Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S6E42 Ramzi Marjaba | From Idea to Approval: Persuasion for Engineers
Ramzi Marjaba is a seasoned Solution Engineer and consultant currently with Veeam Software, working remotely from Ottawa since March 2025. Prior to this, he spent nearly four years as a Senior Solution Specialist at Keysight Technologies, managing Eastern Canada accounts and mentoring both SEs and account executives. Earlier in his career, he held technical roles at Spirent Communications, Alcatel‑Lucent, and Nortel, starting as an embedded software tester and evolving into a network design engineer and systems engineer.
In 2018, Ramzi founded We the Sales Engineers, a coaching platform and podcast designed to help sales engineers grow through thoughtful conversation, expert mentorship, and practice‑based learning. With hundreds of episodes and written content to his name, he’s built a global community for pre‑sales professionals seeking to sharpen their craft.
Ramzi emphasizes the difference between treating symptoms versus diagnosing root business needs—with a heavy focus on discovery, customer context, and vision building. He often compares SEs to business athletes: they don’t get to practice outside the field, and must deliver under pressure with clarity and impact. He also explores the evolution of presales roles in a shifting job market, noting the increasing competitiveness and need for strategic, value‑centered hiring.
Outside of client work, Ramzi mentors aspiring SEs, runs podcast and written series, and leads workshops—from quick discovery techniques to advanced whiteboarding and objection management.
LINKS:
Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramzimarjaba/?originalSubdomain=ca
Guest website: https://wethesalesengineers.com/
Aaron Moncur, host
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About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of the Being An Engineer podcast. Today we have a repeat guest, Mr. Ramzi Marjaba, a senior solution engineer at VM Software based in Ottawa, and the founder of we the sales engineers. With over 15 years of experience bridging technical design and consultative pre-sales, Ramzi's passion is helping engineers level up through. Coaching, community building and content creation. His work centers on deep discovery, value-driven demos, and empowering sales engineers around the globe. Ramzi, thank you so much for being with us and, and welcome back to the podcast.
Ramzi Marjaba:Thank you for having me and, uh, I don't know about exciting. I, I, I don't know what to do to get it exciting, but I'll do my
Aaron Moncur:Oh no. All right. So I'm, I'm gonna start this episode with, um, a, a, a short personal note here. Uh, I've been working with Ramzi as a sales coach for. I don't know, six months, something like that. 6, 7, 8 months, something like that. And, uh, Ramzi's not paying anything to, to be on this show, and I'm not being, I'm not being paid anything to have him on this show. I just thought that it's been so valuable for me working with him and I've, I've derived a lot of benefit from it that I thought, you know, we should have Ramzi back on the show because the first time you were on the show, we weren't working together. I think you maybe had reached out to me. And, and we had you on the show and it was great. And, and then we went for several years without really communicating. And I reached out at some 0.6, eight months ago and said, Hey, I, I could, I could use some help with sales. Are you free? And luckily he did have some availability. So anyway, we've been working together for six or eight months now. I've gotten to know Ramzi, and he's just a, a wonderful person, um, and, and very, very knowledgeable when it comes to sales. He's taught me a lot and, uh, he works with, um, other CEOs out there like me, who own engineering or manufacturing businesses, uh, and, and just need help selling B2B in kind of that engineering environment. So, anyway, excited to have you on the show today and, uh, and we'll just dive in here.
Ramzi Marjaba:Thank you. You don't know how awkward it is to sit here or listening to somebody else say nice things about me. I'm not used to it. I don't know what to do with myself. I
Aaron Moncur:I, I, I could see your face turning a little red. Yeah,
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah. Yeah, that, that's, that's not special effects or anything. That's just, already 10 and I turned somehow a shade of red, but I appreciate it.
Aaron Moncur:and, and we are recording video for this as well, so everyone else will be able to see that as well. It's not just audio only at this point.
Ramzi Marjaba:I, I apologize in advance.
Aaron Moncur:All right. So Ramzi, why don't you tell us in your own words, what, what is a sales engineer? What, what do you do for work and, uh, who are the people that that you help?
Ramzi Marjaba:All right. Well, sales engineering is the concept of, uh, solving a business problem with technology, right? And as a sales engineer, I have to first find out what the business problem is, because probably know this, not many people wanna tell you what the problem is. They just wanna buy something. So figure out what the problem is, convince them to share that information with you, and then show them the best solution to fit their needs.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I, I wanna say one thing, and there might be engineers listening to this thinking, well, I'm not a sales engineer, so this episode isn't for me. I, I'm gonna respectfully push back a little bit and say, um, this, this episode is also for you. True. This episode is, is probably most. Useful to sales engineers out there, but being a, a non-sales engineer and understanding the sales process, especially if you have to deal with salespeople, which most engineers out there do, right? Uh, I, I think it's really helpful for you to understand the sales process. Um. So that you can facilitate the, this process on your end. You know, none of us like spending time that we don't need to spend, and I think understanding the sales process from both ends can, can help engineering organizations, engineering teams, uh, speed up the process and, and just get through it quicker in a more efficient and successful manner. That's my opinion anyway.
