Have Multiple Sales Engineers on One Deal with Deirdre Sommerkamp, Skillibrium

How can tapping into your team's strengths transform sales engineering, boost win rates, and forge stronger customer connections?

In this episode, Jarod Greene, host of V5, and Deirdre Sommerkamp, Chief Solutions Officer at Skillibrium, discuss the benefits of assigning SEs based on their specific skills for different stages of the sales cycle. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1. The Power of Strengths-Based Sales Engineering: Deirdre introduces the concept of assigning multiple SEs to opportunities based on their unique strengths, leading to a more effective sales process.
2. The Importance of Collaboration and Continuity: Detailed note-taking and pre-call strategies are essential for maintaining seamless transitions and ensuring that every team member is aligned, regardless of who takes the lead in different stages of the sales cycle.
3. Adapting to Customer Preferences: Tailoring your sales engineering approach to fit the specific needs of your buyers is crucial, and flexibility in SE assignments can significantly impact customer satisfaction and sales success.

Things to listen for:
(00:00) Strengths-based approach to sales engineering

(01:51) How to balance continuity and specialization

(02:39) Importance of collaboration and note-taking

(03:43) “We-first” vs. “Me-first” mentality

(04:40) When using a strengths-based approach

What is The Unexpected Lever?

The secret sauce to your sales success? It's what happens before the sale. It's the pre-sales. And it's more than demo automation. It's the work that goes on to connect technology and people in a really thoughtful way. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, pre-work centered around the human that makes the dream work, but you already know that.

The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what you already do best—combining your technical skills with your strategic insights. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to grow revenue. You're not just preparing for the sale—you're unlocking potential.

Join us as we share stories of sales engineers who make a difference, their challenges, their successes, and the human connections that drive us all, one solution at a time.

Jarod Greene [00:00:00]:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to V5, where we spend exactly five minutes on our soapbox on notable topics in B2B, sales, specifically in the sales engineering function. I am joined today by Deirdre Sommerkamp of Skillibrium, and she has a hot take on how to assign sales engineers to opportunities. I won't spoil it. I'm going to have her jump right into it. So, Deirdre, without further ado, jump right into your soapbox. Got exactly five minutes? Five and ready.

Deirdre Sommerkamp [00:00:26]:
So, in a lot of organizations, NC's are assigned to particular account executives or sellers. And what happens is they work together and work on a whole deal at the same time, like throughout the whole lifecycle of that opportunity. What I believe in is a strengths based approach where you can have multiple Ses assigned to the same opportunity. What that does is it allows multiple SES to work with a buyer or customer, and they bring different points of view, different stories in different things to the engagement. So what I typically see is AE would put in an SE request, a resource for a particular activity, like a discovery call or an executive demo, or maybe it's a technical integration discussion with a technical team. And so being able to have the SES decide which is the best person to attend that particular activity works in our favor. I've seen it over the course of, you know, just looking at trends and seeing that when they can assign themselves and bring different points of view to an opportunity, the win rates are actually higher by about 10%. So it works great if you have AE's and SES that are collaborating together and, you know, keeping great notes, skeptic.

Jarod Greene [00:01:51]:
Probably would say, what about continuity? You're bringing all these random people to the mix. How do you. How would you answer for that?

Deirdre Sommerkamp [00:01:57]:
Well, certainly an AE can request the same SES resource across the whole deal if they want to, because they know what's in the best interest of the prospect or customer. But what I've found is that most AES like the variety, because we might have one se that is phenomenal at storytelling and can tell a clear, concise message to a c level stakeholder and win that stakeholder over. Right. And then we have someone else who is a whiz at technical integrations, and they can talk technical things to technical people. All right. So they like having the specialization in the different strengths approach.

Jarod Greene [00:02:39]:
Wow, that's awesome. So it sounds like there's a couple prerequisites there. I'm hearing that there's, you know, diversified skill set amongst the AE's. I'm hearing AE kind of flexibility and autonomy on the ability to choose. And I also heard something around detailed note taking. Can you double click on that for a minute? Because again, I would imagine without the ability to keep track of it all things could potentially go awry.

Deirdre Sommerkamp [00:03:02]:
Yeah, it doesn't work if you don't keep track of things. Right. So this requires everyone who's involved in the deal to take detailed notes and store them in the same place. Like some type of collaboration might be Salesforce, it might be another application that is really key because if you have one Se taking a handoff from another Se, and I don't even like the words handoffs because you want it to appear very seamless, then that Se can get up to speed with those detailed notes. And so the end result is that the prospect or customer doesn't even notice that there's any difference. Same with the AE. And there also needs to be a pre call strategy. Right.

Deirdre Sommerkamp [00:03:43]:
You need a prep call before you get in front of the prospect or customer. That's just good hygiene.

Jarod Greene [00:03:49]:
Just good hygiene, just good business. Makes a ton of sense. And it sounds like, you know, having run these programs, what tends to be the takeaway from the SE? I would imagine AE's love it because they have a bench, they have autonomy, they have flexibility. What's typically the take from the, the SES who are being requested and ultimately have to fulfill.

Deirdre Sommerkamp [00:04:07]:
They love it. They have a higher level of engagement because they get to pick and choose the things that they're great at and they work together as a team. There's not a me first mentality, there's a we first mentality. So they're always looking at what is going to help us win that deal and they work among themselves and figure out who's best to join.

Jarod Greene [00:04:28]:
It's a hot take. It's controversial. I can see most folks kind of struggling with it, but the more you explain it and make it make sense, the more it makes sense. So any other notes to share on this thing is really interesting. One.

Deirdre Sommerkamp [00:04:40]:
Just that it doesn't work at all environments. Right. You have to understand who it is that you're selling to. Some buyers and customers might prefer having the same sc or seat across the whole sales cycle. So think of what is best for your buyers and customers, because at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

Jarod Greene [00:04:59]:
100%. Yeah, it jives really well with a take I saw from Gartner probably about a year ago, right. They surveyed all the B2B buyers and said, hey, which resource do you most prefer to engage with during your buyer cycle. And overwhelmingly, it's the sales engineer. And so I'd imagine putting an s on that is the same takeaway. So this is awesome. So this is what we do. That is the time.

Jarod Greene [00:05:20]:
Deirdre, we want to thank you so much for the insight. And what I'll ask of the audience here is that if this is a take you want us to stretch out, if you want us to elaborate a little bit further and a little bit more, maybe go from a V5 to a V15, let me know. Send me a message on LinkedIn, get in my DM's, and we're going to cast votes for takes, and we will extrapolate out the ones that you want to hear from the most. And so with that, I will see you all soon. Thank you very much. You're listening to the unexpected lemon. For additional resources, check out vivun.com. got a soapbox you'd like us to talk about longer? Let us know by messaging me.

Jarod Greene [00:05:56]:
Jarod Greene on LinkedIn.