Think back to when you were a kid and went to school each day. I’m sure we all have fond memories of learning, and homework, and trying as hard as possible to fit in. You know what, let’s not revisit those days. But instead, let’s look at the other side of the coin from the teacher’s perspective. We were probably too young to consider it at the time, but the amount of work they put into preparing lessons, classroom management, time management, and being super adaptable to the needs of each kid…not easy!

Being an educator is actually a huge advantage if you are considering a transition into pre-sales. Most people think that “sales” is all about selling, but the reality is that it’s about educating. Educating on the problem, the pain points that you help solve, and most importantly, on the outcomes that you can help achieve.

Before we explore how you can map your unique educator skills to your future pre-sales role, let’s have a look at the pre-sales role itself and what the job is like.

A Look into the Pre-Sales Role

For those that are just starting out in the world of (pre-)sales, they often start with a look at some current job postings to see what the role is like. If you’ve ever read a pre-sales job description before then you know how daunting these seem for a newcomer to the field. However, pre-sales isn’t as scary as it might seem and almost any technical skill can be learned once you land the role. So instead of being deterred, let’s take a look at what really matters when it comes to being in pre-sales.

At a high level, here is a list of the most common activities you’ll encounter in the role:

• Participating in customer calls
• Performing “discovery” to identify what a customer is looking for
• Conducting product demos of your solution
• Leading a proof of value (POV) / proof of concept (POC)
• Addressing technical questions and concerns throughout the sales process

Alright, let’s break these down a little further. This time focusing on how your unique skills as a parent can help.

Tip: If you’d like a more in depth look at the world of pre-sales, have a peek at our guide on, “What is Sales Engineering?”.

Mapping Your Skills

As an educator, you might feel a little discouraged because you don’t have the technical skills that most of these roles are looking for, but that is only because they often focus too heavily on the technical skills. However it’s the intangibles, or soft skills, that often lead people to stand out above the crowd. So here are some of the key skills that healthcare professionals bring to the table aligned to the five common pre-sales activities previously mentioned.

Active Listening - When you are dealing with kids each day, there are going to be situations where someone is upset or confused. But kids don’t always know the right way to express what they are feeling. Similarly customers often don’t always know what they are looking for. Being able to listen to their concerns and listen for the deeper meaning is what will make you successful during customer calls.

Curiosity - Kids are, by nature, curious about everything. Even if you aren’t a curious person, they will shape your thinking because you have to anticipate how they think and what they might ask. Educators are really good at stimulating curiosity, through play, lesson plans, and creative thinking. Discovery in the sales process isn’t that different. You simply use different techniques to poke at a particular problem until you have discovered the underlying issue.

Adaptability - One of the things that amazes me the most about educators is their ability to adapt. In a group of kids, you will have varied learning styles, speed, and comprehension. What works for one kid may not work for another. You, as the educator, need to continuously adapt to their needs…just like you would when giving a demo to a customer. Even adults learn in different ways. Demos aren’t meant to be perfect, but they are meant to communicate the value of your solution and it’s up to you to adapt the story to make that happen.

Time Management - The number one reason that POCs go sideways is because of scope creep. Whether it’s new requirements, new stakeholders, or something completely unrelated…it always seems to happen. How do you combat scope creep? Time management. By time boxing activities and delivery of results you can prevent additional items from being introduced into the process. As an educator, you are a master at time management. From creating lesson plans that fit into a specific amount of time to helping kids transition from one topic to the next. Keeping a POC running smoothly should be a walk in the park for you.

Resourcefulness - Education isn’t done in a vacuum, it’s based on a ton of collaboration, feedback, and teamwork. From peers, to parent input, to mandates by individual states, to feedback from administrators. This is also a core part of working in pre-sales; from collaborating with other teams to understanding changes to your solution from the product team. The resourcefulness of educators will mean they are well versed in change, no matter where it comes from.

So you can see from these five examples, you actually have a lot more pre-sales related skills then perhaps you realized. Now it’s time to hone in on what’s missing and take your first steps towards your journey into pre-sales.

Where to Focus Next

To begin your journey into your first pre-sales role, there are four tasks that you need to accomplish next. Let’s look at them in order.

Choose an Industry

A common mistake I see when talking to educators that are looking to transition into a sales career is being too broad in what they are looking for. This also applies to pre-sales as well. Before you start applying to a single role, you need to have a look at the different industries that are out there and find what appeals to you.

Tip: Because you have industry experience, you can also lean into that. There are a lot of pre-sales roles where you might sell educational software or security solutions that help with COPPA compliance. Knowing first hand what educators go through each day and the pain points they experience gives you a huge leg up.

You already have a background in education, which is a hugely underserved market in sales (in my opinion). If you weren’t an educator, what would your second career path have been? That can be the second industry you focus on. Regardless of which industries catch your eye, explore some job postings and talk to a few folks in each to get a sense of if it’s really for you. You don’t have to niche yourself down at this point, but you should have one or two industries that you can target (and yes healthcare can be one of them).

Shape Your Story: Transitioning Parent

Once you know what industries you are going to target, and you’ve done some skill mapping, it’s time to start crafting your story. This should include a few elements:

• Your “why”, what is driving you into pre-sales
• How your unique skills can make an impact
• Your approach to overcoming obstacles

As you start to create your narrative, imagine you are talking to a hiring manager. What tone would you use? How would you weave your industry experience to support your unique abilities? Don’t break any confidentiality agreements, but draw from real-world experiences that you’ve faced and how they would directly apply to the pre-sales role. Once you are done making notes and crafting your narrative, create two versions; a 30 second version and a 2 minute version. This will allow you to make use of each depending on the situation you are in.

Lastly, record yourself delivering your story. Make sure, above all else, that you appear confident and calm in your delivery.

Update Your Resume + Digital Profiles

While this should be the easiest step on your to-do list, it’s also the most tedious. You will need to update your resume, LinkedIn, website (if you have one), and any other digital profiles for consistency. Each digital profile should include relevant experience, any projects that will help you stand out, and your story. Make sure you have a recent photo for each profile as well.

Tip: For each position that you’ve held in the past, including your current one, make sure you list your accomplishments in terms of outcomes. You did X, which had an outcome of Y. It’s about showing the results that you helped achieve.

Above all else, remember that your digital profiles should be concise! No hiring manager, HR professional, or really anyone for that matter, wants to read a novel.

Reach Out to Hiring Managers

You are almost there! Your last task is to start assembling a list of jobs that you want to apply to. Now this isn’t as simple as applying to a job because the world doesn’t work that way anymore. From insane competition to needing to really stand out, you’ll need to be very targeted and specific for each role you apply too.

Reach out to those that already work for the organization. Make a connection with the talent acquisition folks. Finally, submit your application AND reach out to the hiring manager with a personal note on the impact you can make in the role. Remember to lean on your experience and your unique story to help you rise above the noise.

Good luck and I hope to see you in your future pre-sales role soon!

Think about the last time that you were sick. You probably took some medicine to help you feel better, but after a day or two you went to see the doctor. From the minute you walked into the doctor’s office, a healthcare professional asked you questions, narrowed down the reason for your visit, and triaged you based on severity. Once you are finally examined, you are given a diagnosis and potentially some medication (the solution) to help you feel better.

If you are that healthcare professional, congratulations; you just experienced a super compressed version of a sales cycle. See that, you’re already more skilled in pre-sales than you even realized! If you are considering a career change into the world of pre-sales you not only have more skills than you realized, but you also bring another valuable asset to the table; industry experience!

Before we explore how you can map your unique healthcare skills to your future pre-sales role, let’s have a look at the pre-sales role itself and what the job is like.

A Look into the Pre-Sales Role

Many people looking to transition into a career as a pre-sales professional will start by reading the job description of a few open pre-sales roles, see a list of all the technical requirements, and then immediately get discouraged. However, pre-sales isn’t as scary as it might seem and almost any technical skill can be learned once you land the role. So instead of being deterred, let’s take a look at what really matters when it comes to being in pre-sales.

At a high level, here is a list of the most common activities you’ll encounter in the role:

• Participating in customer calls
• Performing “discovery” to identify what a customer is looking for
• Conducting product demos of your solution
• Leading a proof of value (POV) / proof of concept (POC)
• Addressing technical questions and concerns throughout the sales process

Alright, let’s break these down a little further. This time focusing on how your unique skills as a parent can help.

Tip: If you’d like a more in depth look at the world of pre-sales, have a peek at our guide on, “What is Sales Engineering?”.

Mapping Your Skills

If you read through 90% of the job descriptions today for the pre-sales role, sadly you’ll find that they are lovely focused on technical skills. However it’s the intangibles, or soft skills, that often lead people to stand out above the crowd. So here are some of the key skills that healthcare professionals bring to the table aligned to the five common pre-sales activities previously mentioned.

Confidence - As someone who is on the frontlines (patient-facing), you interact with different types of people every single day. Being on a customer call is no different. Being comfortable around people gives you a leg up by allowing you to lead with confidence, even if you aren’t the expert (yet). Being seen as someone who can get things done will go a long way to quickly establishing trust.

Empathy - Working in healthcare, people come to you when they aren’t feeling well. This could be everything from a little cold to a major viral infection. It’s your job to ask the right questions and figure out exactly why they are there and how you can (hopefully) help them. Not only is it important to be thorough, but it’s important to show empathy because they aren’t feeling well (the equivalent of a prospect feeling pain to a problem). By empathizing with them you’ll get the right answers faster than anyone else.

Communication - One of the most important parts of healthcare is communication. From understanding what ailments you have to how to treat them. Unsurprisingly, this is a key part of pre-sales too…particularly when it comes to demos. Knowing how to communicate the problem statement (illness) and how your solution (cure) can help address the problem is all part of delivering an amazing demo.

