Patrick Flanagan

Yes. An easy way to tell how you’re doing with this: how many days of the week do you eat lunch alone? If you’re eating alone more than 2 days a week, fix it. Go see people.

Interviewing for your first sales engineering gig? You've got the technical chops, but what about the other half of the equation - understanding how sales works? This is what separates the "oh they're just an engineer" candidates from the ones who can be successful SEs. Hiring managers need to know you can operate in the language of sales. How do you show that? A few ways: If you're in IT currently, pay close attention to your org's buying process. How do purchases actually get approved? What paths do deals take - who weighs in and when? Watch how your sales teams navigate it all. If you're brand new with no corporate experience, find a friend or mentor in the game. Get them to walk you through a typical sales cycle from start to finish. The roles, the process, the lingo. Immerse yourself. Then in interviews, be ready to speak fluently about deal paths, approvals, proof-of-concept success criteria - all of it. Hiring managers want to hear the vernacular. We want to know you're not just a tech expert, but somebody who understands how the sausage gets made. It's the little things that can separate you. We have to feel like you 'get' the daily reality. Show that in your interviews, and you'll pull yourself out of the 'just an engineer' pile.

There is nothing that more companies get more wrong than their intro sales presentation. Corporate slide decks are built by committee. And most reps fail to land a second meeting. Instead, crush every first meeting with this framework: - No more than 5-6 high-level slides total. Why? To make the storyline and interaction the centerpiece, not the deck itself. - Start with a high-level overview of why your company is awesome and typical problems you solve for companies similar to your prospect. This is about establishing the credibility of your company. - Slide 2: A single problem statement that you've gathered from your prep. Essentially: Why are we here? Work with the customer to edit this problem statement on the fly. This should start a dialogue. Your problem statement will become THEIR problem statement from their own mouths. - Slide 3: What have you tried? Put in some sample bullet points of alternatives your other clients have tried, and talk through what your prospect has done already. This should give you the competitive landscape. The customer should be doing 80% of the talking during slides 2 and 3. This is you doing discovery without them feeling like you're running sales discovery on them. - Slide 4: Quick differentiators. Highlight your top 3-5 differentiators (without naming competitors). Frame it as "customers buy us because of _____" This should hopefully lead to Q&A where the customer asks "Do you do this or that?" Always answer these questions with stories. Yes, we do that and here's how Peer Company X solved a big issue with it. You can also say - let's drill in on that during a deeper dive. We've seen some really interesting results from customers doing just that. Slide 5: Outcomes. Use your prep work. If they are looking to save money, consolidate tools, launch a new initiative, etc, put it here. Collaborate with the customer live to solidify the outcomes they are looking for. Suggest some outcomes, also. Be a value-adding expert. See if they resonate. And that's it! This should take upwards of an hour if you do it right, just enough time to schedule your follow-up deeper dive. The minimal deck keeps you present and focused on reading body language + having a real conversation. Most reps overbuild their decks, then drone through slide after slide. And they wonder why they don't get second meetings.

Years ago, I met a guy who changed everything I thought I knew about tech sales. The Mayor. He was a young rep, around my age. But he outsold the veteran AEs who'd been doing it for decades. We became friends and I started paying close attention to his methods. What shocked me: I'm an engineer. My bias is towards delivering a quality solution. If the solution works, gives them the benefit, why wouldn't they buy? Or so I thought. He didn't care one bit about the tech. His method was 100% an interpersonal persistence strategy. The exposure effect. What he realized was that humans are wired to adapt and get used to whatever we're exposed to a lot. This is especially true with being exposed to people. We're social animals. His goal was to have as many voice interactions with as many people as he possibly could. If it could be sent by text, he'd rather say it over the phone. So he'd call people. All day long. But not to sell. Just to talk. If you're seen, if you're heard, if you're present - consistently - even if it starts off seeming strange or annoying, you'll eventually become familiar enough that people start paying attention to you. I never thought this would work. I laughed when he described it. It sounded to me like a great way to get kicked out of your accounts for being a pest. But he didn't. He'd show up anywhere. He'd call anyone. He called our senior executives, just to chit-chat. It was under the guise of talking about a deal, but they'd finish the deal stuff in 3 minutes and then chat for another 30. He'd do the same with clients. He'd call them all the time, but he'd also randomly show up at their office with quality snacks (but never company swag). He'd send books to people, personalized to something they'd talked about. His network was MASSIVE because he just kept reaching out and being a friendly ear once he got someone on the line. As it turns out, most people like talking to someone who will listen. Was he a great presenter? Nope. Was he a slick guy? Not at all. Smart and strategic? Definitely. He knew exactly what he was doing. Once he built the relationships at the right level, getting deals came down to "my solution will check the right boxes, and I'll give you a fair price on it." And he consistently got great margins - no crazy discounts or giveaways. Just a fair price for a good solution. All this to say - tech sales is still a people business. He treated his territory like he was the mayor and he wanted to personally know all his constituents. Shaking hands, kissing babies. It was the polar opposite of my engineer mindset at the time. But it opened my eyes to the real dynamics behind deals and taught me a lot about the world. PS: This guy rose through the ranks with ease - turns out this strategy works internally too.

The pain, business case, solution set etc is all important too. But many times, 3 different vendors will have similar stories, business cases, and price points. Who wins that battle? The Mayor.

Most cyber companies are unable to provide a compelling "why this" or "why now" case. Tool rationalization is the order of the day. Too many point solutions.

SE comp plans are generally either direct (tied to specific rep/s) or pooled (tied to a regional number). Across the board, I believe pooled is more common. And SEs in this model will rarely blow it out, but there is a higher floor.