Sales Engineering Process

Process on how Support Team can help Sales close deals

Sales engineering and Pre-Sales Support

Sales Engineering is a Pre-Sales Support given by the Customer Support Team in order to help Sales close deals for new customers (not for existing customers). This goes from doing pre-sales tech support, sales calls, technical consulting, and if it is needed, demos and post-processing.

 

Pre-Sales Support will:

• Assist on technical questions
• Assist in giving support to the potential client/end-user
• Help Sales close the sales cycle sooner
• Answer obstacles on Sales (technical and detailed questions)
• Include or update the Sales Manager on all communications with the customer
• With approval, conduct demos and even do/help on post-processing

Pre-Sales Support will not:

• Promise feature requests or use ‘future’ selling tactics
• Be involved in any sales discussion (prices, discounts, bundles, etc)
• Be a consultant
• Offer onsite assistance

 

How to create a Pre-Sales Support request

• Sales Rep goes to the created deal for the potential customer

• Sales Rep creates a ticket that will be associated with his existing deal. 

• Sales Rep puts the ticket under “Sales Engineering” Pipeline
• Sales Rep can choose different Ticket Status. If the Support Team is not aware of this case, the best option would be “New Request”
• It is important that the SE changes the Ticket Status so anyone can check the progress

• In the Ticket Description, describe briefly what it is about (all the details will be filled later under Notes)

 

• SE should be the ‘ticket owner’
• It is important that “Sales Engineering” is selected under the Ticket Main Category so the Support Team can see it.
• Under Incident Date, chose the Due Date or the proposed date for the demo (talk, conference, etc)
• Write a Note to the Sales Engineer and use the Snippet Sales Engineering, completing all the fields

 

• SE creates a note tagging Jasna and asking for approval. Only after this, SE and Sales Rep can proceed with details.

 

Closing the ticket

• The ticket owner closes  SE tickets.
• To close the ticket there are 4 different options that have to do with the impact it’s had on the potential client. The sales rep will close it according to what he/she feels the impact was.

1. Negative impact on the deal
2. Unclear or neutral
3. Positive impact - time-saving, increased confidence in the deal
4. Key involvement, removed an essential roadblock to deal

• The ticket owner will have to add the time it took them to work on the presale support request.
  
  

 

Scope and limits for Pre-Sales Support members

• They can dedicate ⅕ of their time to helping the Sales Team.
• They are answering tickets on a daily basis for the Customer Success team so they’re expected to continue answering them.
• If a Pre-Sales Support member is asked to be on a trip for more than one day (Exhibitions, Demos, Presentations), Jasna should be consulted beforehand to check availability. It should be clear why it is important and the level of priority.
• They can deny an invitation if it overlaps with their work and can ask to reschedule the meeting/presentation/call if they need to.
• Sales Engineering Tickets will be created on Hubspot and checked daily by Support Team members. Should there be any questions, a Skype call can help clarify details.
• Sales Engineering Tickets should be less than 2 per week 
• The work for Pre-Sales Support members ends when their presentation/meeting/demo/call is over unless they agree to share information with the potential customer (maps, examples, post-processing). In this case, they will cc the Sales Rep in every email they exchange with the potential customer.
• Unless otherwise discussed, the Sales Manager will set the scope of the SE involvement and communicate with both the Support Manager and the SE
• The SE will work under the direction of the Sales Manager throughout the scope of the activity.