Time Management - The number one reason that POCs go sideways is because of scope creep. Whether it’s new requirements, new stakeholders, or something completely unrelated…it always seems to happen. How do you combat scope creep? Time management. By time boxing activities and delivery of results you can prevent additional items from being introduced into the process. In healthcare, there is always going to be a next patient, a new script to fill, or a new set of x-rays to be taken. Keeping the system running requires great use of time management skills.

Teamwork - Healthcare isn’t done in a vacuum, it’s based on lots of collaboration and teamwork. From nurses, to doctors, to technicians, and everyone in between. Teamwork doesn’t just happen in healthcare though, it’s also a core part of working in pre-sales.

From these five examples, you should feel confident (see what I did there?) that you actually have a lot more pre-sales related skills then perhaps you realized. Now it’s time to hone in on what’s missing and take your first steps towards your journey into pre-sales.

Where to Focus Next

To begin your journey into your first pre-sales role, there are four tasks that you need to accomplish next. Let’s look at them in order.

Choose an Industry

A common mistake I see when talking to healthcare professionals is a certain level of comfort that they have from working within a specific industry (healthcare). If you are considering a career change into pre-sales, that is a scary shift. Now consider a shift into pre-sales and in another industry (yikes!). But, to unlock the most opportunities, it’s important to consider industries outside of your comfort zone. Before you start applying to a single role, you need to have a look at the different industries that are out there and find what appeals to you.

Tip: Because you have industry experience, you can also lean into that. There are a lot of pre-sales roles where you might sell healthcare software or security solutions that help with HIPAA compliance. Knowing first hand what healthcare professionals go through each day and the pain points they experience gives you a huge leg up.

Think about some industries that you interact with everyday. What about something specific that you’ve always been curious about. Regardless of which industries catch your eye, explore some job postings and talk to a few folks in each to get a sense of if it’s really for you. You don’t have to niche yourself down at this point, but you should have one or two industries that you can target (and yes healthcare can be one of them).

Shape Your Story: Transitioning Parent

Once you know what industries you are going to target, and you’ve done some skill mapping, it’s time to start crafting your story. This should include a few elements:

• Your “why”, what is driving you into pre-sales
• How your unique skills can make an impact
• Your approach to overcoming obstacles

As you start to create your narrative, imagine you are talking to a hiring manager. What tone would you use? How would you weave your industry experience to support your unique abilities? Don’t break any confidentiality agreements, but draw from real-world experiences that you’ve faced and how they would directly apply to the pre-sales role. Once you are done making notes and crafting your narrative, create two versions; a 30 second version and a 2 minute version. This will allow you to make use of each depending on the situation you are in.

Lastly, record yourself delivering your story. Make sure, above all else, that you appear confident and calm in your delivery.

Update Your Resume + Digital Profiles

While this should be the easiest step on your to-do list, it’s also the most tedious. You will need to update your resume, LinkedIn, website (if you have one), and any other digital profiles for consistency. Each digital profile should include relevant experience, any projects that will help you stand out, and your story. Make sure you have a recent photo for each profile as well.

Tip: For each position that you’ve held in the past, including your current one, make sure you list your accomplishments in terms of outcomes. You did X, which had an outcome of Y. It’s about showing the results that you helped achieve.

Above all else, remember that your digital profiles should be concise! No hiring manager, HR professional, or really anyone for that matter, wants to read a novel.

Reach Out to Hiring Managers

You are almost there! Your last task is to start assembling a list of jobs that you want to apply to. Now this isn’t as simple as applying to a job because the world doesn’t work that way anymore. From insane competition to needing to really stand out, you’ll need to be very targeted and specific for each role you apply too.

Reach out to those that already work for the organization. Make a connection with the talent acquisition folks. Finally, submit your application AND reach out to the hiring manager with a personal note on the impact you can make in the role. Remember to lean on your experience and your unique story to help you rise above the noise.

Good luck and I hope to see you in your future pre-sales role soon!

Anyone who has kids knows that raising them is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. From picky eaters, to potty training, to endless tantrums…each day is a new challenge when it comes to raising tiny humans. But those daily challenges also build a unique set of skills that can be tapped into when transitioning into the world of pre-sales.

As a parent there are no sick days. There is also no manual. Each kid is different and it requires you to experiment with different parenting techniques till you figure out what works. Being in pre-sales isn’t all that different. No two customers are the same and it’s a lot of listening to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Before we explore how you can map your unique parenting skills to your future pre-sales role, let’s have a look at the pre-sales role itself and what the job is like.

A Look into the Pre-Sales Role

Many people looking to transition into a career as a pre-sales professional will start by reading the job description of a few open pre-sales roles, see a list of all the technical requirements, and then immediately get discouraged. However, pre-sales isn’t as scary as it might seem and almost any technical skill can be learned once you land the role. So instead of being deterred, let’s take a look at what really matters when it comes to being in pre-sales.

At a high level, here is a list of the most common activities you’ll encounter in the role:

• Participating in customer calls
• Performing “discovery” to identify what a customer is looking for
• Conducting product demos of your solution
• Leading a proof of value (POV) / proof of concept (POC)
• Addressing technical questions and concerns throughout the sales process

Alright, let’s break these down a little further. This time focusing on how your unique skills as a parent can help.

Tip: If you’d like a more in depth look at the world of pre-sales, have a peek at our guide on, “What is Sales Engineering?”.

Mapping Your Skills

Contrary to popular belief, and 90% of the job descriptions for the role, pre-sales is not about having the most technical skills. It is in fact the intangibles, or soft skills, that often lead people to stand out above the crowd. So here are some of the key skills that parents bring to the table mapped to the five common pre-sales activities previously mentioned.

Active Listening - When you first have kids you can’t wait for them to talk. Then when they can talk, they never stop talking! But amidst the rambling and endless questions, they also tell you what they need. Being a good listener is critical in customer calls. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Knowing how to ask a question and then actively listen is a key skill when it comes to pre-sales.

Curiosity - There will come a time in every parent’s life where their kid will ask a question, you’ll provide an answer, and they will follow up with a “but why?”. And so begins the vicious circle of you trying to provide an answer to each “but why” until you finally acknowledge there is no winning move for you in this game. At some later point in time (when you can think clearly again), you’ll realize this (demonic) game is just your child’s way of being curious. Many times in pre-sales, we also need to ask “but why” to uncover the deeper meaning…this is more commonly referred to as discovery.

Adaptability - As I mentioned earlier, there is no manual for raising kids. You have to adapt as you go for each kid and their individual needs. This translates well when performing demos because no one wants to sit through a boring generic demo. Customers want you to adapt it to their needs based on what you know about them.

Outcome Focused - Have you ever ordered groceries for delivery? What about Target curbside pick up? You were probably crunched for time, but still needed the items so you leveraged what services were available to you to make that happen. Here’s the thing, customers don’t buy products for a specific feature or technical capability. They buy because you are helping them achieve a specific outcome. You were trying to save time with curbside; they might be trying to save time using your solution. The POV/POC is just a technical exercise to prove that your solution will produce the desired outcome.

Resourcefulness - Let’s face it, we all took math and science a long time ago. A lot has changed since then and we probably didn’t commit everything to memory. So think back the last time your kid brought you a math problem from their homework that you didn’t know the answer to. Maybe you read the textbook. Perhaps you watched a YouTube video. Whatever method you tried, you were able to find the answer and help guide them towards a solution. Addressing technical questions as a pre-sales professional is no different. You will never have all the answers, but you should be able to find them.

So you can see from these five examples, you actually have a lot more pre-sales related skills then perhaps you realized. Now it’s time to hone in on what’s missing and take your first steps towards your journey into pre-sales.

Where to Focus Next

To begin your journey into your first pre-sales role, there are four tasks that you need to accomplish next. Let’s look at them in order.

Choose an Industry

A common mistake I see when talking to parents that are transitioning back into the workforce is being too broad in what they are looking for. The same is true for pre-sales. Before you start applying to a single role, you need to have a look at the different industries that are out there and find what appeals to you.

For example, I work in the cybersecurity industry (which in and of itself is huge). Perhaps you have an interest in healthcare or manufacturing? Maybe you have an affinity for the public sector? Regardless of which industries catch your eye, explore some job postings and talk to a few folks in each to get a sense of if it’s really for you. You don’t have to niche yourself down at this point, but you should have one or two industries that you can target.

Shape Your Story: Transitioning Parent

Once you know what industries you are going to target, and you’ve done some skill mapping, it’s time to start crafting your story. This should include a few elements:

• Your “why”, what is driving you into pre-sales
• How your unique skills can make an impact
• Your approach to overcoming obstacles

As you start to create your narrative, imagine you are talking to a hiring manager. What tone would you use? How would you weave in life stories to support your unique abilities? Once you are done making notes and crafting your narrative, create two versions; a 30 second version and a 2 minute version. This will allow you to make use of each depending on the situation you are in.

Lastly, record yourself delivering your story. Make sure, above all else, that you appear confident and calm in your delivery.

Update Your Resume + Digital Profiles

While this should be the easiest step on your to-do list, it’s also the most tedious. You will need to update your resume, LinkedIn, website (if you have one), and any other digital profiles for consistency. Each digital profile should include relevant experience, any projects that will help you stand out, and your story. Make sure you have a recent photo for each profile as well.

Tip: LinkedIn recently added a job type for parents that stepped out of the workforce to take care of kids. Make sure you include this amidst your other professional experience.

Above all else, remember that your digital profiles should be concise! No hiring manager, HR professional, or really anyone for that matter, wants to read a novel.

Reach Out to Hiring Managers

You are almost there! Your last task is to start assembling a list of jobs that you want to apply to. Now this isn’t as simple as applying to a job because the world doesn’t work that way anymore. From insane competition to needing to really stand out, you’ll need to be very targeted and specific for each role you apply too.

Reach out to those that already work for the organization. Make a connection with the talent acquisition folks. Finally, submit your application AND reach out to the hiring manager with a personal note on the impact you can make in the role. Remember to lean on your unique story to help you rise above the noise.

