I went into this role underestimating what I was about to step into. Although RSA was a very mature company at the time with solid, well-known products, the DLP solution had been recently acquired from a start-up and was anything but mature. Furthermore, we were competing against a VERY strong competitor called Vontu, which had been recently...