How to support a broader portfolio?

Are you finding it hard to support more and more products?

Many Sales Engineers are being asked to support more and more products as time goes on.  Businesses are finding new ways to expand offerings, acquiring new technologies, or downsizing sales organizations, and SEs need to pick up the slack and learn how to present more.

How do you get started on new product areas?
Many people find it easier to use a script to get started in a new area.  This helps you structure a good demo (and this is often a good idea even for experienced SEs too). It also means you can focus on each aspect of your presentation and even keep some important points written down so that you don't miss them.

How to have the technical depth to be considered an expert?
Some solution areas can be challenging to support, due to the breadth of questions that could be asked, and the overall complexity of the business problem.  This part does take time to become the proper expert, but an initial focus on the frequently asked questions, watching webinars from other experts, and doing some study into case studies will help you build up the expertise.

How to stay up to date on multiple solutions?
Each of these solutions is now taking a share of your time.  In my business, we make each SE in the team take responsibility for keeping us all up to date in a different product area.  This splits the workload and helps us all still have a great level of knowledge in each area.
Still there are logistic problems of having access to all the different sets of materials and solution sets.  Here it is worth having a more conversational method to ensure