What is Sales Engineering? (EVERYTHING you need to know)

Sales engineering is one of the most in- demand and popular career paths today in tech. However, there's a lot of

tech. However, there's a lot of misconception, a lot of misunderstanding on what it takes to even get the role what the role looks like, how it compares to other roles like tech sales.

So, today I want to break down every single facet of the sales engineering position, and give you a better idea of what it takes to get in that role, and why it may or may not be a fit for you.

So, first and foremost, let's start with what is sales engineering? And maybe for those of you that have watched this channel or understand a little bit about a direct tech sales role where you're making cold calls, you're trying to

advance and close deals. Whether you're

an SDR or account executive, a sales engineer is primarily responsible for the technical aspects of a sale. So

where a sales engineer typically fits in is they will come in once a prospect has already been qualified that they could be a fit for the software that you're selling. And a sales engineer will

selling. And a sales engineer will typically dive in to understand what they're using today, what their technical requirements are. And from

there, the sales engineer is responsible for providing demonstrations of the product at a high level. And certainly

if a prospect agrees to go into a trial to ultimately buy the software, that is where a sales engineer really sets the requirements and ensures that the technology works as advertised throughout the entire process. And while

we'll get into the compensation in just a moment, on one hand, it's really nice in the sense that if you don't want to make cold calls, if you don't want to have a lot of your compensation really come down to quota and quota attainment

like I said, a sales engineer benefits from really only being brought into most conversations once the prospect has already been identified as a potential fit. And on the other hand, many

fit. And on the other hand, many engineers after they get a few years of experience look towards a role like sales engineering because they're tired of programming all day. They want a little bit more customer interaction.

And also, while a sales engineering role isn't compensated quite the same as a direct tech sales role like account executive, you still do have a commission component of your salary. So

there is potential to make more than just a direct engineering role or standard 9to-5 desk job. And that

transitions well to the next point of sales engineering salaries. Typically

from the entry level, it is higher paid than a direct tech sales role. And in

some cases, a direct engineering role. I

know in my own career, I was in engineering before I transitioned to tech sales as an SDR, then account executive. And many sales engineers come

executive. And many sales engineers come in right out of the gate around 110 to 120 on the low side and maybe up to 150k a year on the high side. That is

typically comprised of 80% base salary.

So in the example, we'll just use a round number like $100,000. They would

have $80,000 like a salary that's just guaranteed paid every, you know, twice a month or every two weeks. And then the commission based on the deals that they closed that they were a part of would get paid out on top of that base salary

of $80,000. Now, as I mentioned, the

of $80,000. Now, as I mentioned, the entry level pay for most sales engineers is around 100 to 120K on the low side and maybe 140 to 150K on the high side.

And certainly, as you get 5 to 10 years of experience in a sales engineering role, you can make upwards of 2 to$250,000.

And at some of the biggest companies in the world, sales engineers and similarly called solutions architects are making anywhere from 275 to $300,000 a year. So

when you compare that to a direct engineering role that typically might pay anywhere from 80,000 at like an entry- level role to 120 to 150k a year there's more upside with the exception

of fang companies that pay direct engineers a little bit more. But also

if you don't have sales or you don't have engineering experience, that is certainly a great amount of money you can be making within 5 to 10 years in your career. But this leads me to one of

your career. But this leads me to one of the biggest misconceptions about the career, which is how do you even get a sales engineering role in the first place? And the weird thing about sales

place? And the weird thing about sales engineering, I would say, compared to many other roles in tech, is it really depends. I have peers of mine that were

depends. I have peers of mine that were in a direct engineering role for 10 years and got tired of it and then made that transition to sales engineering.

And on the other hand, I've met sales engineers that had a year or two of experience in engineering or in some cases some sales experience, whether it was SDR or account executive, and then they were able to make that transition

to sales engineering as well. So, while

there's no one-izefits-all answer here I do think a couple things are important to understand. First and foremost, in

to understand. First and foremost, in many, many cases, the sales engineering role is not entry- level. So, if you're familiar with the tech sales path of becoming a sales development representative, in many cases, you can

break into an SDR role right out of school and/or without a college degree at all. But that is not always the case

at all. But that is not always the case for sales engineering. And there's a couple of reasons why. As a sales engineer, you typically benefit from having a few years of experience.

