Are you familiar with the roles of Technical Sales or Sales Engineers?

These are technical sales positions that utilize a technical background and specialized knowledge in sales activities to clients.

In some ways, they are similar to IT consultants.

Given the nature of microCMS as a headless CMS, the implementation invariably requires engineers, making it a quite unique product. Consequently, engineering knowledge is essential for our sales team. The level of required knowledge varies, but for headless CMS, it tends to be quite advanced. We need to instantly assess the client's service and infrastructure setup to determine the appropriate implementation method. A good understanding of infrastructure, backend, and the latest frontend trends (like Jamstack, SSG) is necessary. Superficial knowledge won't suffice, and, of course, sales communication skills are also crucial.

High Rarity Value

Considering the need for full-stack engineering knowledge along with sales capabilities, the rarity value of Sales Engineers is quite high. While it's common for engineers to shift to managerial roles, transitioning from engineering to sales is rare.

I believe it's more efficient for a full-stack engineer to acquire sales skills than for a salesperson to learn full-stack engineering knowledge.

However, engineers typically want to continue developing, so it takes a lot of courage for them to abandon their engineering career to focus solely on sales. Additionally, engineers generally have an aversion to sales.

Therefore, to increase the number of Sales Engineers, we should define this role as a career advancement for engineers and offer higher salaries. Alternatively, we need to create positions that focus on development but also involve sales.

The need for engineering knowledge isn't limited to sales. The growing number of technical inquiries in our chat support also demands it. Even with some manuals prepared, a customer support team composed only of non-engineers can hardly handle most of these inquiries.

The Importance of Sales

The belief that "a good product sells itself" is an illusion. Especially in B2B, sales are essential.

Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, states in his book "ZERO to ONE":

Just as you can't expect a great product to sell itself, you shouldn’t believe a good company will get noticed without a PR strategy. Even if you’re pursuing a viral sales strategy and don’t need media exposure to acquire users, the media can help attract investors and employees. If someone excellent is considering working for you, they’ll Google you first — and the search results could decisively impact your company’s success.

Whether it's marketing or sales, efforts to sell are mandatory.

For a startup to achieve rapid growth, it needs to monopolize the market.

Rapid growth is possible when the average total net profit obtained from a single customer over their lifetime (Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV) exceeds the average cost of acquiring a new customer (Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC).

Generally, the higher the price of the product, the higher the sales cost, and it's rational to spend accordingly.

According to this graph, it can be said that sales are an effective means for high-priced products.

Most businesses do not suit complex sales. If the average sale amount per transaction is between ten thousand and a hundred thousand dollars, the CEO does not need to handle all sales personally. The challenge in such sales is not how to sell a specific case but rather how to establish a process to sell to a broad customer base using an appropriately sized sales team.

Additionally, Yasutaka Fukuda in his book "THE MODEL" states the following:

Even without approaching, most inbound leads that come through website form submissions are from SMBs, and sales departments handling large corporations must unearth their own deals.

For microCMS, for the Standard plan (4,900 yen per month) and Business plan (53,000 yen per month), we often seal deals without sales efforts or even a single meeting. However, for the Enterprise plan (starting from 300,000 yen per month), it is challenging to close deals without meetings.

Conclusion

For a product like microCMS that requires engineering knowledge, this knowledge is also necessary in sales and customer success.

It might be best to aim for an organization where the majority of employees have an engineering background.

If there are engineers who want to try selling the product they've developed, please contact us.