1.
Two SE leaders were promoted to match the status
of their sales peers. A VP of WW Sales Engineers became an EVP, and a Director
of North American SE’s was elevated to a VP. I am sensitive to this as many
years ago it always used to bother me that I was a SE Director with a team of
over 40 people, and worked side-by-side with area sales VP’s who had teams of
10 to 20. It struck me as a sign of the different status between sales and
presales even in the eyes of HR at the time. OK – I’m just sensitive..
2.
A mid-size software company decided to
re-organize their SE team and eliminated the horrendous “player-coach”
positions they had created. That position required a lead SE to manage 4-6 other
SE’s and still do a regular SE job. Leadership is a full-time job. Awesome!
3.
It’s the year of SE Leadership. We’ve now run
three SE specific leadership workshops already, have another three booked and
two more likely. This is a global phenomenon and not just limited to the US.
4.
A joint group of sales and presales individuals “negotiated”
an agreement with Marketing to update their slide decks so they were customer
focused instead of analyst and/or “what’s new?” focused.
5. Two other large technology companies started up
their own grow-your-own SE programs. Taking in college recruits and putting
them through a comprehensive 12-18 month training program.
6.
Three companies modified their salesforce.com
practices to allow SE entry of technical and business sales data.
A good month indeed!
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