Because sure, I'm sure if you spend enough time, like 3 to 6 months learning how to demo a product, learning all the ins and outs of the company's product itself. The reason that a lot of

product itself. The reason that a lot of people breaking into the sales engineering role are coming from anywhere from 2 to 5 years of experience in another career path within tech is because they understand the broader

landscape of all the tools that are out there. So, it's one thing if you know

there. So, it's one thing if you know how to demo a product, but when you're getting into really deep technical conversations of what they're using today, when you're looking at a prospect's tech stack, it's not just about saying, "Hey, here's how this

product would come in and fit in your tech stack as a whole." You really have to be knowledgeable about the broader tech stack and the implications and trade-offs of using your tool versus the many other options out there. And if you

have years of experience in tech especially in an engineering role, that will help you better understand the trade-offs. you will understand what

trade-offs. you will understand what teams go through when they are evaluating tools and it really gives you a much more advanced perspective that is required when getting into multi-million dollar deals at some of the biggest

companies in the world where they have thousands of different uh technologies.

They have thousands of different projects that would really be impacted by making a major change. Now that being said, it's not a firm requirement that you have to have 5 years of engineering experience. But this brings up another

experience. But this brings up another common misconception that if you want to be a sales engineer, I definitely think it is possible. But if you do not have an engineering background, you do not have a very technical background. You

need to understand that there are a couple of different types of companies that have sales engineers. If you want to be a sales engineer with no tech background, it is definitely possible but you should target companies that are

selling tools to people that are not engineers. So, if you've never written

engineers. So, if you've never written code, if you don't know that much about the ins and outs of software development, you should be targeting companies that are selling a low code to no code solution to non-developers.

That's often something I see in the comments here and in our community at higher levels.com where people come to me and say, "Hey, I want to be a sales engineer 5 years from now." And again that's definitely possible. But if you

are not an engineer, to be quite frank with you, unless you get secondary education like a coding boot camp andor direct industry experience programming for a company for two to three years it's not realistic to think that you

could come in and consult some of the biggest companies in the world as a sales engineer if you don't know how to write code and understand the underlying technology. So again, it's not to

technology. So again, it's not to discourage you from pursuing that role but just make sure if you fall in that category of not having a deeply technical background, target companies that are using low code, call it drag

and drop or pre-built interfaces that don't require you to go in and write lines of code. And that also brings me to my next point. Again, I've mentioned that I've met sales engineers that made that change a year or two into their

career, and I've met others that were 10 years into their career as an engineer that ultimately made the change. It's

really kind of a mystery box of how you even break into that career. But here

are some of the most common things that I've seen. If you want to break into

I've seen. If you want to break into tech in the first place, I highly recommend breaking into the SDR role unless you have an engineering degree and want to pursue that path. But from

there, if you are breaking in as an SDR and want to become a sales engineer it's really on you to carve that path out over two to three years within the company that you broke into. I actually

had a guest on this channel a year ago or so where they started as an SDR and made it very clear once they got about six months into that role that they wanted to transition to sales engineering. And when they said that, it

engineering. And when they said that, it wasn't like they were like, "Okay, in fact, it was the opposite where they were like, okay, if you want to do this for the next year to year and a half, I want you to educate yourself on these

things. I want you to network within our

things. I want you to network within our company and meet these different people.

And then maybe a year from now, you're going to, be, in, a, position, where, we, could consider having you as a sales engineer.

So again, if you don't have direct engineering experience or hands-on keyboard experience writing code, you should put yourself in an SDR position ideally at a low code to no code company where it's not unreasonable to think

that within 2 to 3 years you could learn the technology and actually be an effective sales engineer. Now, on the flip side, if you're an engineer trying to go from engineer to sales engineering, I recommend the same path

exactly, but you're going to have to develop new skills and get a little bit more uncomfortable than you have been in your day-to-day role. Sales engineering

teams love recruiting engineers that want to make that transition. But quite

frankly, if you're not willing to put yourself out there, if you're not willing to learn about the role, if you think asking one or two people like "Hey, I want to be a sales engineer."

and then it's just going to happen.

You've really got to put yourself out there, learn the skills of being a sales engineer, learn more about the aspects of a sales cycle, and then over the course of 6 to 12 months, really as you build a network both maybe in your

company and externally with other sales engineers you reach out to, then you're in a position to say, "Hey, I'm an engineer that wants to become a sales engineer and have meaningful conversations." So on both sides, if you

conversations." So on both sides, if you are not technical, don't be naive and think you can walk into a cloud infrastructure company and become a sales engineer. But also, if you're an

sales engineer. But also, if you're an engineer that thinks, hey, I know the product really well. I've been writing code for 5 to 10 years. That's great.

