A good Sales Engineer can truly turn your sales strategy around. Working to simplify complex concepts and turn them into easy to understand selling points, they can ensure that potential clients and customers truly understand the benefits of your products and services.
Since this role has such a direct impact on your revenue, it’s important to hire the right person for the job. The essential skills for a Sales Engineer are:
- Excellent communication and negotiation skills.
- Technical understanding of your industry, products or services.
- Ability to work with different departments to produce a comprehensive sales strategy.
- Strong mathematical skills.
- Fluency with MS Office.
- Excellent networking skills.
- Strong problem-solving ability.
Depending on your client base you may also need to confirm that the candidate has a driving license and is willing to travel.
How to interview a Sales Engineer
Since they will essentially be a spokesperson for your company, as well as ensuring that your services are communicated effectively, asking the right interview questions for a Sales Engineer is critical.
We’ve put together a list of Sales Engineer interview questions that’ll help you assess different skillsets in your candidate. These questions are best utilised at the start of the interview process so that you can decide whether to proceed to the next steps.
How to open the job interview
If you want to accurately assess the cultural and skill fit of a potential hire in your team, it’s best to start off by putting them at ease.
Interviews are nerve-wracking, whatever your role or seniority, so preparing some laidback interview questions for your Sales Engineer will mean that you can fully experience their personality and skills. This section of the interview will only be a few minutes long, then you can get into the more technical side of things.