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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
Jarod Greene [00:00:00]:
Hey, everybody, and welcome to V5, or should I say V15. We've extended this conversation with one of our original V5 guests because five minutes just wasn't enough. So, back by popular demand, please welcome Marjorie Abdelkrime from VMware by Broadcom, who is the Head of US West and Healthcare Solutions. Marjorie, thanks for joining us again. We really appreciate it.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:00:26]:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Jarod Greene [00:00:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. The back by property division came from a very popular topic. It was all about sales, engineering, solution consulting, career growth. It was real talk on advancement. It was real talk on why some sales engineers get stuck while others take off. So rather than just get it in five, we got a lot of time, so let's get into this topic. So one of the trigger points for conversations we've had is a lot of people would say, well, you get scs from anywhere. But again, from your experience, what you talked about, let's be real about it.
Jarod Greene [00:00:58]:
Who makes it and who flames out? What are the characteristics of a great SE and how do you grow and groom those folks so that they don't flame out?
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:01:07]:
The first trait that you also see during the interview process when you're talking to candidates is curiosity. An SE that is curious, that is willing to recognize that they don't know it all. They need to ask questions. Questions they need to learn whether it be about the customer, about just the business that they're talking to, about the technology, not just the technology that you're selling, but the technology that surrounds the technology that you're selling. It's really how SEs succeed. Right. It's about having that curiosity about learning more and then being able to come back and saying, okay, based on my investigation and diving deep into these aspects, whether it be about the customer's business or the technologies that they're using, you can come up with a good answer. The SE that's not curious is not going to progress.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:01:57]:
They will flame out.
Jarod Greene [00:01:59]:
Yeah, it's funny because I think you hear curiosity. It just, it strikes me as a conversation that happens throughout the entire process. I hear a lot on the sales side, like, salespeople don't do great discovery. And we think a discovery is something you typically just do only at the top. Curiosity broadens the whole realm, which I think is really cool. Yeah. And it's funny, I had a conversation earlier in the week, the same trait came up. You've hired sales engineers.
Jarod Greene [00:02:25]:
You talked about the kind of sniffing for curiosity in the interview process. What's the. Another red flag other than them not being curious, that immediately tell you whether or not they're cut out to do this thing.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:02:38]:
I think the other one is the willingness to say I don't know. I think a lot of times SEs we have a lot of pressure to be the know all, be all expert. And the moment you start going down a path that the customer will sniff out that you don't know what you're talking about, you lose credibility. Right. So it's super important to be self aware about what you know, where your expertise sits and not feel like saying I don't know is a negative thing. I think people who are willing to be like, you know what, let me get back to you on that. Let me go and do some digging and some research just demonstrates that a customer or even the team can trust that individual so much more.
Jarod Greene [00:03:20]:
Yeah, I think this is really, really important. We talk a lot about trust underpinning really every buying decision. And we don't buy from people we don't trust. And it only takes, I think an instant to ruin all that good trust you've built. For the things SEs know, we see demos at the top of the list. Everyone would, I think, say, yeah, we're demo experts and that's what we do, it's a primary responsibility. But you and I both know SE do more demo. But some think if I just get really good at demos, if I'm just the expert rockstar demoer, I'm going to get promoted.
Jarod Greene [00:03:54]:
You got to take on this. Why is it the wrong approach?
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:03:58]:
Oh my gosh. Especially nowadays. Right. So I won't name any products, but some products that I know, they leverage AI to do the demo. I mean, I gotta say, when I saw that AI demo, I was blown away. Right. It's just super impressive to see where technology has gone. And the fact that AI can talk about the technology in a manner that a customer can understand and comprehend means that as an se, we just got to take it another level beyond that. Right. Being able to understand the impacts to a customer's business when they do take this solution and when they go down a specific path, super important. So just perfecting the nuances of a demo, I mean nowadays AI can do that. And if AI can do it, then why do I need you to do it?
Jarod Greene [00:04:44]:
Yeah, and it's interesting when we think about that too. The notion of the trust in AI is not quite there yet. Right. Whether it's by the actual SE who might leverage it, or the buyer or the seller. You know, that notion of AI as a tool to facilitate and Help you build the trust and build a rapport is what we see. A lot more so than we just see. Well, let the AI do it at all. I'm not there yet to completely trust it in all its facilities.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:05:10]:
Yeah, I think, I mean, artificial intelligence. I think at this point you're right. I think we as technologists, as people that think about business results, need to understand the value that it brings to our customers and the value that it brings to us from a training perspective as well. Right. So let's talk about career progression. I'm constantly telling the SEs in our organization, what tools are you using? How are you leveraging AI to make you a better se? Whether it be from crafting a good email and perfecting your communication style to data analysis, where it makes sense and where your company allows it. Right. So that's another tool that as SEs start learning that this is going to be something that's here to stay and if they don't smarten up and start leveraging it, it's, it's really gonna be detrimental to people's careers.