Good luck and I hope to see you in your future pre-sales role soon!

Think about the last time you were in a sales meeting with a new vendor. You probably got the pitch, the slide deck, and some generic looking demo. If you did manage to stay awake you were probably wondering what the technical punchline was. As a cybersecurity practitioner, you probably deal with dozens of different technologies on a daily basis and have heard more sales pitches than you care to admit. Ever wonder if you could do it better?

It’s actually pretty common for someone in a cybersecurity pre-sales role to switch over to the customer side as a practitioner. However going from practitioner to pre-sales is a different story. Some common objections range from “sales people are evil”, to “I’ll lose my technical edge”.

All valid concerns, but there are also a lot of benefits to making the switch. Great pay. Cutting edge tech. Exposure to a lot of different customers across a variety of industries. If you’ve ever considered making the switch, this guide will help you see how your current skills map to a pre-sales role and how you can get started in the pre-sales profession.

Let’s start with a quick look at the pre-sales role itself and what the job is like.

A Look into the Pre-Sales Role

While many people looking to break into pre-sales are often put off by the technical requirements so many job descriptions ask for, they should be a breeze for you. After all, you’re deploying, managing, and reviewing alerts from dozens of tools each day. Interestingly, the portion of the job description that scares away practitioners most are the soft skills. Giving presentations, conducting demos, that sort of thing. So instead of being deterred, let’s take a look at what really matters when it comes to being in pre-sales.

At a high level, here is a list of the most common activities you’ll encounter in the role:

• Participating in customer calls
• Performing “discovery” to identify what a customer is looking for
• Conducting product demos of your solution
• Leading a proof of value (POV) / proof of concept (POC)
• Addressing technical questions and concerns throughout the sales process

Alright, let’s break these down a little further. This time focusing on how your unique skills as a practitioner can help.

Tip: If you’d like a more in depth look at the world of pre-sales, have a peek at our guide on, “What is Sales Engineering?”.

Mapping Your Skills

Since soft skills can make such a big impact in the world of pre-sales, let’s look closer at some of the key skills that cybersecurity practitioners bring to the table mapped to the five common pre-sales activities previously mentioned.

Collaboration - Cybersecurity is rarely about technology, but more how you can use technology to enable the business. What’s the best way to find out what the business needs? Just ask! Whether it’s talking to a coworker in another department in your current role, or listening in on a customer call, collaborating together helps to build trust and relationships which can make a huge impact in a pre-sales role.

Critical Thinking - We’ve all had days where technology was not being our friend. What should be a simple config change or quick update turns into a troubleshooting nightmare. Knowing when to take a breath and reflect on the problem at hand will not only help you get through the problem, but it might help you understand the root cause as well. Discovery is no different. It’s about looking beyond the question at hand to identify the root cause of what your prospect is trying to accomplish.

Adaptability - If you’ve worked in the cybersecurity industry long enough, you know there is almost always more than one way to derive the answer to a problem. Being adaptable can help you try new solutions, think outside the box, and generate new ideas. Running a demo requires you to be adaptable in a similar manner. Every customer will have different requirements, it’s up to you to adapt your story and what you demo to match their needs.

Curiosity - Have you ever watched a demo of a product and wondered what it would be like in the real-world (outside the demo environment)? Would it detect the things the sales team promised it would? What about stopping threats? As a cybersecurity practitioner, curiosity to test new technology and see what limits you can take it too comes naturally. In pre-sales, running a POV/POC allows you to unleash your curiosity by putting solutions to the test to prove out use cases and business outcomes.

Resourcefulness - Having a deep technical background allows you to excel when it comes to question time. Even if you don’t know the direct answer, you can draw on experience and similar technology experiences to derive an answer. This level of resourcefulness is a key differentiator because you are able to act independently and address the majority of technical questions on your own.

So you can see from these five examples, you actually have a lot more pre-sales related skills then perhaps you realized. Now it’s time to hone in on what’s missing and take your first steps towards your journey into pre-sales.

Where to Focus Next

To begin your journey into your first pre-sales role, there are four tasks that you need to accomplish next. Let’s look at them in order.

Choose an Industry

A common mistake I see when talking to cybersecurity practitioners that are looking to break into pre-sales is being too broad in what they are looking for. You could work for a startup or a well established security vendor. You could work for a reseller of multiple technologies. You could even work for a Manager Security Services Provider (MSSP). However, before you start applying to a single role, you need to have a look at the different options that are out there and find what appeals to you.

For example, imagine you work as an Application Security Engineer in the healthcare industry. Your focus might be on protecting patient data and dealing with the complexities of ensuring HIPAA compliance as all time. But what if you suddenly found yourself inside the manufacturing industry? Would you know the unique challenges that practitioners in this vertical would be facing? Regardless of which industries catch your eye, explore some job postings and talk to a few folks in each to get a sense of if it’s really for you. Most pre-sales roles are industry agnostic, which you should be comfortable with, but if you want something more industry specific you can target established cybersecurity vendors that break out their teams into vertical coverage.

Shape Your Story: Transitioning Practitioner

Once you know what industries you are going to target, and you’ve done some skill mapping, it’s time to start crafting your story. This should include a few elements:

• Your “why”, what is driving you into pre-sales
• How your unique skills can make an impact
• Your approach to overcoming obstacles

As you start to create your narrative, imagine you are talking to a hiring manager. What tone would you use? How would you weave in life stories to support your unique abilities? Remember you want to lean into your non-technical skills more heavily. The hiring manager knows you can “talk tech”, they want to know that you can hold a conversation with business leaders and the finance folks.

Lastly, record yourself delivering your story. Make sure, above all else, that you appear confident and calm in your delivery.

Update Your Resume + Digital Profiles

While this should be the easiest step on your to-do list, it’s also the most tedious. You will need to update your resume, LinkedIn, website (if you have one), and any other digital profiles for consistency. Each digital profile should include relevant experience, any projects that will help you stand out, and your story. Make sure you have a recent photo for each profile as well.

Tip: For each position that you’ve held in the past, including your current one, make sure you list your accomplishments in terms of outcomes. You did X, which had an outcome of Y. It’s about showing the results that you helped achieve.

Above all else, remember that your digital profiles should be concise! No hiring manager, HR professional, or really anyone for that matter, wants to read a novel.

Reach Out to Hiring Managers

You are almost there! Your last task is to start assembling a list of jobs that you want to apply to. Now this isn’t as simple as applying to a job because the world doesn’t work that way anymore. From insane competition to needing to really stand out, you’ll need to be very targeted and specific for each role you apply too.

Reach out to those that already work for the organization. Make a connection with the talent acquisition folks. Finally, submit your application AND reach out to the hiring manager with a personal note on the impact you can make in the role. Remember to lean on your unique story to help you rise above the noise. If you have friends, peers, and other connections in the industry already…leverage them as well to ask for introductions (where it makes sense).

Good luck and I hope to see you in your future pre-sales role soon!

Here’s what most people miss though. The job search is a sales cycle. There’s a buyer (the hiring manager), a competitive landscape (every other applicant flooding the same inbox), and a close (the offer). SEs already know how to run that motion in their sleep. The problem is almost none of them apply it to themselves.

AI changes the equation. Not by doing the work for you, but by compressing the timeline and sharpening your execution at every single stage. Think of it as an accelerant, not a replacement for the actual thinking. In this guide we’ll walk the full job hunt from first signal to final close, with AI injected as a force multiplier along the way.

Run Intel Before You Apply

Most people apply first and research later, if they research at all. That’s completely backwards. You wouldn’t walk into a customer call without knowing anything about the account, so why would you apply to a company you know nothing about?

Treat every target company like a prospect. Do the recon before you make a move. Here’s where AI earns its keep:

• Summarizing recent news, funding rounds, leadership changes, and product launches for a target company
• Spotting the signals that a company is growing for the right reasons versus quietly heading into contraction mode
• Building a quick account brief on the company before you apply, so your resume and outreach already speak their language

Tip: If the company had a rough earnings call last quarter or just announced layoffs in another division, that’s intelligence worth having before you sink two weeks into their interview process. Better to find out now than three rounds deep.

Decode the Job Description

Job descriptions are written by committee. They’re bloated, wishlist-driven, and half the time they have nothing to do with what the role actually requires day-to-day. Before you tailor a single thing, you need to figure out what actually matters in that posting.

Here’s how AI helps you cut through it:

• Stripping the JD down to its core; what does this hiring manager actually care about?
• Telling the difference between “required” and “nice to have” (the line is way blurrier than the formatting suggests)
• Surfacing the specific language and terminology the team uses, which feeds straight into your resume, outreach, and impact brief later

Tip: Paste the full JD into your AI tool of choice and ask it to rank the top five problems this hiring manager is actually trying to solve. The output will probably surprise you, and it’s a lot more useful than the bullet list of “requirements” you were staring at.

Find the Right Roles

Applying to everything is a volume trap. You’ll burn time, you’ll get generic, and you’ll burn out before you land anything. The goal isn’t more applications, it’s better targeted ones.

This is where you let AI do the filtering for you:

• Building a targeting framework (industry, company stage, team size, SE-to-AE ratio) before you open a single job board
• Scanning and summarizing a stack of job postings quickly so you can compare signal versus noise
• Flagging the roles that match your criteria against the ones that just sound good on paper

Build a short list, not a long one. Fifteen targeted applications will beat a hundred generic ones every time.

Tip: Use AI to cross-reference your target list against public data; LinkedIn headcount trends, recent press, funding history. A quick gut check on whether a company is actually worth your time can save you weeks.

Personalize Your Resume Fast

A generic resume is a disqualification waiting to happen. Every application needs to mirror the language and priorities of that specific role. The catch is that personalizing every resume by hand takes hours, which is exactly why most people don’t do it. AI compresses that down to minutes.

