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Having Trouble Hiring and Keeping Sales Engineers??

In today’s tech world, the Sales Engineer, aka Pre-Sales Engineer, Solutions Consultant, Solutions Engineer, or whatever new fancy title you want to use, has become more and more important in the sales process and success of a territory. Everyone has recognized it. I hear that in some cases, the “SE” is more of an influencer in the final decision-making than the Sales Executive!  Not surprising at all. 

It has become a bloody war when it comes to hiring SE talent, due to the increased difficulty in finding and retaining them. I’ve been placing these types of professionals for 14 years and must say-- it’s great to finally see this role get its due justice and recognition!

If you’re a technology company looking to find some good SEs, here are some steps to help you win the battle:

Competing with the “Big Boys and Girls” for Top Life Sciences Talent

As a business leader, I’m sure you’re aware that competing with larger corporations for talent can be challenging. But, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done — you just need to offer what the bigger boys and girls can’t.

Small(er) businesses often win clients by offering things that their large competitors don’t – such as enhanced personal care, responsiveness, tailored solutions, and in many cases a higher quality product or service at a lower price...You can win top talent by leveraging similar competitive advantages, such as:

Want to Hire ‘A Players’? You’ve Got to Pay to Play!

 "Let me teach you a lesson...you can never overpay a good player. You can only overpay a bad one." -Art Rooney

Most of my work entails finding executives in the manufacturing sector. Any discipline, from Directors to CEOs for companies that make products, is my sweet spot. But for a good client, I am more than willing to go back to my roots and find them an engineer.

Of course, they all want A-players. When the economy is booming and unemployment is at 4.3% in the US, A- players have lots of options. B-players are in demand and companies will even reluctantly hire C- players (unemployable in a recession) to fill jobs. So, if an engineer or any other true A-player wants to move and money is part of that motivation, he/she will want a salary bump, a BIG bump.

Solving Hiring Challenges Faced by the Health Sciences Industry

Employers in the pharma and biotechnology sectors can face many special hiring challenges in efforts to attract and retain top talent. By recognizing these challenges and the impact they can have on hiring - HR teams throughout the healthcare industry can improve their chances of success in both attracting and retaining top quality job candidates.

In the pharma space, several factors remain especially important for HR teams to understand and anticipate:

The Night I Drunk Dialed the Candidate Who Took a Counter Offer

You shouldn’t mix. Business with pleasure, dance beats with ballads from the 90s, and definitely not schnapps, mediocre champagne and beer…My colleagues wanted to make me feel better after my candidate took the counter offer. We totally intended to have one drink. But they had half off on shots, Justin bought the first two rounds and that NEVER happens, and they had open mike night and pre-season football, one of which I participated in, it’s kind of fuzzy, and I really, really didn’t want to go home and feel sorry for myself. So I drank way too much. I would like to report that I used Uber, endangered no one and got home responsibly. I would like to report that. I don’t know how I got home. Or where my car is. And I ended up feeling sorry for myself anyway.

Finding Talent with “Good Bones"

I love home improvement shows, especially 'Property Brothers'. Enter: a stressed out family who has outgrown their space and are using their bedroom as a nursery, office and bar. The Property Brothers whisk them off to their dream home, and after many “wows”, “yeses” and “when do we move ins”, they reveal that the house is WAY out of their budget. But, the brothers announce that the potential owners can have everything that is in this house and more…The catch: they need to buy a fixer-upper–a house with “good bones”, which means the foundation is solid. It will require some investment of time and money, but once they’re done, they’ll have their forever home. After visiting numerous dated and run-down homes, the family makes the commitment. After some unexpected issues for dramatic effect, and some paint and throw pillows, the finished project is even nicer than the house that elicited the initial “ooos” and “aaahs”.  Plus, the new owners get to feel the pride of contributing to the finished product.

The same concept applies to attaining talent. Every statistic says that there are not enough people to fill job openings, and employers either need to buy or build their talent. At times, I feel just like the Property Brothers. My clients come to me stressed and needing to find the “unicorn” of employees.

Why I DON'T Hate Cold Calling

My role as BD Consultant at Hobson Associates is to form relationships with new companies as well as renew ties with past clients who have benefitted from our recruiting services. I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of cold phone calls, and I’m still astonished that the individuals I call are extremely eager to hear about how Hobson Associates and I can be a resource to them. And I can also truthfully say that so far only two people have abruptly hung up on me! [That’s OK, when that happens, I go ahead and call their competitors…they usually DON’T hang up!]

Know what else? I must admit that I love cold calling. It is truly a science of its own. There are so many variables to earning a firm’s business, and no mathematical equation can equate a new client. To every problem, there is a solution. During my time at Hobson so far, my takeaways for successful cold-calling are simple:

Great Products Don't Sell Themselves, Great Salespeople Do

I call BULL$HIT on that. Sure, you need to start with a great product in order for your company or startup to get off the ground. But, you will also need phenomenal salespeople to reach and appeal to buyers who won’t be swayed by just product features.

Sales, along with Marketing, are there to show prospects just how innovative your SaaS product truly is, and why it’s worth paying for. The best sales reps do this with ease — however they’re not the majority. And of course, as a sales leader, you’re always looking to spot these top sales reps who can take your company to the next level.

So who are they? The product evangelists of the world. Those who can “sell ice to Eskimos”. As a software sales recruiter who talks with talented (and sometimes not-so-talented) people every day, let me tell you what I’ve seen…

4 Things You Need to Know When Interviewing for a Tech Sales Job

So, you’ve decided to make the leap and start interviewing for a new sales job with a tech company or start-up... We’ve got tips to get you from square one to job interview to offer, courtesy of siliconrepublic.com

Do your research

Hiring managers and recruiters can tell within just a few seconds who did their homework before an interview and who didn’t. That’s why, to get ahead of other candidates in the interview process, you need to do more than a quick Google search.

So, beyond reading a company’s mission statement, some things to consider: have you read any customer case studies? Are there free tools you could sign up for? Did you search for product reviews online? Digging into more resources will make you more prepared and it won’t go unnoticed.

Hiring Tug of War

The poet William Blake wrote, “Without contraries, there is no progression.”  This quote rings very true to my day-to-day work-life, as the job market shifts from the last decade’s client driven position, to a candidate-centric environment.

The job market is a very different place than it was 10 years ago, when the bottom fell out of the housing market and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers disintegrated; ushering in the highest unemployment rates seen in a couple of generations. That era was a very dark time in the world of recruiting, when only the best and the strongest recruiters survived.

When the eventual recovery set in a few years later, finding a workable “hot” job was still very difficult.  As the laws of supply and demand would dictate, this allowed companies to be extremely choosy in the candidates they chose to interview, the recruiters they chose to work with, and with their contractual terms for agencies.

The situation is very different in 2017. The job market is roaring at, or close to, full structural employment. The BLS reported in April that the unemployment rate for candidates with professional degrees is 1.6%. The pendulum has swung to the other side, and I find that companies are struggling with some of the realities of this shift.