rdschneider

While many Sales Engineers (SEs) gladly elect to spend their entire careers in this interesting, challenging, and potentially lucrative job, others choose to explore different roles. I’m writing a whole series about prospective post-SE career paths, and it’s now time to examine what a move to marketing might look like.

Marketing in a technology company offers numerous potential responsibilities, and a sales engineering background provides a great foundation to be an effective marketer. Of course, there are always positives and negatives to any career change, so here are a few of the most notable examples:

Advantages

• Executive potential. It can be difficult to directly advance from sales engineering into an executive (VP or higher) position. In contrast, in marketing there’s a clear career path from an individual contributor to an executive.
• Defining product strategy. Marketers often have more input into the company’s strategic vision and positioning than individual sales engineers.
• Travel. Marketers generally spend less time on the road than sales teams, and when they are asked to travel, it’s often to trade shows held in places where people want to go.

Drawbacks

• Compensation. While this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule everywhere, SEs tend to have higher overall incomes than their marketing counterparts. Why? Although the marketing base salary may be higher, SEs have the potential upside of commission.
• Competitive knowledge. Sales teams in the field will look to their marketing counterparts to have an up-to-date and accurate understanding of what competitors may be doing. This requires never-ending research since the market landscape is always shifting.
• Customer interaction. Well-run technology companies encourage their marketers to work with customers. However, a sales engineer will always have more detailed exchanges with clients – it’s the nature of the job.

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Tagged: marketing, sales, sales engineer

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