• Rewriting bullet points to match the language and keywords from the JD, without losing what makes them authentic
• Identifying which parts of your experience are most relevant for that specific role, then surfacing them higher up the page
• Flagging the gaps; the things the JD asks for that your resume currently doesn’t address at all

The goal here isn’t to fabricate anything. It’s to make sure the right version of your real experience shows up for each role.

Note: Always review the output before you send it. AI will get you 90% of the way there, but your voice and your specifics need to be in there. Generic AI polish is easy to spot, and hiring managers are getting better at spotting it every day.

Pressure-Test Your Story

SEs are trained to handle objections. Funny enough, most are completely unprepared to handle objections about themselves. Your “why,” your career narrative, your positioning; all of it needs to hold up under scrutiny before you’re sitting across from a hiring manager.

Put AI in the hot seat across from you:

• Have it play a skeptical recruiter. “Why did you leave your last role?” “Why should we hire you over someone with more experience?”
• Use it to find the holes in your narrative before a human does
• Sharpen both the 30 second and the 2 minute versions of your story

Tip: Record yourself delivering your story after you’ve pressure-tested it with AI. The combination of AI feedback and watching yourself back is faster and a lot more honest than practicing in front of a friend who’s just going to tell you it sounded great.

Build Public Proof Points

In a crowded applicant pool, claims are cheap. Evidence wins. Proof points are public-facing assets that show you can do the work before anyone thinks to ask.

• Drafting short-form LinkedIn posts that document your expertise, a lesson you learned, or a tactic that actually worked (in your voice, not a robot’s)
• Turning a past deal win or technical challenge into a structured field debrief
• Repurposing one strong story into multiple formats, so you’re not starting from a blank page every time

The format matters less than the consistency. Pick one channel and show up on it.

Real World Example: A hiring manager who has already watched you break down a complex technical concept clearly on LinkedIn is a hiring manager who’s halfway sold before you ever show up to the interview. You’ve done the demo before the demo. That’s the whole point.

Run Mock Interviews

The SE interview process is notoriously long and layered. Intro call, panel, technical screen, mock demo, final round. Each stage is its own obstacle, and most candidates show up underprepared because they practiced with people who went easy on them.

AI doesn’t go easy on you (unless you ask it to):

• Simulating each interview stage, from the recruiter screen all the way to the dreaded mock discovery call
• Throwing hard follow-up questions at you to expose where your answers go soft
• Giving you structured feedback; what landed, what was vague, what raised a flag

Tip: Run a mock discovery call where AI plays a skeptical VP of Security. Tell it to push back on your questions, give you minimal answers, and throw in a curveball objection halfway through. That’s the rep you actually need before the real thing. After each session, ask it to summarize your top three weaknesses, then run it again. The gaps that keep showing up are the ones to fix first.

Personalize Your Outreach at Scale

You can’t just apply and wait. Hiring managers are buried, and if you didn’t follow up, you didn’t stand out. The problem is that personalizing outreach to every contact at every target company eats your whole day if you do it manually.

• Drafting connection requests and follow-up notes that reference something specific about the company or the person
• Writing outreach that doesn’t read like a template, because the hiring manager has seen every template ever written
• Helping you time and sequence your follow-ups so you’re persistent without being that person

Tip: The best outreach leads with what you can offer, not what you want. Use AI to help you frame every message around the value you’d bring, not the role you’re chasing. Nobody owes you a reply, so give them a reason to want to send one.

The Impact Brief: Your Close Move

This is the tactic almost nobody uses, which is exactly why it works so well. An impact brief is a one-page document you send to the hiring manager that answers a single question: here’s specifically how I’d make a difference in this role in the first 90 days.

Here’s what goes in it:

• What you’ve learned about the company, the team, and the challenge they’re solving for
• Three to five concrete actions you’d take across your first 30/60/90 days
• How you’d measure whether it’s actually working

And here’s where everything you’ve already built pays off:

• AI assembles the brief fast, using the company intel, the JD analysis, and the research you did in the earlier steps. The inputs are already sitting right there
• It pressure-tests your assumptions; does this actually address what they care about, or what you assume they care about?
• It tightens the format so the thing reads sharp and doesn’t overstay its welcome

This isn’t a cover letter. It’s a sample of how you think. That’s the difference between the SEs who get offers and the SEs who just get compliments.

Pulling it All Together

The job hunt isn’t a lottery. It’s a pipeline. And like any pipeline, the operators who run it with the most precision and the clearest signal are the ones who win. AI doesn’t replace the work, it compresses the timeline and raises the floor on everything you produce.

The SEs who come out ahead in this market are the ones who treat the job search like a deal; research the account, qualify the opportunity, build the business case, and close with evidence. You already know how to do all of that. Now you’ve got the tools to do it faster.

Happy hunting.

But we have to stop this type of thinking. It’s time we start normalizing the conversation around compensation and ensuring that we help set each other up for success. Additionally, we can help make compensation equal and fair for everyone the more we talk about it together. So let’s start this journey by exploring the different areas of compensation when it comes to being in a pre-sales role.

It Starts with Having the Right Mindset

Before we dive into dollars and cents, it’s important to know exactly what you need (vs what you want). If you haven’t done this already, here is a quick exercise for you:

• Open up a spreadsheet and list out all of the fixed costs you have each month
• Next make an entry for monthly living expenses
• Another entry for those monthly emergencies and incidentals that always creep up
• And finally an entry for something towards your savings account

Got your total monthly figure? Excellent. Multiple it by 12 and you now have a baseline for the minimum salary you need per year.

Tip: There are few certainties in life other than death and taxes. Don’t forget that the minimum salary you just calculated is a post-tax figure. You’ll need to adjust that number up based on your specific tax situation.

Defining Your Worth

Whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned pre-sales professional, knowing your worth is the next step in setting up the right mindset. This can be loosely defined as your unique set of skills, plus your experience, plus the impact you can make (both within the role and the organization). Once you put a value to that equation, you’ll have a better idea of what you can ask for in terms of compensation because you’ll know how quickly you can deliver a positive ROI.

However keep in mind that you also have to balance this against external factors as well. For example, the macroeconomics of the market as a whole, the expansion or contraction of particular industries, and the amount of available talent on the market at a given time are all external factors that impact what you can reasonably ask for (in terms of compensation). This isn’t to say that you should compromise on how you define your worth, but you should take it into consideration.

Optimize for an Outcome

Another piece to consider is optimizing your compensation in relation to a specific outcome. For example, perhaps you are just getting started in your career. Your specific outcome would be “gaining experience”; whether in the role, the industry, or both. While you don’t want to go below the minimum salary you defined earlier, you might consider taking a lower paying role if it will net you the experience you are after. You can then later use this experience to negotiate a substantial raise or much higher pay in your next role.

The opposite could also be true though. Let’s say you are at a very senior level in your career and your outcome is “not having to worry about benefits”. You could actually achieve this in two different ways; a higher salary to offset high premiums not covered by the company or a lower salary with low to no premiums fully covered by the company. The point is, there will always be trade offs, but knowing what you are optimizing for will help you to stay focused in your consideration of any compensation package as a whole.

Write Out Your Response

By now you should have a clear understanding of the minimum salary you need, the range you’d like to aim for, and what your specific outcome is. The final step is to write out the response you are going to use in the awkward game of “who brings up compensation first” when talking to recruiters and hiring managers. There are dozens of different strategies out there that you can use to navigate the waters on this topic, but knowing how to address the question clearly when the time comes will help you avoid any mis-steps.

We will talk about the difference between base salary and On Target Earnings (OTE) in the next section. For now, here are three starter templates that you can begin to make your own:

Compensation Not Listed - “I’m currently looking for a base salary between $XX and $YY with an OTE around $ZZ. This is based upon my current experience within the industry, the skill sets that I bring to the table, and the impact that I can have in this role within XX timeframe. Is that inline with the compensation range for this role?”

Tip: Always use a range so as not to box yourself into a corner. Once you state your range, back it up with hard evidence to justify (your worth). Finally, confirm that the range is acceptable so the conversation can proceed forward.

Compensation Listed (Clear) - “I noticed in the job posting that the compensation range was listed between $XX and $YY. Can you provide the breakdown of base salary vs OTE? Additionally, I would like to confirm that the range listed is still applicable for this role.”

Compensation Listed (Unclear) - “I noticed in the job posting that the compensation range for this role is very broad. I’m currently looking for a base salary between $XX and $YY with an OTE around $ZZ. This is based upon my current experience within the industry, the skill sets that I bring to the table, and the impact that I can have in this role within XX timeframe. Can you confirm this is inline with the compensation range for this role?”

Tip: With the new pay transparency laws, some organizations are trying to skirt the rules by listing huge ranges for a given role (e.g. $50,000 - $300,000 per year). If the range is unreasonable or too wide, this would be considered “unclear”.

If you’ve made it this far, you should have a clear mindset when it comes to talking about compensation. Knowing what your goals are and how to approach the conversation with hiring teams is half the battle. Now we can move on to specifics of how compensation is most commonly broken down within pre-sales.

Show Me the Money

Now it’s time to talk dollars and cents. While we’ve been mostly focused on base salary and what you need to survive, sales is a lot more nuanced than that. This is both a blessing (you can make really good money) and a curse (your money could slip away before you even get started). So let’s start by looking at how most compensation plans work.

Tip: The following breakdown is based on experience and feedback from others in a pre-sales role. Your mileage will vary by company and industry. This information is meant to provide a starting point only.

Unlike other members of the sales team (e.g. Account Executive), pre-sales often comes with a higher base. This is often 70% - 80% of your total (cash) compensation. The remaining 20% - 30% is your bonus which is usually paid out quarterly. The full formula looks like this:

On Target Earnings (OTE) = Base Salary + Annual Bonus

Remember I said sales is full of nuances? Well here is your first one. When talking about compensation, your bonus is presented as an annual amount (which makes sense because the company is talking about total compensation). However when you get to the actual offer, your bonus is actually split equally across each quarter of the fiscal year. So while you get your base salary consistently each month, your bonus is much dependent on several factors each and every quarter.

