{"id":1064,"date":"2015-05-13T09:15:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T13:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/?p=1064"},"modified":"2015-05-13T03:38:26","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T07:38:26","slug":"be-great-right-now-with-dom-delfino-ep-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/2015\/05\/be-great-right-now-with-dom-delfino-ep-85\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Great Right Now with Dom Delfino &#8211; Ep 85"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sales engineers are a self-admitted strange breed. They&#8217;re technical, yet they make their living working with people. What makes them tick? Is this a job for you? This week we talk with Dom Delfino, VP of Worldwide Systems Engineering for Networking and Security at VMware.<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_6093\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-1064-2\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3?_=2\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\">http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>\n<p>The SE is the conscience of the sales force. (Or the jockeys of the sales force?)<\/p>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s about sales, but the SE has to be an advocate for your customer &#8211; that&#8217;s underestimated by the market as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>Most people in pre-sales engineering come from post-sales engineering or an internal\u00a0IT background.<\/p>\n<p>Work ethic &#8211; you can teach people technology, but you can&#8217;t send somebody to a class to teach soft skills like\u00a0work ethic, ambition, self-starting, and how to collaborate successfully.<\/p>\n<p>Sales engineers must have access to training. Dom wants to train people at least 4 weeks a year in technical skills and perhaps 4 weeks in conferences and other development activities.<\/p>\n<p>On the spectrum from pure technologist to pure sales, anybody on one extreme end or another tend not to be good sales engineers.<\/p>\n<p>When you move into a management role, you have to give up the idea of being a hero. Often you move to being a player-coach, and eventually a pure leadership role. You inevitably will have to give up some hands-on technical experience, but you have to retain some conceptual understanding of the technology you&#8217;re working with. You have to develop the areas you&#8217;re weakest in.<\/p>\n<p>The technologists who will succeed are embracing change, not holding on to legacy. They&#8217;re the ones saying &#8220;I&#8217;m an enterprise architect&#8221;, not &#8220;I&#8217;m a storage person&#8221; or &#8220;I&#8217;m a networking person.&#8221; People are moving up the stack and being able to interface with developers is becoming more important.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s ok to like what you do, but eventually your skill set will age out. People get cut when they can&#8217;t transition.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re stuck in your career, there might be a variety of reasons. But the biggest reason you can&#8217;t move to something new in your organization is that you&#8217;re not good at what you&#8217;re doing right now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Be Great Right Now at what you&#8217;re doing. At least try to be great at what you do.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Contact Dom on Twitter\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/domdelfino\">@domdelfino<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/dominickdelfino\">LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_6092\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-1064-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\">http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Podcast: <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/?powerpress_pinw=1064-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sales engineers are a self-admitted strange breed. They&#8217;re technical, yet they make their living working with people. What makes them tick? Is this a job for you? This week we talk with Dom Delfino, VP of Worldwide Systems Engineering for Networking and Security at VMware. The SE is the conscience&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/2015\/05\/be-great-right-now-with-dom-delfino-ep-85\/\">Read All Show Notes<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Be Great Right Now with Dom Delfino &#8211; Ep 85<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_6094\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-1064-3\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3?_=3\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\">http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Podcast: <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/?powerpress_pinw=1064-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/geek_whisperers\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"Geek-Whisperers-Dom-Delfino-Ep-85-.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1066,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions\/1066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geek-whisperers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}