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4 Skills your Technical Sales Experts Need to Have

4 Skills Your Technical Sales Experts Need to Have

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Written by Mike Schultz
President, RAIN Group


Solution engineers, technical consultants, solutions consultants—whatever you choose to call the technical expert on your sales team—they play a significant role in the sales and account-development process.

In our research, Top Performance in Strategic Account Management, we analyzed data from 397 executives, strategic account managers, and sales professionals to learn what sets the companies that are best at growing their strategic accounts—Top Performers—apart from The Rest.

Overall, we assessed 32 skills comprising six roles strategic account managers play: Results Driver, Project Manager, Technical Expert, Innovator, Collaborator, and Relationship Lead.

Read: 6 Strategic Account Management Roles Every Company Needs to Know About

When companies have the right team in place, they can develop ideas to drive more value at accounts, drive relationships with executives, and drive new opportunities.

Here we discuss the crucial role the Technical Expert plays.

The Technical Expert Defined

A technical expert is the specialist / analyst / technician who has 1) the relevant depth of knowledge, and 2) the ability to solve problems and facilitate deep-dive discussions. They know the company's products and services inside and out, and can apply the right ones to the right situations.

Note: Often one person on the sales or account team plays several roles and the technical expert may be combined with another role.

It's fundamental that any company that sells products and services should sell the right ones in the right solution combinations to help buyers achieve the greatest success.

4 Skills of Technical Experts

There are certain skills that your technical experts need to excel in to get the best sales growth and the best client satisfaction results:

When it comes to growing accounts, the technical expert role is the most commonly well-played role across all companies. But technical expertise alone won't win the sale.

Think of it like this: technical experts help you get a seat at the table—they are the price of entry. If you want to drive the greatest account growth and sales, your technical expert needs to excel in these areas, and you need your account and sales team to play all 6 strategic account management roles well.

1. Mike Schultz and John Doerr, What Sales Winners Do Differently, RAIN Group.

RECOMMENDED READING >> What Makes for Successful Strategic Account Management?
Last Updated September 1, 2021

Topics: Strategic Account Management

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