Now here is where you need to be careful. Companies will often dangle a very large OTE number in front of you as a way to attract talent (this goes for the Account Executives too). The real question to ask though is around quota attainment, which leads us to nuance number two.

How will you be “paired up” in this pre-sales role? Some pre-sales resources are paired 1:1 with an Account Executive, some are 1:many, some are based on region, and some companies use a pooling model. How you are paired up can have a big impact on your ability to hit your revenue goals (which can directly impact your bonus). During the interview process, make sure that you ask solid questions around how you will be paired and how that team performed over the last few questions.

Tip: If the job sounds too good to be true, or the numbers aren’t adding up…perform more due diligence before accepting the role. When in doubt, reach out to others that already work for the company and (politely) ask them to confirm what you’ve been told.

And finally, let’s touch on nuance number three. So far we’ve been talking about the bonus part of your compensation as it relates to revenue generating activities. But there are actually two different types of bonuses commonly used in pre-sales land; revenue based bonuses and Management Based Objective (MBOs) bonuses. Let’s look a little deeper into the differences between the two.

Tip: Almost every company on the planet has a clause in their employment contract that forces you to forfeit your bonus if you quit, are fired, or laid off prior to the date of the bonus being paid out. If you ever plan to exit your pre-sales role, make sure you time it right (if possible).

Revenue Based Bonus

For the majority of those in a pre-sales role, you’ll find that your bonus is tied to how much business you close, also called revenue or quota attainment, within a given time period (usually a quarter). This makes it fairly easy to estimate what your bonus would look like at the end of the quarter. Let’s say you had a revenue target of $100k this quarter and you closed $80k in business. You achieved 80% of your quota, so your bonus would be 80% of the total amount you are eligible for this quarter. Not bad.

The challenge with revenue based bonuses though are the way in which they are calculated. If you work the deal alone, you get 100% of the revenue (credit)towards your quota. But what if you worked the deal with a peer? What if there was a partner involved? There are so many little intricacies of how revenue attainment works that it’s often hard to keep up, but during the interview process the hiring manager should be able to provide you with a general idea of how it works for this organization.

The final point on revenue based bonuses is around quota relief (not to be confused with quota attainment). Quota relief is when you get credit towards your “total quota” for a given quarter without the need to explicitly close a deal. Wait, what?! Why would any company agree to this?! Consider this, you’ve just been hired. It’s day one on the job and your manager says to you, “Welcome to the company. Your quota for your first quarter is $500k and we are already two weeks into the quarter. Good luck.”. Yikes! Anyone that has been in pre-sales before knows that it takes a minimum of 30 days to ramp up, but more realistically it’s closer to 90 days. That means your primary focus is on learning all the things, not closing deals. Conflict of interest? I’d say so.

So, now that you’ve seen a real world example of how you can get screwed, let’s consider a few other examples where quota relief would make sense:

• During your ramp up period (first quarter)
• You start in the middle of a quarter (your ramp period is now across two quarters)
• You go out on maternity or paternity leave
• You are in a hybrid role where 50% of your time is not pre-sales related
• You work for a super early stage company that doesn’t have consistent revenue yet

While each of these situations will have certain nuances to them, talk about them up front with the hiring manager and any executives that are involved with quota assignment for the sales organization. The last thing you want is to realize one of these situations applies to you after you’ve already taken the job.

MBO Based Bonus

We’ve been talking a lot about revenue based bonuses, but what about non-revenue generating activities? There will be plenty of times that you are assigned work in your pre-sales role that won’t have any impact on revenue generation. How then do organizations incentivize pre-sales teams to get these things done? Well money of course. But more specifically, setting MBOs and tying them to a part, or whole, of your bonus.

Some common MBO items include:

• Completion of a particular technical certification
• Completion of a training course
• Achieving a milestone in a particular product
• Producing a certain amount of content in a given time period
• Closing a certain number of new customer logos
• Delivering partner training in a given time period

Again, these are only some examples and your mileage may vary. Just make sure that you are clear when reviewing any offer that you understand what type of bonus structure is in place and how the bonus itself gets broken down. In some organizations you’ll also find that quarterly bonuses can be further split into smaller chunks across revenue generating activities and MBOs.

Red Flag: Unless you are very senior in your career or are comfortable managing up, be very careful accepting a role where the bonus is tied to MBOs or KPIs that will be defined in the future. If the company is mature, this is a sign of dysfunctional sales leadership. If it’s a startup (more common), this is probably just something they haven’t had to think through yet and are wanting to kick the problem down the road. It can present serious challenges once you are in the role if you don’t know what you are being measured against and you won’t have a leg to stand on to challenge bonus payouts.

Payout Windows

The final consideration when it comes to the bonus portion of your compensation is the payout window. For example, most organizations (regardless of size) take some time to process all of the deals in a quarter. You have to account for contract close dates, churn, chargebacks, etc. On average it takes about 30 days to reconcile everything and then tie that back to quota attainment. Additionally, for any MBO based portion of your bonus, your manager will need to submit documentation that you achieved what you were supposed to. Once the organization has the final numbers and documentation they will trigger a payout for your bonus in the next payroll cycle. When all is said and done, your bonus payout will arrive between 30 - 60 days from the close of the quarter.

Tip: If you are new to pre-sales, this staggered payment situation is why I always recommend ensuring you can survive on nothing but your base salary and treat your bonus as extra. You can’t control the payment dates and sometimes things happen.

Now here is the watch point; most organizations that have a sales team up and running will have this process figured out and payments will just flow. If you work at a startup however, or a highly dysfunctional organization, then it’s a different story. You’ll need to keep a super close eye on not only the payout window, but also the payment amount. There might be times where you need to chase down payments or ensure that they are calculated correctly. For some folks, this is all part of the startup life and they are probably used to it (myself included). For others, the instability and added stress this might cause can be a deal breaker.

Red Flag: Sales is complicated. Paying your people shouldn’t be. If there is an issue with a single bonus payment, don’t assume the worst and raise the issue right away. If this becomes a recurring theme…run like hell.

Beyond Money

Moving away from dollars and cents, there is another part of compensation that is often overlooked; benefits and perks! Yes we all love cold hard cash, but sometimes you have to zoom out and consider just how much money you are potentially saving through the benefits and perks being offered as well. In fact, many companies are getting so desperate for top talent in some industries (like cybersecurity) that they have started to get really creative in the benefits and perks that they offer! So let’s look at some examples of the things you might find being offered:

WFH Stipend - you can thank covid for this one! A rare perk to see in all but the largest tech companies just five years ago, this one is usually the lead off perk these days. You can often use this stipend for a laptop, home office furniture, and other technical gear to help you get the job done. Not a bad way to acquire a few new things on the company’s dime or refresh aging gear.

Unlimited PTO - this one has been making the rounds for quite some time, however it is being met with new levels of skepticism of late. Yes it’s nice to be able to take off when you need to, but in reality many employees don’t actually take enough vacation time! When you are doing your homework and asking around about your potential employer, this is another one to gut check on how many people actually take time off.

Healthcare - if you require healthcare coverage through your employer, make sure you get a list of plans and providers offered, full stop. Healthcare is one of the most expensive line items in the United States and employers know it. Make sure they aren’t passing along huge premiums for you to pick up the tab. While many employers do try to reduce the cost of healthcare for their employees (some are even fully covered 100%), dependents can also add significant costs too if you aren’t careful.

Dental - similar to healthcare, understand your premium costs vs what your employer is covering.

Vision - similar to healthcare, understand your premium costs vs what your employer is covering.

Basic Life Insurance - a pretty common benefit still, many employers tend to offer a basic life insurance policy. Depending on the company you might also find accidental death coverage as well.

Short-Term Disability Insurance - an often overlooked benefit because you don’t often realize the importance of it until you really need it. While it isn’t the top of the list for many, it should still be taken into consideration.

Long-Term Disability Insurance - similar to short-term disability insurance, you don’t often realize the importance of this benefit until you really need it. While it also isn’t the top of the list for many, it should still be taken into consideration.

401k Match - sadly a less common benefit these days, getting a 401k match from your employer is free money. Seriously, they are giving you free money to contribute to your retirement account (up to a certain amount). If you are in saving mode, this can be a really powerful benefit.

Mental Health Insurance - finally mental health is starting to become a normalized topic in the workplace. Many companies are also starting to provide specific insurance coverage for mental health services, above and beyond what standard healthcare covers (which isn’t always a lot). Additionally, app subscriptions like Headspace and Calm are covered to help folks rest and recharge mentally.

Paid Parental Leave - another very in demand benefit these days. Many employers are providing 12 - 16 weeks of full paid time off to ensure new parents are getting the time to disconnect from work and enjoy the new addition to their family. Even better news? Paid caregiver leave is starting to appear as well with the same benefits.

Cell Phone + Internet Stipend - if you haven’t checked your cell phone bill lately, the savings from this perk might really surprise you. It’s fairly common to get coverage up to $100 each on your cell phone and home internet…that’s $2,400 per year in savings to you. Not bad!

Professional Development - perhaps one of the most under-utilized perks, professional development funds can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. If you plan ahead, you can get some serious learning done without spending a dime.

Pet Insurance - don’t laugh, but it’s a thing. While still an uncommon benefit, I’ve seen it more than once so it makes the list! Coverage will vary wildly.

Charitable Donation Matching - this is one I don’t think we see enough of and frankly I wished every company had. Again, matching amounts will vary wildly, but the fact that some companies are still willing to match at all makes it a win in my book.

Tip: Performing a quick analysis of the open job roles we track here, more than 85% of the postings don’t include a list of benefits or perks for the position. This is just dumb and antiquated to say the least so be sure to speak up and ask early what the full list of benefits and perks include.

