The need for Sales Engineering expertise continues to expand, yet many organizations struggle to provide the necessary support, enablement, and investment to match this growth. 

In a discussion with Kerry Sokalsky (Co-founder of Tech Sales Mastery) and John Care (Founder of Mastering Technical Sales), we explored Vivun’s 2025 State of Sales Engineering report to uncover why. 

From shifting responsibilities to investment priorities, here’s what Sales and SE leaders need to know about getting the most from this critical function.

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Top 5 Noteworthy Sales Engineering Trends 

1. Capacity issues are snowballing

Sales engineers are involved in more stages of the sales cycle than ever before—spanning lead generation, technical validation, post-sales handoff, and expansion/renewal. While this highlights the strategic importance of SEs, it also raises concerns about capacity and the prioritization of SE efforts. 

Key Findings:

• 69% of SEs are involved in customer onboarding and value realization.
• Only 52% are often involved in general discovery.
• 30% of SE time is spent on poorly qualified pursuits.

Why it Matters:

The data suggests that SEs are being pulled in multiple directions, often without proportionate investment in hiring or tooling to scale capacity. While it’s encouraging to see SEs more involved in later deal stages, such as proposal negotiation, their lack of participation in early-stage discovery could be contributing to the large percentage of wasted SE time. 

SEs need a stronger voice in early-stage discovery to ensure they focus on high-value opportunities and avoid wasted effort on poorly qualified deals. Organizations must consider how to scale SE capacity and expertise to accommodate increasing demands on the function.

2. Revenue predictability could be within reach

Despite being in a prime position to assess deal viability and risk, SEs are largely excluded from the forecasting process. Instead, most organizations rely solely on sales reps’ input, which often lacks a technical perspective.

Key Findings:

• 75% of respondents agree SEs identify deal risks not flagged by sales reps. 
• Yet, 61% of SE teams do not provide a technical forecast to sales leadership. 

Why it Matters:

Technical validation is often the biggest hurdle in closing a deal. If an SE has secured a technical win, the likelihood of a closed-won deal increases dramatically. By incorporating SE insights into forecasting, sales teams can achieve more accurate pipeline predictions and allocate resources more effectively.

Organizations that integrate technical insights into sales forecasts gain a more reliable indicator of which deals are likely to close, leading to better resource allocation. SE teams should work with sales leadership to formalize a technical forecasting model that highlights deal risks and validates pipeline confidence.

3. Budget control remains an uphill battle

Sales engineering teams continue to face challenges in securing their own budget for growth and investment. The report highlights a concerning gap between SE leaders’ confidence in making a business case for investment and their actual ability to secure funding.

Key Findings:

• 82% of SE leaders feel confident in their ability to justify investments in their team.
• But only 8% strongly believe they will successfully secure additional budget.

Why it Matters:

Many SE leaders are responsible for managing budgets but lack the influence to expand them. This is a major obstacle in growing SE team impact, investing in enablement, and securing the tools needed to scale capacity sufficiently. 

SE leaders need data to help organizations recognize that investing in SEs means investing in Sales success: higher win rates, better deal qualification, and more predictable revenue growth. SE leaders should advocate to be involved in budget planning discussions, rather than having to fight the uphill battle for additional investments throughout the year. 

4. Investment priorities are misaligned with strategic goals

Investment in SE tools has continued to rise, but the focus remains on tactical solutions rather than strategic, high-value platforms. These tools are undoubtedly useful and necessary but don’t always provide an easy way to derive insights that will elevate SE impact or meaningfully expand capacity. 

Key Findings:

• Demo automation and RFP management remain top software investments.
• Yet, over 50% of SE teams cite limited functionality and difficulty in tracking overall SE metrics and performance as top challenges with their existing tech stack.   

Why it Matters:

While automation tools help SEs streamline certain tasks, over-reliance on them can reinforce poor seller behaviors—such as defaulting to demos rather than conducting proper discovery. Moreover, they can unintentionally reinforce the impression that SEs are just demo experts, at a time when teams already struggle to prove their impact and incorporate SE insights into organizational decision-making. 

Organizations should look beyond just demo and RFP tools and consider investing in strategic solutions that will help gather, integrate, and surface the data that will help connect SE efforts to Sales outcomes.  

5. SE Enablement Remains A Challenge

SE enablement remains an afterthought in many organizations. Training, development, and coaching are essential for SE performance, yet the report shows that SEs spend only 5% of their time on enablement.

Key Findings:

• 65% of SE teams are responsible for self-enablement.
• 62% say they lack dedicated enablement resources.

Why it Matters:

Without structured enablement, SEs struggle to stay up to date on product developments, refine their messaging, and improve soft skills. This lack of investment ultimately leads to inconsistent sales execution and longer ramp times for new hires.

With the rise of AI tools and agents for sales teams, sales skills are more critical for SEs to master than ever before. Organizations need dedicated SE enablement programs—not just generic sales training—to ensure SEs have the resources and support needed to excel.

Final thoughts: What needs to change?

The State of Sales Engineering reveals a profession at a crossroads. The report highlights several contradictions that, if left unaddressed, will limit the effectiveness of sales teams—but if tackled head-on, present real opportunities for change.

• SE capacity is simultaneously overstretched and wasted. Despite increasing demands on SE teams, nearly a third of their time is spent on poorly qualified opportunities. Instead of focusing on high-impact activities, SEs are caught in inefficient sales cycles that could have been avoided.
• SEs aren’t involved in efforts that would prevent that waste. Many SEs are excluded from critical activities like general discovery and technical forecasting—two areas that could significantly improve deal qualification and reduce wasted effort. Without their input, sales teams continue to pursue deals with misaligned solutions, leading to delays and lost revenue.
• Organizations want to integrate SE insights into strategic decisions but don't plan to invest in the right tools. Rather than making strategic investments that scale capacity and aggregate and elevate SE insights, companies continue to prioritize point solutions that don’t address the bigger picture and that can unintentionally reinforce a narrow perception of the SE role.
• Enablement is considered a top challenge but is executed as an afterthought. Without structured learning programs, teams struggle with inconsistent messaging and sales motions that inadvertently delay deals.

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Turning contradictions into opportunities

These contradictions present an opportunity for SE leaders to shift the narrative. Instead of accepting the status quo, SE teams can take action by:

• Pushing for greater involvement in discovery and technical forecasting to reduce wasted effort and improve sales efficiency.
• Advocating for strategic investments that capture and elevate SE insights, while also reducing manual admin work.
• Expanding enablement efforts to ensure SEs have the training and tools needed to drive business value, not just execute product demos.
• Strengthening internal alignment between SE leadership and sales leadership to ensure SE investment is prioritized as a vehicle for sales growth.

SE expertise is more critical to the buying journey than ever, but without a shift in how their contributions are measured and resourced, organizations risk limiting their impact. The teams that address these contradictions head-on will build a stronger, more efficient sales motion—one that fully leverages the expertise of SEs and ultimately drives better outcomes for your business and your customers.

Download the full State of Sales Engineering report to explore the data and insights in more detail.

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