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. 2nd Degree Workshops build upon core curriculum to provide further deep experiential / practice in a given domain areas, customized for a specific company with templates and homework and certification presentation or discussions. These are typically done after the core BrownBelt workshop for active reinforcement, but not mandatory.
See below for the Latest Public Workshops, and Contact Us for Questions or Inquiries on Private Courses or any combination of Leader, IC, and 2nd Degree workshops to meet your specific needs.
"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 (TBD or Private Schedule)
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 (4 2-Hour Zoom Sessions)
In-Person 1 Day Format (TBD or Private)
SESSION #1 & #2: WORLD-CLASS SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING
Examines the Four Dimensions of World-Class Solutions Engineering:
#1 Organizational Impact: Awareness and Advocacy of the multiple business drivers of the SE function
#2 Core SE Strengths: Three Core Principles of Sales Engineering that drive exceptional functional execution
#3 Outer Performance, Inner Resilience: Emotional Intelligence and Mindset fundamental to accelerate career and life success
#4 Relational Excellence: Key Relationship Management internally, with sales, and with customers
Discussions and exercises drill down on specific skills in each dimension, focusing on functional working capabilities, understanding of dark spots, and programs to consistently develop and accelerate SE practice in both the immediate and longer term.
SESSION #3 & #4: THE SE SALES BLUEPRINT
Examines the building blocks of the technical sales cycle from Qualification to Close (and expansion), offering tested and proven industry best practices, examples, and tools or programs for each stage. Various Deal Scenarios are discussed, along with a discussions on CRM, latest industry tools and AI, and proven cadences.
+ Understanding Engagement and Alignment within Sales
+ Qualification Best Practices: Guidelines, approaches, and exceptions
+ Discovery Best Practices: Art, Science, Process, and templates
+ Demo/Presentation Best Practices: (Value mapping, high impact delivery, collaboration with Sales, templates and strategies)
+ Proof of Value: Value advisory specific examples and Objection Handling
+ Transition and Expansion: Proper technical close, account transitions, and best practices of collaboration with PS/CS on expansions and upsells.
"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
BrownBelt Second Degree Workshops
Format: 3 or 4 2-Hour Sessions, Zoom or In-Person
The Second Degree workshops drills down into specific and highly popular programs, and incorporate more experiential learning with lecture, homework, and discussion/certification meetings to reinforce core principles and instill specific habits and tools.
Existng Second Degree workshops are listed below, and can be mixed and matched as appropriate.
Dont see a topic below that you are interested in diving deeper? Any in the Core BrownBelt workshop (e.g. Value Engineering artefacts under development) can be developed into a 2nd Degree experiential workshop, and we are happy to work with you on its development!
Discovery ( 2 sessions )
Review of core Discovery principles and practice, with added group discovery exercises, homework, and presentations/discussions or certifications. Two focus areas are: Active Listening (EI) and Discovery questioning and strategy. Templates and additional exercises provided as best practice along with a co-created case study, complemented with existing company tools if appropriate.
Demos and Presentations ( 2 sessions )
Review of core Presentation and Demo principles and practice, with added exercise time in teams to work on a specific demo or presentation with new strategies. Focus is on high impact delivery, discovery driven use-case vignette themes, quantification. Presentation prep templates are provided along with scoring rubrics for the follow-up group certification session.
AE / SE Relationships and Effectiveness
Review of strategies for most effective AE/SE relationships both internally and in sales execution. More immersive case studies to reflect more deal and internal scenarios, and a focus on self awareness and outcomes. Homework and presentations follow in the second session along with a 1-1-1 commitment for continuous improvement. Bonus material around working with your SE Manager. Highly rated session.
Expansion Playbook
Review of Close-->Onboarding transitions and expansion best practices, along with the introduction of presales-oriented plays to leverage for ongoing renewal and expansion opportunities. Template provided with pre-built play ideas along with a plan to capture key information, programs, and dependencies. Homework and presentations follow in a second session, individually or in teams, on actual account expansion playbooks. Applicable to Customer Success / post sales professionals in concert with SE teams.
New!
Objection Handling
Review of Objection Handling strategy and framework, along with deeper dive exercise on role-playing top objections Customization to identify top 5 objections into prebuilt template, and homework to complete and add to template before sharing session where new objections are role played. Extremely effective for teams who do not have a pre-existing framework.