Equity

There is one element of the compensation package that we didn’t talk about; equity. While you will often find this simple little word casually thrown in among the zillion other things listed in the job posting it is often one of the most complex topics when negotiating a compensation package. As such, I’ve decided to do a whole separate guide dedicated to equity (coming soon)! If you do receive an offer, I always advise to remove equity from the equation (initially) because there is too much you can’t answer right away. If the rest of the compensation package makes sense and you want to move forward, then come back to equity and evaluate it separately.

The Full Picture

Whew. This was a ton of material to cover, but hopefully you’ve stuck with me. The reason that compensation is such a difficult topic is because it’s a multi-variable problem. Base, bonus, benefits, perks, equity…it’s a lot to take in while also trying to get through multiple rounds of interviews at the same time.

My final piece of advice when evaluating any compensation package is to consider the game of chess. It isn’t about any single piece, the best strategy is to see the whole board. Cash is always important for us to survive, but make sure you evaluate the entirety of the package and see how each piece fits into the balance.

Waiting for a Phone Call

Usually the first part of an interview involves a phone screen with someone in HR. They scanned your resume, found some keywords that match, and want to do a quick phone screen to make sure you are both a real person and address any glaring red flags (in their mind). Ironically enough, I think the HR phone screen is the hardest part of any pre-sales interview. Why? Because you are trying to convince someone that doesn’t come from a technical background that you are not only a fit for the job, but that you stand out above the rest. Not an easy task. Unless you have someone referring you into the job (which you should), it’s hard to know if you will even get the phone call for an HR screen. Now couple this near impossible task with the different types of interviews you will go through (physically) and you are in for a fun time!

Note: Don’t get me wrong, interviews are not all doom and gloom, but the emotional aspects of interviewing are something that are not discussed enough. The examples we are talking about here are in relation to a single interview and most folks are usually juggling a few interviews, at different stages, all at the same time. It takes a toll.

To help feel prepared for the HR screen, here are some quick tips:

• If possible, know what type of conversation you are going to have. Phone, zoom, in person…it will help you prepare both mentally and physically. Since most HR screens are short and you don’t know if / when they are going to happen…they are usually a phone call.
• Prepare your answer ahead of time. Employment history, gaps, salary, why you want to work at company X, etc. Basically, know what questions to expect ahead of time since they are all pretty standard at this stage.
• Write down your answers and your questions. If there is anything super pressing that you need an answer too in the HR screen (like does the company offer healthcare benefits because the job description wasn’t clear), get those answered up front.

Once you’ve made it past the initial HR screen…that’s when the real fun begins!

An Interview Here, An Interview There

We’ve already talked about the HR screening portion of the interview, so now let’s outline what the rest of the process looks like (for a pre-sales role). While your mileage may vary by company, the general interview process is usually the same:

• The HR screen
• A conversation with the hiring manager
• The technical interview with a potential peer
• A panel interview / demo
• The offer

Each of these phases will look a little different, but overall you should know roughly what to expect going into them.

The Hiring Manager

For this portion of the interview, you are being assessed on a few different areas. What experience do you bring to the table? Would you be a good fit culturally for the company? Do you have a general understanding of the technology and space that the company operates in? Do you know anything about the company’s solutions (or even better, their competitor’s solution)? Ultimately, this is less about being “technical” and more about how you fit into the team that the hiring manager is responsible for. Since it’s early on in the interview process and everyone is used to the remote world we now live in, it’s fairly common for this portion of the interview to be held over the phone or a video call.

Tip: If it’s a video call, assume that you will have a camera on and find yourself a semi-quiet space to be in so you can stay focused.

The Technical Interview

If you’ve never been through a technical interview before, buckle up because you are in for a ride! Think of it less like an interview and more like an interrogation. These portions of the interview process are usually handled by someone already in the role, usually a little more senior. They will ask you every twisted combination of questions possible so you unfortunately need to be prepared for anything. They might go super deep on a singular topic or stay broad and touch on many different topics. Who knows!

One thing is for certain though, the technical portion of the interview has to relate to the solution being sold. This should help narrow the scope a little bit, but make sure you are prepared. Again, this portion of the interview is most likely to occur over the phone or a video call.

Note: For the technical interview, anything you listed on your resume or LinkedIn profile is fair game to be questioned! If you haven’t already, make sure you clean up both items and only list things that are relevant to the type of pre-sales role that you are applying too or something that you’ve worked on in the last 5(ish) years.

Tip: Never ever lie or make up an answer in a technical interview (well any part of the interview really, but especially the technical part of the interview). Most of the people doing these interviews have been at this a while and we can tell very quickly when you are out of your depth on a given topic. If you don’t know the answer, either be honest about that OR be up front and say, “I don’t know the answer to the question, however this is how I might approach finding out the answer”.

The Panel Interview

This is one of the last phases of the interview process and it’s also the phase that I see the most people panic about. While every interview process is different, the most common scenario is that you will have to get a demo of a product or solution to a panel of individuals (which usually include the hiring manager). Other than a date and a time, there is often very little information provided to you (this is trap number one). Once you are on the call, most people dive right into the demo rattling off features and technical points (trap number two). Fifteen minutes later, when you finally come up for air, and ask if anyone has questions…you’ll either get crickets or you’ll be hammered (trap number three).

So let’s re-wind.

Demo Prep - Before the meeting ever occurs, make sure you set the stage (the interviewers won’t do it for you). If necessary, assign each person a role / persona, just like in a real meeting. Send out an agenda ahead of the interview meeting and clearly outline what you plan to cover. When you finally get into the meeting, reference the preparation that you did and ask if anyone has any questions prior to you getting started.

Outcomes, Not Features - For too long, people have referred to the pre-sales role as the “technical person” in the room. While you are indeed the technical person, you are also in the business of selling them on something; more specifically, selling them on an outcome. When you give your demo, break apart each topic you plan to cover with a technical statement tied to a business outcome (super important!).

Pace Yourself - The worst thing you can do in a demo is ramble on for 15 minutes. That is also true when it comes to an interview scenario as well. If you are doing the demo to the panel over video chat, set a timer in the corner of your screen or on your phone next to you. Use the time to ensure that you breathe, pause to see “reactions in the room”, and prompt each person to ask a question. If your audience isn’t engaged, you are in trouble.

The Offer

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! It’s a great feeling to receive that offer. If the offer is being presented to you verbally, make sure you ask for it in writing within a reasonable time frame after the call. Also set the expectation that you will need time to review the offer and communicate back any questions or concerns you might have. Finally, make sure you weigh all the components of the offer provided to you so you know where to negotiate if necessary. Not sure what to look for, I got you covered.

Closing Thoughts

In no particular order, here are some final tips to remember throughout the interview process.

• Always have the answers to (dumb) questions written down ahead of time so you can respond confidently and calmly. Things like, “why are you looking to leave”, “can you explain this employment gap”, “you don’t have experience with X”. These things will come up, they are often to poke at anything the employer might consider a red flag (whether it’s a valid consideration or not).

• While we are still heavily living in a remote first world, the need to see customers, colleagues, etc. in person is starting to return into the business world. It’s hard to say how much of your interview process will be virtual vs in person, but if you are required to go in person for the interview…make sure you leave enough time for travel, building security, etc. It seems obvious but many of us haven’t had to do this in a while and we forget just how long some of these things take.

• Always, always, always, bring a list of questions with you to every portion of the interview. As strange as it seems, don’t forget that interviews are a two way street. You are interviewing and assessing them just as much as they are doing the same to you. Make sure you ask the tough questions, understand what the company is like, and know that you would rather uncover something during the interview process than start working there and be in a position where you need to leave a few weeks into the job. Which leads me to my next point.

• Do your research. Before each meeting. Before the offer. Before you even apply. Talk to folks that are already in the role at the company. Talk to former employees. Find out everything you can on what it’s like to work for your potential future employer and the culture + teams they have built. You should never be surprised in an interview, ever.

• Whether you are a seasoned pre-sales professional or a newcomer to the role; make sure that you practice for each phase of the interview process. This includes answering technical questions, the demo, setting agendas, etc. We learn, and improve, through practice…even those of us who have been at this a while.

By this point you should be armed with everything you need to crush the interview process, no matter where you applied. Yes, there is still an emotional component. No, there is nothing you can do to make that fully go away. But going in prepared, and as calm as you can possibly be, is the best way to ensure that they see the best, and most authentic, version of you. If you are still feeling nervous, practice with a friend and solicit some feedback. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it certainly helps you make progress.

If I were to reflect on lessons learned and changes to the industry, here are three key pieces of advice I would give to my (younger) self as a new Sales Engineer trying to land my first role:

1. Before applying to a single job, understand the skills you need first
2. Choose your initial path into the industry (values + organization type)
3. Apply to a specific set of roles with targeted outreach

The name of the game is value. Whether you are applying for a job or meeting with a customer, the best way to establish trust and build a relationship is to continuously deliver value.

Assessing the Skills You Need

Everyone has skills, most of the time we just don’t stop and take inventory of what those skills are. Before you try and hunt for a technical sales job, it’s important to make sure you have a baseline level of your current skills, address any gaps in your knowledge, and set yourself up for the best chances for success. I’ll cover the three main groups of skills you’ll need for a technical sales role.

Learning the Business

The first skill set you should master is all about how businesses work. Regardless of what business you work for, sell too, etc. there is a core set of functions that are common to all of them. The high level process looks something like this:

• Build a product (physical or digital)
• Market to the world that your product is for sale
• Review the price and decide to purchase the product
• Agree to any legals or terms and conditions (if applicable)

Sounds simple enough, right? For a small product it might be. Think about buying an iPhone. Apple builds a new version of the phone, markets it to the world at a global event, and hours later it is available for sale on their website. Consumers review the price, complain it’s too expensive, and then buy one anyway. During the checkout process you agree to Apple’s terms and conditions as well as acknowledge you need a separate phone agreement for cell service.

