It typically happens in the latter sales stages. Your team and management are engaged in forecasting and reviewing all of the details of an opportunity and trying to make a meaningful estimation of whether you have or will actually win the business. Inevitably, the question comes up, as it well should, “do we have the technical win?”

As the sales engineer on the opportunity, everyone looks to you for the answer. Well, do we? How do you know and how can you be sure? Or, what exactly is the “technical win”?

The technical win is assurances from the customer that the product or solution that we are proposing meets their needs and the subsequent support to whomever is responsible for making the purchase to go ahead and do so. The “win” is determined by customer stakeholders who are typically responsible for ensuring that the technology meets the specific requirements of their project or initiative and fits well into their existing technology environment. It is essentially a vote of confidence and support that the solution can be successfully implemented to meet the needs of the business and produce value for the organization. There are many potential indicators that can let you know if you have the technical win. Such as:

• The customer is investing in or has expressed significant interest in the necessary training to enable them to implement the solution on their own.
• The customer has informed you of their implementation timeline, the details of the project and it’s supporting business case, and has asked you to be involved throughout the entire implementation lifecycle.
• The customer is asking for skilled resources from your organization or from your business partners to help them implement the solution.
• Your outstanding relationship with the technical stakeholders before and during the opportunity sales cycle has established trust such that they have shared the results of any evaluations or proofs of concept that they have conducted with your and your competitors’ products. You have seen that your product emerged as the most appropriate for their business.
• The customer responded favorably to the simple question, “when will you be moving forward with implementation of our solution?”

Opportunities are often won and lost based on existing business relationships, strategic direction of either the customer or the supplier, contractual Ts & Cs, and even pricing. Most of these conditions are beyond the influence of the technical sales professional. What IS within the sales engineer’s scope of responsibility, however, is ensuring that you never lose because you failed to demonstrate the technical merits of your solution to the customer, how it fits in their environment, and how it will help them run their business. In other words, it is up to you to gain the technical win.