This month’s MTS Edge newsletter features a lead article
about Pricing And The Sales Engineer. Judging by some of the emails I received
it is a very contentious subject. My view, and it’s a simple straightforward one,
is that SE’s need to stay as far away from pricing as they can – at least from
the customer viewpoint. So let me explain that in a little more detail.
First, on the scale of things that SE’s do and Account
Manager’s do – pricing should clearly be the sales role. Yet in many companies
it isn’t. SE’s are asked to put together configurations, and then to price them
out – leaving the salesguy with not much to do in that area except apply
specials and discounts and get approval (yes – and I know that is not always
easy!) That kind of behavior is prevalent in hardware companies, in companies
that deal with a lot of RFPs and in subscription model type environments.
There is enough for SE’s to do during the sale without
having to get involved in complex pricing and configuration. Yes – the SE
should validate the configuration and make sure that it is technically accurate
and does the job for the customer, but they shouldn’t put the initial
configuration together or price it. If your pricing and config is so complex
that sales cannot do it – how can a customer ever hope to understand it? So if
a rep (or a partner) can’t do pricing and config I think it is the role of
sales management to teach them – not of the SE to bail them out. Contentious - yes.
A little “not my job: - yes. But an appropriate use of resources and applying skills
strength to strength. I've seen some SE teams spend 30% of their time on this task.
That said – any senior and experienced SE should understand
the pricing model of their services/solution/product. Just as you can usually
tell in the first 15 minutes of a call whether you are a “good fit”, you should
also know an approximate deal size that you are looking at. As far as the
customer is concerned you know nothing, but behind the scenes it helps you to
be honest and do the right thing for the customer.
Just my thoughts.
