Stay ahead in today’s ever-changing business climate and arm yourself with the right insights to accelerate revenue, enhance customer experiences, align products with market needs, and increase deal velocity.
The State of Sales Engineering report offers valuable insights into current trends, challenges, and best practices for this critical function. This guide serves as a compass for industry leaders and practitioners to navigate through an environment where innovation, efficiency, and customer focus are paramount. The data highlighted in this report demonstrates the changing nature of Technical Sales and its impact on people, processes, and technology while addressing the challenges and opportunities posed by the AI revolution.
Sales Engineering org structures are increasingly aligned to support revenue growth and long-term business objectives. A notable trend is the steady investment in Sales Engineering resources, which is congruent with overall revenue growth.
Sales Engineering teams are experiencing steady or increasing budgets, reflecting the growing recognition of their critical role in driving revenue and customer success. SE investment priorities have remained consistent.
Sales Engineers are expanding their influence across the entire sales cycle, from discovery to post-sale engagements. However, they spend the majority of their time on non-selling activities. Reducing the administrative burden on SEs will allow organizations to see the full strategic advantage of their impact on a wider range of activities and initiatives.
Sales Engineers report productivity and efficiency gains from AI tools but cite reliability, security, and training concerns as barriers to transformative impact. While teams are becoming proficient in leveraging AI, there remains significant room for growth in equipping them with the most impactful tools.
Despite their aptitude at identifying deal risk, the majority of SE teams do not provide a formal technical forecast to Sales, missing a critical opportunity for proactive risk management. Our research suggests the need for better tools and processes to ensure technical insights are captured in real-time and seamlessly integrated with broader sales forecasts.
While most teams report having basic levels of alignment with Product, these interactions fail to achieve satisfactory product roadmaps. This foundational engagement provides some visibility into product strategy but lacks the level of collaboration needed to truly align priorities and drive mutual success.
Our research demonstrates the lack of and need for the formalized training frameworks, consistent content, and repeatable processes that are hallmarks of professional enablement programs. Closing the enablement gap would help teams achieve consistent performance at scale.
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