Thursday, July 1, 2021

Some Observations – Exploring the Data in Consensus’ 2021 Sales Engineering and Workload Report

 

Consensus graciously provided me with access to the data in their “2021 Sales Engineering and Workload Report" – here are some interesting observations.  (You can find the full report here:  https://demo.goconsensus.com/2021-sales-engineer-salary-compensation-workload-report-registration )

 

Do larger average deals yield higher compensation?  

Yes for Practitioners; No for Leaders.

 

Deals < $1M 

Practitioners Base:      $112K

Leaders Base:              $154K

 

Deals >= $1M

Practitioners Base:      $132K

Leaders Base:              $142K

 

Deals < $1M 

Practitioners OTE (On Target Earnings):       $152K

Leaders OTE:               $213K

 

Deals >= $1M

Practitioners OTE:       $185K

Leaders OTE:               $207K


Moral?  It is a sellers’ market for experienced presales practitioners! 


Do larger deals require more demos?  

Yes, but not conclusively…!

 

Deals < $1M 

3 demos per deal median


Deals >= $1M

4 demos per deal median


Moral?  Not sure – perhaps vendors in doing more Discovery and preparation for the larger opportunities (resulting in fewer demos per dollar).


Do larger deals require longer demos?  

Yes, indeed…!

 

Deals < $1M 

2.5 hours per demo (prep, delivery, follow-up) per deal median


Deals >= $1M

5 hours per demo (prep, delivery, follow-up) per deal median

 

Moral?  Again, not sure, but I hope vendors are doing more pre-demo prep, in particular, as opposed to simply delivering longer demos…!


Fewer demos per week for larger deals?  

Yes…!

 

Deals < $1M 

4.4 demos per week average


Deals >= $1M

2.3 demos per week average

 

Moral?  Not surprising…!


Interestingly, the total time doing demos is about the same – about 25% of workload

 

Deals <$ 1M 

11 hours per week average


Deals >= $1M

11.5 hours per week average

 

How about unqualified demos?  

Nope – no apparent difference.

 

Deals < $1M 

30% average


Deals >= $1M

28% average


Moral?  Many SDRs, BDRs, and salespeople still suffer from “happy ears…”!  (The use of Great Demo! Discovery methods and Situation Slides could dramatically improve these numbers.)


It was really interesting to see that Discovery (far and away) is the area people want to invest more time doing for all deal sizes, but it was especially high for large opportunities.  


Deals < $1M 

432 vs. 361 (the next activity item on the list)


Deals >= $1M

33 vs. 21 (the next activity item on the list)


Moral?  Vendor teams know that doing Discovery is important, but likely (1) struggle to understand what information needs to be collected and (2) how to go about collecting it.  (Great Demo! Discovery methodology training could be a high-value cure for this…)

 

Questions I’d Love to Ask:

 

What percent of (presales) time is customer-facing?

What percent of time is consumed by Discovery?

What percent of time is consumed by demos?

What percent of customer-facing time is Discovery?

What percent of customer-facing time are demos?

What investments are being made to support these?

And overall, how are all of the metrics changing year-over-year?

 

No comments: