Daniel Berry

A Sales Engineer's goal is to make a sale, not simply answer questions and consult. We are not impartial. If you're an impartial SE, you're not doing your job. Whatever you call it, System, Sales, Consultant, or whatever, we gain a high level of trust and are able to get much more information from a prospect than a sales person can. This allows us to share strategic information with the sales person, direct and demo the most valuable areas or uses of the product, provide workarounds for product problem areas, and build a higher level of confidence in what we're selling to make the deal close easier and more valuable.

Sales people oversell but are often not trusted.

Engineers are trusted but often undersell because they lack persuasive ability.

A good SE can do both and finds the right balance for the situation.

A good Sales Engineer needs the mind of an engineer and the personality of a sales person. Tough to find and tough to train.