Just getting started

This is "The Art of Sales Engineering", a blog hosted by Paul Vogt, a Sales Engineering Leader with more than a decade of experience in presales and fifteen years in management.  During that time, I've had the opportunity to help grow hundreds of folks into our trade as well as coach  new leaders as well as help existing one refine their skills.    I have also learned a ton and made many mistakes myself.

For the vast majority of us working in technical presales, we learn via "on the job training" (OJT).  Many of us are "home grown", as in we did delivery or development until our company discovered they needed someone doing presales stuff.  Others, like myself, discovered sales engineering, thought it sounded cool, applied and landed a job then immediately discovered how little we knew.  Very few of us have had formal training and even years into our roles, many of us are struggling with common best practices.  Now I'm not saying my content will be "best practices", but what I hope is that my perspectives can help others along their journey so that they don't need to learn lessons the hard way as many of us have done.  

The same goes for leadership.  A large portion of us get into leadership because we were fantastic individual contributors (ICs) who wanted greater responsibility, then one day we are responsible for folks livelihoods and careers.  Like SEs, we typically receive little formal schooling and many unfortunately get almost no coaching.  Furthermore, much of the classroom time we get is so broad that we struggle to apply it OR it assumes a foundation in leadership that must be developed on its own.  As a result, a good number of us absolutely suck as leaders for several years before we start to figure the basics out (I know I did).  

My goal here is to share thoughts, experiences, and ideas with SEs, aspiring leaders, and existing leaders that can hopefully help them on their journey.  The primary purpose is to eventually refine the content into a book, so please feel free to share feedback, thoughts, or even your own experiences.

Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published!