Sales Skills: Professional Networking and Continued Practice with Ramzi Marjaba (1/2)

Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

Is professional networking the same thing as sales? Does the thought of that make you cringe a little?
Ramzi Marjaba, our guest in episode 307, says sales skills are some of the most important skills we as technology professions need that no one talks about. Whether you are building professional connections or searching for a job, you are running a sales cycle.
Ramzi helps us understand the role of the sales engineer and the trend in job openings over the last several years. We’ll hear about the genesis of We the Sales Engineers, how it has changed over time, and what Ramzi has learned from hosting a podcast after 300+ episodes.
Original Recording Date: 12-07-2024
Topics – Genesis of We the Sales Engineers, The Sales Engineer Role and Job Market Trends, Sales Skills and Professional Networking, Transformation of We the Sales Engineers, An Emphasis on Practice
2:21 – Genesis of We the Sales Engineers
* Ramzi Marjaba is a returning guest and currently works as a solution specialist for a technology company.
* In addition to this, Ramzi runs We the Sales Engineers, which began as a podcast. Over time Ramzi started creating blogs and YouTube videos – @WeTheSalesEngineers related to sales engineering. He has been coaching others who work as SEs / want to become SEs for a few years now.
* Ramzi tells us that coaching is one of his favorite things to do, more so than being a salesperson or a sales engineer at a company.
* An SE is a sales engineer, which may also be known as a systems engineer, solution engineer, solution consultant, etc. at other companies. There are many different names for this role in our industry, but it’s a technical pre-sales role.
* We last spoke to Ramzi way back in Episode 27, which Nick missed due to sickness.
* In that discussion Ramzi mentioned starting the We the Sales Engineers podcast because he didn’t really have a place to go to get educated on what it was like to be a sales engineer. Ramzi wanted to create resources for people getting into sales engineering profession and to build a community.
* Ramzi tells the story of a specific customer meeting 2 years into his career as a sales engineer.
* “Halfway through the meeting, my customer…he basically stopped me and said, ‘Ramzi, I don’t care about anything you’re showing me right now.’ And my VP was sitting there…. That was the best thing that ever happened to me because he took me aside after the call… He said, ‘Ramzi, you didn’t do any discovery.’ My immediate response to that was ‘what is discovery?’ Two years into the job and no one has ever explained to me what a discovery was. So, I went down a rabbit hole….” – Ramzi Marjaba
* Ramzi ended up reading a number of sales books, but he wasn’t able to find many SE focused books. Demonstrating to Win had some helpful tips on discovery.
* When speaking with other SEs inside his company, Ramzi found they were making the same mistakes.
* Ramzi wanted to talk with SEs outside his company and learn from them, and he thought (at the time) that the one way to get them to talk to him was to say he had a podcast. So, he started a podcast.
* “Knowing now what I didn’t know back then, I would have been able to talk to anybody without a podcast. SEs is the best community in the world from what I’ve seen. They are willing to talk to anybody to help.” – Ramzi Marjaba,