Now instead of marketing this new iPhone to consumers, Apple wants to sell it to 30,000 employees who work for a defense contractor that frequently have access to classified data. Suddenly this deal takes on several layers of complexity. How will the phones be provisioned for each user? How can we keep the data on them safe? I don’t want to pay for 30,000 iPhones in one fell swoop, but I want a deal so what terms work for both parties? Once turned on, what data does Apple have access to on these phones? See where this is going?

Let’s take our high level process and abstract it one final layer higher. Now it looks something like this:

• Product
• Marketing
• Sales + Procurement
• Legal + Compliance

Each of these areas have certain nuances to them as you sell to various organizations of different sizes, but each component still remains critical to the whole. The more you understand how businesses work, the teams involved at each phase, and the pain points they experience…the better you’ll be able to connect to those individuals and help provide them with value (hopefully in relation to the solution you are selling).

Soft Skills

Some people see the words “soft skills” and suddenly anxiety sets in, particularly if you tend to be more technical in nature. But you aren’t looking for a developer job, you want to be in technical sales, and that means half the job is about, ya know, selling. Don’t worry, in this second skill set we’ll talk through some of the key soft skills you need.

Communication - this one seems like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how complicated communication can be. Communication also happens in many forms. Are you a good presenter? Perhaps you excel at verbal communication. But are you also a good listener? What about written communication? No one is good at everything, but when taking inventory, be honest with yourself.

Critical Thinking - everyday you make decisions, perhaps without even thinking about them. What to have for breakfast. What music to listen to while working. Critical thinking goes beyond these mundane choices and pushes you to really analyze situations and make informed decisions. This often requires you to be creative, adaptable, and to a degree, curious.

Teamwork - there is no flying solo in sales so working together as a team is a huge aspect of the job. Not only that, but this category includes working with others outside of your organization. This means collaboration, empathy, and accepting feedback are all big parts of the job. The greatest way to build a relationship is to see a situation from someone else’s viewpoint.

Leadership - you probably aren’t taking on a leadership role for your first technical sales job, but knowing how to display leadership qualities will certainly help you advance quickly. Keep in mind that having leadership skills doesn’t mean that you need to head straight for a manager role. Some people enjoy being individual contributors, but still benefit from the ability to lead a team on a project or big sales deal.

In order to see where you shine, and where you could use some work, we pulled together a list of skills for each of these categories. While it is not an exhaustive list, it is enough to point you in the right direction. You can grab it here.

Niche Down

The final skill set is actually more about how you present yourself (and your current skills). Ask yourself the following question; what do you want to be known for? The world of cybersecurity is HUGE (seriously there are so many areas you can specialize in). While many people just starting out in technical sales are often generalists, you will often have some skills already. Maybe you aren’t ready to niche down just yet, but it’s something that will help you stand out.

If you aren’t ready to pick a niche just yet, think about some of the areas that interest you most. Think of them as goals and figure out what you really want to be known for.

Tip: Just because you have skills in a particular area does not mean you are tied to that area forever. As your skills grow you might develop expertise in a different area or even a broader one.

The last step is to figure out which channel makes the most sense for you to showcase your expertise. Maybe it’s a blog. Perhaps LinkedIn or even YouTube. There are endless amounts of channels to choose from, the most important part is that you choose ONE and show up consistently. Yes this is hard, but you are in it for the long game and this is how to make an impact.

Real World Example - You are applying for your first technical sales role, but want to find a way to stand out. Let’s say you have five years of work experience and your current expertise is in project management. You start a YouTube channel where you post 3 - 5 minute videos twice a week talking about an aspect of project management. Imagine you post a video on how you collaborated with multiple teams (teamwork skill), another video on how you dealt with conflict resolution on a difficult project (leadership skill), or you do a video on the process you use to keep project participants updated with the pertinent information (communication skill). When you apply for your technical sales job you can highlight your YouTube channel in your LinkedIn profile, resume, and cover letter. This will not only help you stand out, but it provides real examples of how you can both execute an idea and how you were successful in your current role.

If you have a side hustle, personal brand, or even a half decent social media following…think about how you can shape this to showcase your current skills and how they would apply towards the technical sales role.

Defining Your Initial path

The last piece to the puzzle before you start applying for jobs is to outline what your initial path into the technical sales career path will look like. The type of organization you work for, their culture, and your own core values all need to jive in order for you to be successful.

Startup World vs Established Company

Are you looking for a role that is super fast paced, lacks official processes, and brimming with endless opportunities? You are probably looking for a technical sales role within a startup. Perhaps that is not you though and you prefer an organization with clear policies, structure, and rather focus on just your role vs. the whole company changing. You are probably looking for a technical sales role within an established company.

Each path has its pros and cons, but will also have a big impact on the skills you develop in the role as well. Let’s look at how you can align your own values with a given path.

Understanding Your Core Values

Everyone has core values, but oftentimes we don’t think about them when we are trying to break into a new role. As the market has shifted to give job seekers more choices, it’s time to make sure you stand firm in your core values, not just because they are important to you, but also because they will help ensure you have a greater chance of success in your future role.

If you don’t have one already, make a list of your core values. For example:

• Remote work - I need a job that offers fully remote or a hybrid option
• Family first - I have kids with unpredictable schedules and limited childcare, does that fit with the company’s culture?
• Caring about health - Do I have the cash to cover healthcare if not offered by the company (e.g. startup)
• Giving back - How does giving back and volunteerism fit into the company culture?

This is obviously just a small sample, but you get the idea. Know what’s a make-or-break for you when it comes time to apply for jobs and evaluate offers.

The last component worth mentioning in this section is cash vs equity. Most technical sales roles come with a combination of both, but that combination looks really different depending on the type of company you work for. While it’s not a core value per se, make sure you know if having more cash right now or more equity (potential longer term payout) is more critical for you right now.

Putting it All Together

Alright, you have your skills, core values, and company types all mapped out. Now let’s put it all together to execute a plan to get you hired! First, we need to start building out a list of companies that you want to target.

Building Your Ideal Companies List

There are two places you should look to source jobs from when starting to build out your list; private communities and LinkedIn. Private communities might be a mailing list, a slack channel, or some other medium where you have access to a community of other like minded individuals. Most of these communities have a job posting section which is a great place to start. They definitely aren’t as easy to search or filter, but data is data.

I recommend pulling all of this information into a Google Sheet, or Excel if you like that kind of thing, to keep it simple. Fields to track include:

• Company Name
• Funding
• Role Name
• Location
• Contacts
• Link to Job Posting

Once you’ve combed through your private communities, pivot over to LinkedIn and start running some searches for the types of companies that you want to work with (remember the criteria you defined earlier).

Tip: If this is your first technical sales job it’s ok if you don’t meet all of the requirements listed in the job description. Most cybersecurity job descriptions are completely unrealistic, and almost none of them are geared towards entry level applicants. If you meet 50% of the skills they are looking for, add it to your list.

Applying + Outreach

All finished with your list? Excellent, now it’s time to pull together some outreach templates. This should resemble something like a cover letter, but adjusted for social media. You don’t want to email a straight list of your accomplishments, but rather find a way to connect with (ideally) the hiring manager and secondly any other contact that you have within the company.

At this point you should have enough to begin applying to some of the jobs on your list and also conducting outreach at the same time. There is really no right order to the sequence. Some people like to see if their outreach gets a response before they apply to a position while others apply first and then begin outreach. You do you.

The most important part of this process is making sure that you stand out. Your outreach has to help differentiate you vs all the applicants also messaging the hiring manager. Make sure that your message tries to connect on a personal level while also highlighting a few reasons why you would be a good fit.

The Art of the Follow Up

Let’s face it, not everyone is going to respond to your messages. Persistence is certainly key in any sales role, but make sure that you don’t over do it. If you don’t hear back from someone, you should follow up at least once. The timing could have been off, maybe they were out of office, or maybe they just aren’t interested. Following up is important, but so is the language you use. Make sure to frame your message in a way that doesn’t come across as nagging or pushy!

Preparing for the Interview

You did it! A few folks have responded to your outreach, HR has called over, and you have a handful of intro calls booked. No time to rest because now is where the fun begins! Review the messages you used for each contact and ensure that you have a clear set of talking points. Technical sales interviews are often lengthy and well, technical. The worst thing you can do is blow this chance by being unprepared (but you’d never do that…right?).

Remember, job hunting in any market is rough. In a fiercely competitive industry like cybersecurity it can rise to a whole new level. Patience, persistence, and creativity are the key to help you land your first technical sales position.

Happy hunting!

In this guide we are setting out to answer a single question; should Sales Engineers learn how to code?

What Does “Coding” Actually Mean?

Great question, so glad that you asked! There are actually two different aspects here; coding and scripting. Both terms are often used interchangeably, but there are slight differences between them. Let’s look at a definition of each:

Coding - for the purposes of this guide, the term coding refers to the act of building a complete website, web application, mobile application, or desktop application (regardless of the programming language used).

Scripting - for the purposes of this guide, the term scripting refers to the use of an interpreted programming language to simplify or automate a given task with a specific outcome.

The reason we describe them this way is twofold; first because of the effort required to learn (a language), and secondly the time it takes to achieve a desired outcome. For example, you can often pick up a scripting language and a functioning sample in a few hours. It requires significantly more time to learn (a language) used for the development of, let’s say, a web application.

Alright, the distinction is now clear, but we still haven’t answered the question. In fact, we have complicated it a bit more. Should Sales Engineers learn to script, code, or both? Let’s ask some more pointed questions to get to the answer.

Should You Learn to Script?

