Workshops
SE Leadership BlackBelt and SE Individual BrownBelt
The SELI BlackBelt and BrownBelt Workshops are handcrafted intensive programs specifically for SE leaders and Individual Contributors. The very best practices as deployed by the fastest growing Silicon Valley companies are taught and reinforced by this program.
The SELI programs are unique in that they are delivered by active practitioners of the craft that maintain recency and currency in global SE Leadership roles. The content incorporates practices of emotional intelligence to develop integral strategies that dramatically improve leadership, performance, resilience, and well being.
Workshops are all virtual and are offered in scheduled Public Sessions (open to multiple companies), as well as tailored Private Sessions (with customization) to allow for specific focal needs or community support.
See below for the Latest Public Workshops, and Contact Us for Questions or Inquiries on Private Courses
"The SE Leadership Blackbelt Workshop provided a tremendous amount of applicable knowledge and value to complement the operations and management of my rapidly growing SE team. There has been a gap in the market on SE leadership specific training. The SE Leadership Blackbelt Workshop shows you what tools, metrics and frameworks are the best in the industry. Coupled with the peer networking, it was one of the most useful and dynamic pieces of training that I have ever attended as an SE leader. I highly recommend it for any SE Manager or Director that needs to build an SE team and is looking for industry best practices and improved networking."
— Owen McClave, Senior Manager of Solutions Engineering, Salesforce.com
Virtual Format (Eight 2-Hour Zoom Sessions)
In-Person 3-Day Format (not currently offered)
SE LEADERSHIP
The SE Leader is tasked with many direct, and influence-based roles. This section discusses these many roles in detail, universally applicable to any SE Leader. Emotional Intelligence practices to drive performance, leadership, and teamwork as supervisor, coach, leader, and executive are emphasized. High focus on peer exercises and workshops around tradeoff evaluations and roleplaying common yet difficult scenarios.
THE SE VISION & CHARTER
Your team’s clarity of vision and charter aligns your teams efforts, resources, and engagement to be its most effective and impactful. Whether building your first charter or evolving it as you and your company grows, direct discussions and workshops will help you to better frame the principles that guide the organization, and manage your team.
MANAGING THE BUSINESS
Iterate or improve discipline and focus on your SE team with discussions on Sales Cadence, Coverage Strategies, and Technical Forecast Strategies. Also reviewed are the latest strategies around group and individual meeting management, individual deal reviews, sales reporting and QBRs.
SE SALES PROCESS, INSTRUMENTATION, TOOLS
Standardizing and driving the highest levels of professional execution is the hallmark of a world-class SE Team. This section covers measurement of SE’s throughout the sales cycle (assignment to attainment KPIs), core systems and tech stack usage, Resourcing and Time Management, and establishment of a disciplined technical sales process. Pro-Tip rapid round discussions around Discovery, Demo, Objection Handling, Value Engineering, and technical closure help create actionable insights to drive immediate productivity and innovation.
PARTNERING THROUGHOUT THE ORGANIZATION
The SE org at its best has established win/win interfaces with almost all departments in a company. Learn and share strategies to better establish ideal partnerships and balance throughout the company, from within the SE team, to Sales, Sales Enablement, Product Marketing, Post Sales and Success, Engineering/Product, Operations, and the C-Suite.
BUILDING A HIGH PERFORMANCE CULTURE & TEAM
Your success as an SE Leader hinges on proper strategies to build and retain world class teams through culture, team diversity, career pathing, performance management, and recognition. These topics along with other team constructs like demo engineering, associate SEs, and managers-in-training programs, will help you create depth and diversity of experience and build a destination organization.
Virtual Format (Two 3 Hour Zoom Sessions)
In-Person 1 Day Format (not currently offered)
SESSION #1: MAKING OF A WORLD-CLASS SE
Examines the four critical dimensions of becoming a world class Solutions Engineer:
+ Organizational Awareness and Impact of the Role
+ The Three Core Principles of Sales Engineering
+ Emotional Intelligence and Mindset for High Performance and Resilience
+ Interpersonal Excellence (Key Relationship Management)
Discussions and exercises drill down on specific core competencies and skills of outstanding SEs, including functional “working” capabilities and emotional Intelligence skills. Understand “dark spot” scenarios of the role, and how to work optimally and effectively with sales and across the revenue organization.
SESSION #2: THE SE SALES BLUEPRINT
Examines the building blocks of the technical sales cycle, and offers specific exercises, tools, and best practices:
+ Engagement Optimization and Qualification
+ Discovery Best Practices, Tools, and SuperPowers
+ Demo and Presentation Best Practices: Creating more Impactful Capabilities based demos; leveraging Prep Templates for optimal execution with Sales.
+ Proof of Value specific examples and Objection Handling
+ Common Deal Scenarios and best practice Strategies (5 deal types)
+ Leveraging CRM, metrics, and approaches
"The SELI Brownbelt workshop brought immediate and lasting value to our global SE team:
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It helped level set knowledge across the global team, helping to create better team unity and alignment on the role, what it entails and the recipes for success.
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It was incredibly powerful for newer members of the team and accelerates their ramp, learning and desire to grow in the role, and helped even our most experienced to polish their practice by providing clarity and structure of thought with new frameworks, templates and tools.
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The best practice templates and tools that were shared are distilled from the best in industry and were a big hit with the whole team.
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We have implemented the outcome-focused demos focus of the workshiop, and have already received positive feedback from customers that should have significant impact to win rate. Coupled with the shared demo prep template, this helps to dirve not only better discovery, but team preparation.
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The Brownbelt also pays due attention to emotional intelligence and inner resilience, which is such a key but under recognised driver of success in the role in other training programs."
— Adam Pinkham, Global Director of Solutions Engineering, Bynder.com
SE Coaching and Consultation
Your Solutions Engineering organization is one of your most important strategic assets, yet with the pace of growth, innovation, and change, most organizations struggle to properly assess, design, and optimize for the right solution selling outcomes. SELI has in the past helped individuals and organizations with a variety of program implementations and active coaching.