Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer's Handbook [Hardcover]

John Care (Author), Aron Bohlig (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1580533450 | ISBN-13: 978-1580533454 | Publication Date: August 15, 2002 | Edition: 1st

This volume aims to cover all of the key areas of selling high-technology products, including detailed action plans to establish personal excellence in key-performance drivers in technical sales. This book teaches professionals how to be more successful as individual contributors, helping to better ensure promotion within their sales organization, or advancement elsewhere within their company. The book offers the practical guidance needed to sharpen skills in sales and technology, and explains how to build an infrastructure to support continuous high sales growth. This book is aimed at: technical marketing, product and sales managers; directors and technical sales staff; sales-support personnel; training managers; and technical consultants.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Care is regional technical director at Business Objects, San Jose, CA. He received his B.Sc. in technical Chemical Engineering with honors from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, England.

Aron Bohlig, director of vertical product management at Nortel Networks, received B.S. degrees in both information technology and English from the University of Puget Sound. He is currently earning his M.B.A. at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 322 pages
• Publisher: Artech House Publishers; 1st edition (August 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580533450
• ISBN-13: 978-1580533454
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,334,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, July 22, 2005

By 

Peter E. Cohan "Great Demo!" (Belmont, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer's Handbook (Hardcover)

Mastering Technical Sales provides a terrific foundation for the newly-minted Sales Engineer, a growth vehicle for the developing journeyman, and rich source-book for the seasoned professional.

While there are numerous "sales methodology" books available today, nearly all focus on the sales people and provide little or no information for the Sales Engineer and others who address the technical sale portion of the overall sales process. Mastering Technical Sales focuses on this critical area and shares how to manage and execute technical sales tasks to enjoy the highest success rates, both in the sales process and in one's professional growth.

Advice to SE's: Buy it and read it.

Advice to SE Management: Purchase copies for all of your new hires.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential tool that any SE be they new, experienced, or a manager should read cover to cover., January 2, 2006

By 

Graham Welland (Vancouver, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer's Handbook (Hardcover)

I was challenged a few months ago to explain in detail what makes up a Sales Engineer/Solutions Consultant? What does the role entail and what do you need to know to be successful? Well, if I'd read this book before that exercise then I'd have simply asked the technical trainer I was briefing to read this book!

Mastering Technical Sales, not to be mistaken with the similar sounding Making The Technical Sale by Greenwald & Milberry, is an excellent practical book that covers the needs of not just new SE's but also provides advice and knowledge for the more experienced SE, SE manager or even executive tasked with creating and maintaining an SE organisation. What I found particularly useful were the real world examples of both successful and unsuccessful practice - these lend a level of credibility and relevance to the material that perhaps the Greenwald & Milberry book lacks. (Btw, this is also a fine & very relevant book for any SE). I also particularly liked the chapter organization of summarizing the chapter goals, presenting the material, summary and then presentation of a skill-building summary for both the new SE and the experienced SE.

The book tackles pretty much every aspect of a typical SE's life from what type of person does it take and why do we do this? What do I need to do to be successful? What resources should I call upon? When? How? When & how to use executives. How to leverage corporate resources be they product management, engineering, technical support, marketing, or external resources such as partners. I thought the section on 'crossing over to the dark side' was particularly relevant and accurate as it covers the risks, the rewards and the reality of whether this is something that an SE should consider or not and more importantly, why or why not?

The book covers all the standard stuff very comprehensively from the sales process itself, presentation skills & techniques, objection and competition handling plus the realities of how to manage the sale to avoid the pitfalls of demos, succumbing to technical trials & evaluations or being driven by your competitor's agenda. All excellent material and covered well with real war stories.

Whilst this isn't the cheapest book on the subject, I'd definitely consider it worth every cent. Highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed info on techniques and processes, July 5, 2006

By 

Janice King "Author, "Copywriting That Se... (www.writinghightech.com) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer's Handbook (Hardcover)

This book is uniquely geared to the sales engineer role, not to general sales reps. Yet anyone selling technology products will learn from the detailed info on techniques and step-by-step processes for the technical sales cycle. Case studies and exercises supplement the book's discussion with real-world perspective. However, the book gives only a brief, passing reference to the role of marketing to support sales activity--an understanding that is valuable to every SE.