Jarod Greene [00:05:57]:
Yeah, run to it or you know, run away from it at your own peril. We, we try to drive the same push even internally here at my company, we, we want people to, to get weird with them to an extent. But like within the rules and within the parameters, we want to push it that this is part of not just your tool set as an se, your skill set, your knowledge as a worker, as an employee. If these are the kind of modern tools you need to get the job done, we want to facilitate that growth for you here and absolutely benefit from the leverage it provides. In addition to not using the AI as something that you see as something that might get an SEs, what are some other reasons you might see really talented, really sharp sales engineers just get stuck and maybe plateau in the role instead of ascending to new heights.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:06:43]:
You know, I think nowadays, especially where we think about just models of how customers are consuming technology, whether it be from how they're buying it, from a buying perspective, if they're subscription based or perpetual, that's understanding that and the nuances behind that is super important, but also understanding why customers buy the solutions that you're selling and it's not well, because it helps speed X, Y, Z function, like that's not enough. I was talking to one of my SEs actually earlier today and we were talking about his customer, our retail company that we work with. And you know, the conversation came around, well, how are they leveraging the technology on the register front and in our space. That's not something that people would normally talk about. Right. So, okay, let's talk about the register aspect of it. How is the consumer who is passing through that lane, shopping on their daily shopping grind. Right.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:07:37]:
And needing to leverage that machine, how are we helping that consumer buy quicker? So understanding the outcomes of why customers buy our technology, super important. So diving into that next level, beyond just the tech of knowing and understanding your customer's customer, if you don't dive into that, then you don't know why the customer is buying what you're selling, and then you don't know the value that you're bringing to the table and why they actually need your solution.
Jarod Greene [00:08:04]:
Yeah. And Marjorie, if they don't have the benefit of a great leader like you, where can they start to hone some of those skills? I think a lot of times there's like, there's that balance of I can get technical on the job, how to do the demo, how to talk to tech at work, and the whole empathy and understanding for customer doesn't come from my manager. If it doesn't come from, like the ethos of my company, I'm going to struggle with that. So are there places, are there sources, are there methods that that can be delivered and developed? If it's not coming from your frontline manager or as part of your general company ethos?
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:08:38]:
I mean, the number of resources that have spun up recently for SEs to learn more about the human skills. Right. How do you get a customer to engage? How do you ask provocative questions that aren't just, hey, you know, how are you using the technology? There's so many resources online between books and we were just before the intro talking about John Kerr, and I mean, he's got so many amazing resources, from whether it be his website to the books, to the trainings that he provides, both for SEs who are in the ground on a daily basis, or even managers on how to manage a team effectively, have really brought to the forefront that technology is not the only thing that you need to know as an se. And there are many others. Right. Chris White has some great books around The Six Habits of the SE. Again, so many different resources that as a solution engineer, we don't have an excuse to say, well, no one really told me how I should be thinking about the human skills. Right.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:09:38]:
It's there. You just got to go seek it out.
