As painful as it may be, sometimes we have to commit ourselves to a cliche. Sometimes the simple approach really is best. Although I have blogged about topics such as The Mission of Technical Sales, Hiring, and The Technical Sales Balanced Scorecard, I keep returning to a much simpler model of the profession that I developed several years ago. I have found that it is the most concise, efficient, and effective way to engage a technical sales team in driving business and customer outcomes. It sums up the role of the sales engineer in terms of a “why am I here?” purpose and provides a basic management framework for the technical sales organization. No matter how often or in how many ways I hear job responsibilities of sales engineers sliced and diced from product line to product line or company to company, I always return to the following:

“The mission of technical sales is to assist customers in the understanding, design, and deployment of solutions based on our technology, thereby increasing customer business value and expanding our business.”

I tell employees and candidates that the above establishes their role. We will have many tools, techniques, objectives, and initiatives along the way, but if they always keep the above in mind and don’t do anything illegal, immoral, or engage in behaviors that violate our own or our customers’ guidelines for conducting business, they should find success. The mission itself is succinct and descriptive enough that it can be shared with customers to help explain the technical seller’s role in a fruitful business relationship between the two companies.

This mission can be operationalized for the technical sales organization to provide direction and focus areas for which metrics and outcomes can be established. Whether we call them priorities, principles, or the preferred preeminent practices of the profession, the four focus areas each begin with the letter “P”: Prospecting, Provoking, Progressing, and Partnering.

I will explore each of these further in subsequent posts over the next few days.