20Sales: What is Sales Engineering? When and How to Hire Them? How They Should Work With AE's? How to Measure Their Success? How They Change Close Rates and Sales Comp Plans with Zach Lawryk, Head of Solutions Consulting @ Rippling
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The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
Zach Lawryk is Head of Solutions Consulting @ Rippling, what is solutions consulting? They are the product expert in the solution that ties a business value to help support the sales rep in the execution of their quota. And there is no one better than Zach, prior to leading the solutions consulting team at Rippling, Zach was VP of Solutions Consulting at Slack where he scaled the SE team from 10 to 200. Before Slack, Zach was Head of Solutions Engineering @ Optimizely and before that was Director of Sales Engineering at Box.
In Today's Episode with Zach Lawryk We Discuss:
1. ) WTF is Solutions Engineering:
- What is Solutions engineering and why is it important?
- How does a software developer turned lawyer become one of the OGs of Solutions Engineering?
- What is the single biggest piece of advice Zach gives to graduates entering the workforce today?
2.) When and Who: Building the Foundations:
- When is the right time to hire your first solutions engineer?
- Should this be a senior hire or a more junior hire? What experience is ideal?
- Would Zach rather have someone who has sold to the same customer segment or sold to the same deal size? What are the challenges with each?
3.) Making the First Hire: The Process:
- What is the right hiring process for solutions engineers?
- Which members of your existing team should be involved in the process?
- What are some of Zach's favourite questions on the candidates past to determine quality?
- What are the best case studies and tests to give potential hires to test their aptitude?
- What are the biggest red flags in the hiring process for solutions engineers?
4.) Integrating into the Team: Making it Work:
- What is the optimal onboarding process for solutions engineers?
- Why does Zach think it is important they spend time with customer success in their first month?
- What is the right way to measure the effectiveness of SE's?
- How should the entrance of SE's impact the close rate and comp structure for AE's?
- How can sales leaders prevent division and friction between AEs and SEs?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So I think what has changed and what is broken about most sales organizations today is they're still trying to sell like they're in control of that process. |
| 0:07.5 | When the truth is, they're not. The buyer isn't control of the process. |
| 0:10.2 | And it's more about buyer enablement than it's about selling anymore. |
| 0:12.5 | We are back and welcome to 20 sales with me, Harry Stebbings. |
| 0:15.4 | Now, in the show today, we discuss something we've never discussed before, but so crucial to so many sales teams, sales engineering. |
| 0:21.8 | We discuss what sales engineers are, how they fit into the team, how to measure their success, |
| 0:26.5 | and how they work best with AEs. And joining us is the OG of sales engineering, Zach Lourick, |
| 0:31.7 | head of Solutions Consulting at Rippling. Prior to leading the Solutions Consulting Team at Rippling, |
| 0:36.4 | Zach was VP of Solutions |
| 0:37.8 | Consulting at Slack, where he scaled the SE team from 10 to 200, and before Slack. Zach was head |
| 0:43.7 | of Solutions Engineering at Optimizely and before Director of Sales Engineering at Box. I'd also |
| 0:48.8 | want to say huge thank you. This was all down to Maggie Hot for the intro and some amazing |
| 0:52.8 | questions suggestions today. |
| 0:54.5 | But before we dive into the episode today, finding your next customer is hard, but it doesn't |
| 0:59.1 | have to be. If you're wondering how to drive more revenue and find the accounts that are looking |
| 1:03.9 | for your solution right now, Zoom info is the answer. Zoom info handles the full revenue pipeline |
| 1:09.9 | from marketing to sales, even ops, all based |
| 1:13.2 | on the number one ranked business data. It's the single best way for B2B professionals to find |
| 1:18.7 | their next customer, close their next deal and streamline their operations. Best of all, it's all in |
| 1:24.2 | one place so your revenue teams can collaborate easily and close deals faster. |
| 1:29.2 | Customers include the lights of Snowflake, Workday, PayPal, Dropbox, and thousands of startups |
| 1:34.9 | and growing companies. Now 30,000 customers and growing. And Zoom info is making their go-to-market |
... |
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