What is Sales Engineering anyway?

Is sales engineering relevant in a product-led world? A conversation with Pinkesh Shah (Qualys) and Scott Taschler (Ex-McAfee, CrowdStrike).

Alok Shukla

By Alok Shukla

Cofounder and CEO

Dec 06, 2022 2 min read

Scott Pod

With this post, we are launching FunnelStory Podcast, focused on all things sales engineering and modern sales process.

In this first episode, Alok Shukla, converses with Pinkesh Shah (EVP, Products, Qualys) and Scott Taschler (Taschler Insights), to define sales engineering and figure out the relevancy of sales engineering in a product-led world.

Listen now on Apple Podcast and BuzzSprout.

Pinkesh Shah is the Executive Vice President of Products at Qualys, and Scott Taschler was formerly Director of Sales Engineering and is currently a marketing consultant. Scott had long stints at McAfee and CrowdStrike as a Sales Engineer and Field Marketing.

Pinkesh and Scott shared tenure in McAfee's Risk and Compliance business almost 12 years back and forged strong bonds. Over the last decade, they have observed large disruptions in enterprise sales and sales engineering functions. An area of particular interest is how modern buyers have impacted the sales engineering function.


Where to find Pinkesh

  1. LinkedIn -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/pinkesh/

  2. Institute of Product leadership - https://twitter.com/prodleader

Where to find Scott

  1. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotttaschler/

  2. Twitter - https://twitter.com/taschlerreport

Where to find Alok

  1. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshukla/

  2. Twitter - https://twitter.com/funnelstory


In this episode we cover

0:00     Introduction

5:46     Entrepreneurs of McAfee Risk and Compliance business

10:00   What does a sales engineer do?

18:10     Are sales engineer good at predicting trial outcomes?

22:32   No tools for sales engineers?

25:42   How do product manager get product feedback from sales engineers?

31:12   Sales engineering in a product led world?

37:31 Why Industry does not makes tools for sales engineers?

40:39   Summary


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