Jarod Greene [00:09:41]:
Yeah, you just got to go get it. That's for sure. On the other side of it, too, again, like I say, it, because I mean it. I think there's, there's managers and there's leaders like you who get it and I would imagine kind of push that down or at least want to make that a part of what you do is because it benefits everyone, right? It benefits your direct team, it benefits the company, it benefits the customers. Again, again, those are the soft skills that I think we obviously believe are really important, but are really critical should you want to rise the ranks and meet the scale that the company has continued to set for you. So when we look at, we do our technical sales, our sales engineering insights, we've seen this interesting trend where like the ratio of like AES to SES, at least for our customers, is starting to get a little flatter. And it's an interesting investigation. When you say, well, does that mean they're downsizing reps or are they downsizing both at the same time? Regardless of the kind of method, we continue to see that there's a need to scale SEs and there's a need to get more of them at more stages of the sales cycle more often because all of the awesomeness they bring to the table, whether it's the training or whether it's the development or whether it's the enablement, where do you think companies could just do a little bit better with the enablement and the training to achieve that scale? Because it feels like just going to higher, higher, higher, higher isn't a sustainable path anymore.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:11:08]:
Yeah, I think a lot of companies unfortunately believe in a one size fits all model for enablement, right? So there's foundational things that, yeah, every company is gonna want to make sure that all of their team members know and have a baseline understanding. But a lot of folks, you hire them because they have experience, right? They have knowledge that you want to leverage in your selling motions, in your customer conversation. So determining where your groups, right, you don't have to do every single person, but grouping your ses, you have, you know, the product experts that know certain aspects of it super deep. They might need more ecosystem enablement. How do you bring them that? How do you get them to understand about whether it be the competing technologies that might exist or technologies that support your solution. Then you have the SEs that you know what have the foundational level. And now they need to build up a little bit more on the specifics from a product perspective, build that up and then you obviously for everyone, you should be looking at vertical training, right? Having the SE understand a little bit more about what's happening in the Vertical that you sell most to. Right? Because a lot of us, we tend to sell most into a specific vertical.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:12:15]:
Why is it important for you to understand it? Well, because if you don't, again, how are you going to sell that value to that customer? So looking at those different aspects and angles are super important. And building training plans and empowering the manager to then have those development conversations with their team members to build upon it, super important. The tech summits of years past, I love the events, they're fun to go to, but I never felt like people walked out with true value. And whenever we'd run surveys for ses, say, hey, did you learn anything new? And they're like, no, that was a waste of time. They enjoyed being in Vegas or wherever it was, but the gaining knowledge needed to shift. And one year, what we did was we said, you know what, we're not doing any product training. We threw that out the window. We said, no product training.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:13:05]:
We're going to come in and you all are going to be in teams and you're going to have to pitch and do a use case presentation. And the SEs were like, what? I actually have to do work that event. We did it seven years ago. Till this day, SEs will be like, that was the best tech summit we ever did.
Jarod Greene [00:13:23]:
Wow. You always think of enablement. It's like a buffet. And if you walk to the buffet and you just eat the product stuff, that's fine. You gotta try to eat your vegetables, right? You gotta try to mix it up a little bit. You see the same kind of path as well. So you heard Marjorie, right? Mix this up. It's not all product training, product knowledge, product expertise.
Jarod Greene [00:13:41]:
It's that mix of ecosystem, it's that mix of competitor, it's that mix of industry. I think that's really awesome. So last question for you, Marjorie. How does someone go from, I'm the demo person who's incredibly technical, knows the product really well, to someone that, you know, at the end of the day, the exec team can listen to and value the inputs of, you've done this, but how would you advise someone else to go from I just do demos here to I have a seat in the room where decisions get made. They're looking at me for insights and input. How do I get there? What's the bridge? What's the path?
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:14:17]:
I don't think a lot of SEs understand the value of. It's the account plan and not just the regular account plan, the technical account plan. So looking at alignment of Business to IT to outcome initiatives that the customers may be driving and using that as your tool to have the conversation and ask the questions to your customer about, hey, tell me more about what you're driving and goals that you're trying to achieve. For example, in health care, one big one is improving patient care or reducing time within a waiting room to time of actual care. Well, okay, let's tie that to the IT initiatives that you're driving. Okay, you're looking to implement a better check in system. Let's talk about that. If you've got a better check in system, how do we then tie into that technology that allows for the customer or the patient to have a better check in system? So again, asking the questions, what are your business initiatives? And a lot of SEs are scared to ask those questions because they're like, oh, the IT people don't know that.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:15:17]:
That's fine, go have that conversation with the line of business and then bring that to the IT folks and have that conversation with both of them together. So that I think helps build your credibility because you're asking questions that a lot of time it doesn't even have access to and you're giving them that same visibility and giving them that recognition within the business that, you know what, I am important too. It is important within our environment. So you're empowering your customer. That's one angle is again the curiosity aspect asking a lot of questions. The second one is thinking about your strategy well ahead of renewal time or sell time. I think a lot of times we're waiting for that moment in time for us to act. If you've got a year, you know you've got a renewal come in in another year and a half.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:16:01]:
What are you doing to plan for that year and a half? What are the steps and milestones again with the customer? Plan it out, do a backwards timeline with them and understand what's that work back schedule that we need to put together. And that gives you that trusted advisor status that a lot of time customers don't always see within sales teams.
Jarod Greene [00:16:19]:
Thank you, Marjorie. Much appreciated. See, this is why we said we could talk for days about this stuff. And I'm sure the audience would love to hear, but I know you're a busy person and they got things to do. So unfortunately, I'll let you go. Bit ado, but it's been great catching up. Good to see you again. Thanks for dropping some knowledge on our V15.
Marjorie Abdelkrime [00:16:37]:
Thanks for having me.
Jarod Greene [00:16:39]:
Thank you much. Appreciate it.