Solutions Engineer South Africa at Riverbed Technology

About this Position

TITLE: Pre Sales Solutions Engineer 

LOCATION: South Africa 

• Account & Territory DevelopmentCollaborate with account manager to influence and develop sales account strategy including competitive threats, technical threats and alternatives
• Engage with the customer, account manager and the account team to execute and/or coordinate Riverbed "awareness". Presentations, demonstrations and other sales related activities to ensure breadth & depth of penetration into the account.
• Understand technical needs and pains of the customer as they relate to business initiatives within the account

Resource Management:

• Identify requirement for additional/multiple resources from other depts. partners, teams, regions (e.g., sales, product management, marketing, partners etc.)  internal and external to Riverbed
• Managing expectations of the account team (identifying roles for each external resource)
• Identify sales/pre-sales roles, responsibilities on a peer/partnership level
• Drive wider and deeper penetration into account

Opportunity Management

• Validate and quantify customer pains/issues and business drivers, confirm Riverbed’s technical viability for the opportunity, understand the customer alternatives (vendor competitors, internal alternatives…) being considered including the current means of handling their requirements
• Validate customer sponsors
• Validate & Close solution proposal for opportunity, Develop, deliver and/or orchestrate technical validation activities required to achieve Technical Validation from the customer (technical Presentations, POCs, Demos)
• Create value based proposal to address pain points and business drivers and drive technical sales cycle to achieve ‘Technical Win” & “Technical Closure”
• Collaborate with Implementation team to ensure proper handoff from Sales to Implementation Provider

Partner & Ecosystem Development 

• Build influencing relationships with key contacts in the partner echo system of your customers.
• Actively involve third party organizations to help drive opportunities to Technical Close
• Leverage the partner echo system to run technical workshops and POC’s to free up your time for more consultative work with your customers

Technical/Business Knowledge

• Extensive IT experience; Domain knowledge in a least two disciplines of Application Architectures & Performance Management or Network Infrastructure
• Confident articulating technical and business value propositions.
• Thorough competitive knowledge including industry, technologies and product offerings, evolving technologies
• Understand and be conversant about company, its solutions, and product strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
• Solid knowledge and experience of customer management practices.
• In-depth understanding and experience in management of all aspects of sales support processes.
• Must have a clear understanding of selling cycles, selling strategies and the skills and responsibilities of an AM and SE team.
• Education typically requires BS/BA (EE/CS) or equivalent.