Today, the majority of all software products are delivered from the cloud (also known as SaaS offerings). Even in the SaaS model though, there might be a component that needs to be downloaded to a user’s laptop or deployed to a cloud environment. In a pre-sales capacity, you’ll have three main tasks that you’ll be responsible for:

• Deploying the (software) product
• Configuring the product
• Integrating the product

If your company is far enough along in the product maturity process, you should be able to accomplish each of these tasks through the product User Interface (UI). Interestingly though, the last point about integration can sometimes pose a challenge (since not all integrations are available by default). Additionally, what if you had to configure hundreds of systems with different settings based on a set of parameters. In both of these scenarios, we want to automate as much of this as possible.

Hopefully your solution was also built with an API that has half decent documentation. Using that API, you could automate the deployment, configuration, or even integration of your solution. So what’s the catch? APIs need to be accessed programmatically. Working with an API requires you to be able to read code and understand the expected result of calling an API endpoint. This is not the same thing as using code to build an application (larger complexity factor).

Using the API, you can then develop a set of scripts to automate the tasks we defined earlier. Additionally, if you do any work with cloud environments like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, you are almost required to learn how to script. These vendors all have UIs that you can use for certain tasks, but to harness the power of a cloud environment at scale you really need the ability to automate tasks, which means scripting.

Tip: When you are interviewing with a company make sure to ask a lot of questions about product maturity, roadmap items, and common use cases or integrations with existing customer tech stacks. This should help you gauge how much you will need to flex your scripting muscles if you join the company.

So have we answered the original question yet? Not really. Let’s keep digging.

Should You Learn to Code?

This is a more complex question because learning to code is a more complex undertaking. Are you interested in learning the front-end or the back-end? Which architecture patterns should you use? What about the choice of language to code in? The combinations here are endless, which can seem really overwhelming…but there are some pretty compelling reasons to dive in anyway.

Learning to Code has Wildly Changed

Ten years ago learning to code was a huge undertaking. You had to build virtual machines to host your environments, all user interfaces were served from the back-end, and resources were mainly limited to Stack Overflow forums. Today, there are dozens of monthly services you can subscribe to that will teach you how to code right in your browser. Additionally, with the rise in serverless and API gateways, the ability to deploy applications has been reduced to minutes from hours.

Sure, it is still a time commitment to learn how to code and it takes practice just like anything else, but the barrier to entry is significantly reduced.

Experiencing Customer Pains

Imagine you are selling a solution that helps Application Security teams hunt down vulnerabilities in their code to keep their applications secure. Sure you can read all of the marketing materials, sales enablement materials, and product documentation…but unless you’ve lived the pain yourself, it’s always hard to have a complete appreciation of the challenges your customers go through. One way to replicate that pain is to put yourself in their shoes (literally). In this example, you could build, deploy, and secure a web application of your own creation to see what the experience is like. Yes, it’s not the scale of an enterprise application, but you will still learn a lot along the way and perhaps uncover new use cases or pain points that weren’t previously considered.

Note: The process of building, deploying, and securing a full blown web application is no small undertaking. This would also be in addition to your full time role in pre-sales. It’s always important to weigh the pros and cons of an undertaking like this, but also know that growth requires a little hard work every now and then.

As an added bonus, you could also use your newly built web application to perform demos. It (might) add some trust to the conversation when talking to your prospect (in this case the Application Security team).

Now I’m not advocating that everyone go out and start building web applications (or similar). You have to assess the value it might bring to your role and sales motion against how your solution is deployed and consumed. For example, some SaaS solutions only hook into large enterprise applications like Salesforce (and you can’t replicate Salesforce).

Tip: If you are deploying your own web applications, hosting environments, or integrations, please make sure you consult with your internal security team so that you aren’t violating any company security policies and are using best practices for securing your environments. The last thing you want to do is increase the attack surface for your organization.

Building Your Own Integrations

The final benefit that comes from learning to code is the ability to build your own integrations. Let’s say your customer needs to bring data from your application into their own data lake for further analysis, but a direct (one-click) integration isn’t available. Knowing how to code allows you to (potentially) build the integration yourself and add some direct and immediate value to your customer.

Note: If you are in a hybrid role where you are responsible for post-sales deployments in addition to pre-sales, developing these types of integrations might be part of your job.

The flexibility to build custom integrations is a huge value add, but also be aware of the dangers of needing to support what you build. Always consult with your product and custom success teams before launching into integration development.

The Final Answer

Should Sales Engineers learn to code? While scripting is becoming vital to the pre-sales role to automate tasks and orchestrate large environments, coding itself is still not a hard requirement. There are however many compelling reasons why you should learn some basic coding skills. In addition to being able to enhance your demos with a live environment, you can help uncover deeper customer pain points, and potentially drive greater value.

What is a T-Shaped Person?

No this isn’t a made up term, it is a real thing. In fact, you might have even run into this concept before when choosing your career path as a generalist vs a specialist. The T-shaped individual takes the conversation one step further by combining two main characteristics; the vertical stroke of the “T” representing depth of skill, and the horizontal stroke of the “T” representing breadth of skills. The greater the ability to collaborate across disciplines, the larger the impact an individual can have within an organization.

For this to really make sense though, let’s look at three different types of individuals; the generalist, the I-shaped individual, and the T-shaped individual.

The Generalist

If you are just starting out in your career or have avoided niching down, you are considered a generalist. You most likely know a little bit about a lot of different domains within cybersecurity. As you progress in your career and work for different companies, you’ll tend to find areas that interest you more than others (naturally). Being a generalist can also go beyond technical skills and include softer skills such as communication and writing, however your ability to use these skills will still be superficial at best.

The I-Shaped Individual

The I-shaped individual is really just another name for a specialist. This is usually someone with deep technical expertise and domain knowledge in a specific area. For example, let’s say you niche down and become a penetration tester. You might have deep knowledge in how to break into systems, social engineering, and using code to automate attacks. On the flip side you probably wouldn’t be an expert in compliance or cloud security.

The T-Shaped Individual

We’ve covered those with broad skills (generalist) and those with specific expertise (I-shaped). Now let’s combine them to talk about the T-shaped individual, someone that combines both breadth of knowledge and depth in key areas. They are often well versed in multiple disciplines and experts in a handful of areas. To use the cliche, they have “the best of both worlds” by being able to go deep and wide.

While some people really enjoy being generalists, or experts in a specific area, know that to be successful in a pre-sales role you will need to use more than just technical aptitude. By growing your soft skills or skills in adjoining disciplines (like marketing or customer success), you are naturally transforming yourself to be more T-shaped without even realizing it.

Benefits of Being a T-Shaped Sales Engineer

Whether you want to be a senior level individual contributor or lead a team of people, being T-shaped will help to unlock several doors for you. As you gain experience in pre-sales you will begin to build empathy for those you interact with (internally and externally). This will give you a greater appreciation for their pain points while allowing you to deliver more value to them.

Strategic Advisor vs Technical Expert

Have you ever worked with a customer trying to make inroads towards the executive team only to be sidelined because they view you as the “technical expert”? T-shaped individuals are well positioned to overcome this objection because they have the ability to draw from both several areas of technical expertise as well as experience from working with various stakeholders on the customer side. Perhaps you are building an ROI model for an executive or working with the risk team on a compliance requirement.

The ability to have these different conversations while providing guidance can help differentiate you to your customers because you have broken free from the “technical expert” box they put you in. This not only helps to establish trust, but it makes you a valuable internal resource as well.

Driving More Value

The role of the Sales Engineer often goes beyond just supporting sales to include support for internal teams, like Marketing or Product. Knowing how to support others in these adjoining roles is critical to being successful both in your individual role and as part of a larger team within an organization.

As the person constantly talking to customers, you are privy to conversations, data, and feedback that can help shape everything from messaging to events to new product features. If you can learn to think like a marketer or a product person, you have a greater chance of providing support and feedback to those teams in a way that makes it easier for them to understand (which in turn drives up your value internally).

Tip: If you are in a pre-sales leadership position, investing in T-shaped individuals helps to strengthen collaboration and communication among both existing team members and between internal teams. Breaking down those silos can help with increasing employee agility and improves the organization’s overall efficiency.

The Hunt for T-Shaped Individuals When Hiring

Unsurprisingly, pre-sales, and cybersecurity pre-sales more specifically, continues to be a hot job market with some fierce competition for roles. When hiring for pre-sales positions, make sure you consider what type of person you are looking to hire (beyond just technical expertise). Do you need someone with deep technical expertise (I-shaped) or someone that is well rounded who can adapt to multiple roles as needed (T-shaped)?

Here are some key tips for finding the right choice.

Resumes are Only Part of the Equation

The first item that you often see when considering someone for a position, the resume tends to paint a very specific picture of an individual. However, what do you know about the person if you look beyond their resume? Are they active on social media? Do they have any side projects?

Many people don’t keep their resume updated because they only need them when they are looking for a new job. When they do update them, there is a chance that they forget to include information. Yes, the burden is on job seekers to put their best foot forward, but you also don’t want to miss out on really good talent because of an oversight on their resume.

Another common challenge is the initial HR scanning that disqualifies people based on keywords, or lack thereof, in their resume. Because T-shaped individuals have a variety of breadth and depth, they might be filtered out for not including certain skills or keywords in their resumes…even if they might be an awesome fit for the role.

Just don’t forget that resumes are only one part of the equation in the hunt for talent.

What to Include in Job Descriptions

Job descriptions these days are pretty standard when it comes to information. A little about the company, a little about the role, and a little about the technical skills. What’s often omitted though, is the broad context of who you’ll be collaborating with and some of the lateral skills that will be needed to do the role.

You don’t want to just hire someone to “fill a seat”, you want them to be successful. By providing more content and context within the job description itself, it will give applicants a better sense of what’s really needed to get things done and be successful in the role.

Where to Go From Here

Whether you are looking to build up your skills or hire more people for your team, you hopefully see the value in T-shaped individuals. If you are serious about branching out to become more T-shaped, start by talking to other team members in different departments (like Marketing or Product). Get a sense of their daily challenges and translate that back into areas where you can provide help. Always remember that the day you become comfortable in your job is the day you’ll stop growing.