Are Sales Engineers Relevant in Product-Led Enterprise?

Paul Steen from Imperva and Jim Still from Imperva join us to talk about continued relevance of sales engineering in Product led world.

Alok Shukla

By Alok Shukla

Cofounder and CEO

Jan 10, 2023 2 min read

James Pod

🎉 Happy New Year, 2023! 🎉

This is the first FunnelStory podcast for 2023, and we are excited to bring another stimulating discussion with key movers and shakers of sales engineering. We start with a quick poll and followed by the links to the podcast (audio and video).

Alok Shukla, in a conversation with Paul Steen and James Still, to define sales engineering and figure out the relevancy of sales engineering in a product-led world.

👉 Listen now on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, and BuzzSprout.

Or, you can watch the video podcast. 👀

Paul Steen has spent 25 years in IT, most of that time as an SE in the Cyber Security space. He has held positions at all levels of the Sales Engineering organization and has lived and worked in several locations and countries worldwide. Today as a Principal SE with Imperva, he continues to mentor SE's across the organization and worldwide.

Jim has spent 30+ years in Enterprise Software, starting his career at CA in and around New York City. He then moved into Sales leadership roles at Rogue Wave Software (IPO), Autonomy (acquired by H-P), Coverity (acquired by Synopsys), and Imperva. His span of control started at the Regional level and expanded into the Americas.


In this episode, we cover

0:00     Introduction

9:20.    Who are sales engineers?

12:15.  Is sales engineering a well-recognized role outside of B2B sales teams?

19:55. Can a sales engineer effectively forecast a sales trial?

32:39  Is sales engineering relevant in a product-led world?


Thank you for reading FunnelStory. This post is public, so feel free to share it.