But that's just one small element of the job in the grand scheme of a sales cycle. So hopefully that gives you a

cycle. So hopefully that gives you a sense for what a sales engineer even does. Typically, I would say on a

does. Typically, I would say on a day-to-day basis, half of your day is going to be spent attending calls talking with customers, checking in on trials, seeing how things are going throughout a deal cycle. And then the

other half of your day is going to be spent more around a little bit more technical work, setting up requirements for customers, setting up trial environments, actually putting your hand on the keyboard, and maybe doing a troubleshooting call with a customer

who's going through a trial. That should

give you a better sense of how it differs from an engineering role where eight hours a day it's engineering heavy work, maybe a meeting here or there, but also compared to sales where almost 100% of your time is going to be emails, cold

calls, meeting with customers, you're not going to be spending your whole day doing cold outreach, getting rejected all the time. And so in closing, if you are considering the sales engineering position, I think first and foremost

just have realistic expectations that if you don't have any experience in a tech company at all, I actually think going the path of breaking in as an STR and just getting some experience unless you have an engineering degree and can get

an engineering job. Getting an SDR job is the best first step in that direction to ultimately position yourself long-term. But again, I just want to be

long-term. But again, I just want to be clear that if you are at a company that is selling something that's highly technical, you're selling it to engineers, you're selling it to deeply technical personas, it's not realistic to think that without, you know, going

back to school or getting a certification that's very specific to learning languages and learning the technology itself. It's not as realistic

technology itself. It's not as realistic to think you could go from SDR or account executive to sales engineering.

But if you are at a lower code company one that is more focused on kind of drag and drop technology or is not selling to engineers, maybe it's like a SAS platform or Salesforce or something that

you know the individual purchaser of the product is not going to be writing code.

That is a position where it is reasonable to think maybe two to three to four years into your career, you could make that transition. And on the other side, if you're an engineer that's looking at sales engineering, you're going to have to get a little bit

uncomfortable here. not just reaching

uncomfortable here. not just reaching out to the person and the team that you ultimately want to break into, but I encourage you to go on LinkedIn and find sales engineers at companies you want to work for andor just even within your own

company before you're even worried about, hey, I want to interview. I want

to do all these things. Spend three to four months really building your network of sales professionals and sales engineers to get a sense for the role to understand the things that you really need to learn. And then at that point

you're in a much better position to approach a manager or approach the sales engineering team and say, "Hey, I want to be a part of this team and make this transition in my career." And again sales engineering is a great path. If

you're an engineer that hates coding all day, you just want to do something a little bit different. You want some more financial upside. Sales engineering is

financial upside. Sales engineering is that perfect sweet spot of leveraging all that technical experience you have being able to earn more money. And also

if you're not the kind of person that wants to hit the phone, you know, 50 times a day, you don't want to have to deal with trying to network and multi-thread into accounts, it is the best of both worlds in the sense that you use your technical skill set that

you've developed, and you also get a little bit more customer-f facing interaction with people that are already qualified and already interested in what you're doing. And also, if you're in a

you're doing. And also, if you're in a direct sales role, maybe you've been doing that for five or so years and you're a little bit tired of the day-to-day, it is a grind, even though it is very lucrative. Sales engineers

again five to 10 years into their career can be making 250k if they're doing really well. Whereas an account

really well. Whereas an account executive five to 10 years in can be making three to 400k on really great years. There are some account executives

years. There are some account executives who get five or so years into their career and want to take their foot off the gas a little bit in terms of not having to deal with breaking into accounts and multi-threading and doing all of the things that are required of a

customer-f facing front-facing sales role. So if nothing else, I monitor the

role. So if nothing else, I monitor the comments myself here. If you guys have any questions about the career path, I have been in a direct sales role myself.

I was an engineer in the past. I

considered all of these different things and quite frankly, I made this video because I think there's a lot of misinformation out there about the sales engineering role. And also, if you are

engineering role. And also, if you are looking at the SDR role or breaking into tech sales as a whole, that's what we do at higher levels.com. We've helped over 6,000 professionals break into and rapidly grow their career in tech sales.

But nonetheless, if you got a lot out of this video, would appreciate a like and subscribe and all that jazz. And uh

yeah, let me know if I can help and we'll see you guys in the next