AMC Bridge has more than 20 years of experience in developing engineering software and assisting in its further integration. We often talk about the projects we work on and the technologies we use. But today, our Sales and Account Managers (SAM) team members will tell the Ukrainian audience for the first time why every developer, whether willing or not, is in sales. Jerry Udy, Director of Business Development, and Mark Driscoll, Senior Director of Industrial and AEC Enterprise Sales, will share how an in-time proposed idea can affect future client engagement and why it is always helpful to be an attentive listener.

Who is your client?

“The best way to provide high-quality services to a client is SAM and tech teams collaboration,” Jerry Udy believes. In his opinion, the crucial skill is understanding the clients’ technical needs and what they are trying to do with their business. For this reason, each team member must answer a simple question: who is the client? Maybe, they are a start-up trying to raise funding, an existing business trying to grow their market share, or a company with a slightly outdated product willing to upgrade it. Understanding all those things is essential not only for the SAM team but also for the tech teams. It helps the tech teams be more effective when estimating projects, developing software, working on demos or proof of concepts, and so on.

Often, researching a potential client’s needs and plans with subsequent demonstration can be a good starting point of fruitful cooperation. From Jerry Udy’s experience, after watching the demo, the client inquires: can the tech teams do precisely the same for them, and will it work in the future? A great example is a current proposal for a video game vendor to enhance some integration for the Navisworks® 3D model review software using the Unreal Engine® real-time 3D creation tool. “Hopefully, we will win that and receive funding to take that demo and make it useful and marketable for the client,” told Jerry.

Each project participant should understand the value of communication with the client. And here, the tech team’s role is often underestimated. According to Jerry Udy’s experience, clients will often share things with the technical team that they are hesitant to share with the SAM team.

“Just be a good listener, understand what is going on with the client, and raise that to the attention of the SAM team member. That’s probably the most important thing,” highlights Jerry.

Do not be afraid to speak

Software developers are often not comfortable communicating verbally, especially doing it in a second language. It can seem complicated and even daunting. Jerry encourages engineers not to be afraid to speak up and stop underestimating their level of English: “But believe me that most of our developers’ English is much better than they think it is! So, do not be afraid to ask a question or to attempt to ask a question. If you need to, write a few questions down in preparation for a meeting so that you have them in front of you.” He also advises remembering that most managers and executives in software development companies are used to working with people for whom English is a second language. They are usually very understanding and willing to help.

“Whether you are on the SAM team or a technical team, any time you interact with a client, you are in sales—believe it or not, whether you want to be or not—because you give an impression of what your company is,” Jerry emphasizes.

The other aspect of paying attention to is the client’s corporate culture. Some clients just want you to take your task and solve it the way they ask you to solve it. But there are also clients who really want to hear questions and ideas from you. In this situation, Jerry urges you not to be afraid to offer suggestions because that’s the culture of their company.

“If you do not sell, you support sales”

That’s what the SolidWorks CEO once said, recalls Mark Driscoll. In other words, each team member must play a role in selling services to clients. Technical teams are often more critical and valuable than the SAM team. Of course, the latter is conducting the whole deal and brings it to a close. However, it is very vital when two technical specialists speak the same language, have common interests, and feel comfort and trust in between.

“A client’s collaboration with the SAM team is often a necessary part of the job, but it is usually easier for them to share important technical details with our technical team. That’s a widespread thing in our industry to have sales and technical people working together. In such situations, it is crucial as a cohesive team, as a singular unit. And it is not a pain point, but it could become a pain point if that stops happening. Right now, it works pretty well,” says Mark.

Two stories of how tech teams may influence sales

Mark talks about a project that should have lasted maybe three months and now is going to be a multi-year engagement. This is the work done for Allegion, which started as a small bug-fix project for very internal legacy software. We succeeded in putting together a great team of people, from software developers to quality assurance (QA) engineers. And Allegion was absolutely impressed with how well they worked, how efficient they were, how professional they were with respect to development standards and documentation standards, and, most importantly, the QA standards that we applied to our systems and processes. It prompted them to write an internal case study on an internal newsletter about the benefit of partnering with external resources like AMC Bridge. And that was totally unsolicited, absolutely unsolicited.

There is another excellent example of how the listening skills and the technical knowledge of the tech team involved utterly changed the direction of our project. We were supposed to work on a small robotics project for 4-6 weeks. The tech team should update the code, fix a couple of bugs, solve a couple of problems. But the client was so impressed that they started sharing ideas with the team.

“The next thing in our regular team meeting, a tech person is telling me there are a lot of other things that we could do; maybe we should talk about the budget, we can put together a plan,” recollects Mark.

So, that very short project started in May 2020 and is still going on! Mark is sure that is a testament to the team’s listening skills and the quality of the work done. The client is satisfied. The tech team proved that we could take the client’s models and show them differently. And we see how it has influenced the business today.

“Technical skills, the delivery of concise communication, exact product, meeting timelines, and improving QA processes—all are just invaluable to the client,” sums up Mark. If the customer receives all that, they not only come back to you when necessary but also happily recommend you to others.