Ramzi Marjaba:Well, I, I'd like to add to that, you've ever tried to convince a manager to give you a. You're maybe not a sales engineer, but you're in sales, right? You have to convince them. You have to show them the business problem that you're solving and why you're valuable to stay within the company enough that they would actually give you more money.'cause they already have you. Why would they give you more money? You have to convince them. If you've ever had to convince a customer or even a fellow employee about a specific design, whether we want to go one way or another here in sales. Sales is the only difference is that. the end of it, there's a transaction, there's a purchase order and there's money exchanged. And in the case of raise, it's the same case you, there's money exchanged in the case of convincing 'em to do an idea. Maybe it's not money exchange, but there is some form of exchange. You're getting acquiescence from somebody else for your idea because you were able to convince them of to go one route versus something else.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, we're, we're all selling something right.
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah, and that's sales is, I like. I grew up, I didn't wanna be a salesperson. That was never my intention. I didn't wanna be a sales engineer. I didn't want to talk to people. I studied engineering so I don't have to talk to people. And then I found out that I can't get anywhere without people. I have to talk to them in one way, shape, or form. I, I started off in support, which means customers called me angry and I had to calm them down and fix their problem. And convince them that I'm fixing their problem in the best way possible. Then I moved out to network design. Uh, so I was in networking and I would still have to work with people and convince them that my design is better than the competitors design or what they think the design should be. So everything, everything. A job interview is a sales sales process. Yeah. So.
Aaron Moncur:You were on the show, I can't remember how long it's been, three years, maybe even four years ago. If you can even remember what has transpired over the past three, four years, what? What have you learned recently that maybe you didn't know the last time you were on the show?
Ramzi Marjaba:I, I think I learned so much. Uh, a good product doesn't sell itself. A bad product could still be sold fairly easily if it solves a problem. Um, it's not about me, it's about the customer or the other person I'm trying to convince to do something. How many more points do you want? Like I can, let's see, let me think. Oh, one big thing, it's the thought process is I'm, because we're in sales, we know that the company every year expects a certain amount of growth from a, from the company, from a, from a sales team. And yet for some reason, engineers, specifically individual contributors, expect some form of financial growth for their own company. Like you're the CEO of your company. But I'm not expecting a raise. Uh, I'm like, I would love a raise, but I'm not fighting for it. But the company's expecting to grow, so why aren't you? Uh, that's a thought. Uh. A perspective shift that I had. Uh, the negotiation isn't hard. I learned that. Right. Well, I don't know. I'll, I'll pause here.
Aaron Moncur:Uh, one, one of the, I think one of the most valuable things I've learned from you, uh, especially when it comes to B2B sales, I'm not sure this is as true for. B2C, but in, in B2B sales, in, in other words, business to business where you're selling to a business or buying from a business, not selling to a, a, a consumer, um, is the importance of the discovery process. And we can talk a little bit about what the discovery process is, because everyone should understand this. Like we talked about, everyone is selling something, even if you're not. Formally in sales, you should still understand the discovery process, which is basically figuring out what's important to, um, the individual or group or organization to whom you're selling. And, and I'll, I'll nuance that with this is something else that I've, um, I, I've, I've learned from you. Is, uh, when you're going through that discovery process, uh, you really need to understand what is the business impact that this solution will have. And I've run into this over and over and over in my own sales efforts here at Pipeline. Selling custom equipment to, uh, manufacturers and, and typically this equipment is not inexpensive. It's custom. We're designing it from the ground up and, and, you know, it can be easily hundreds of thousands of dollars for this thing. So there's a lot of scrutiny that goes into this, and, and people don't purchase these things on a whim. And so with, without understanding the business impact that this piece of equipment, this fixture, this automation is going to have. It is, it's pretty difficult to to sell something, but if you can ascertain that with this piece of equipment, you're gonna save $800,000 in the next year, or you're gonna unlock $1.8 million of new revenue in the next 18 months, then it becomes much easier to say, look, Mr. Customer, this piece of equipment is half a million dollars, but you're gonna unlock. 1.5 million over the next 12 months. It just becomes a much easier conversation. So maybe walk us through the, the discovery process. How do you think about it? How do you teach it to, to other engineers?
Ramzi Marjaba:Sure. So one of the, one of the things that I see for discovery. A lot of people do this mistake, and I wanna start with that because that way I can transition into what a proper discovery should look like. And lemme know if I'm off base here, but most people that I've seen, they don't do discovery. They do a presentation, right? A customer invited them in to their office to come and show them what you got. And we as engineers or salespeople, salespeople with engineering background show up. We just present what we do. This is what we do, and then it's up to the customer to figure out how they can use what you do to solve their own problems, which is why at that point if the customer buys, they bought despite of you, not because of you. And that's what I mean by products. Good products don't sell themselves. Right. And a good product is a product that works. And a lot of people ask like, what's a good product? It's a product that doesn't have a lot of failure. It's a problem that solves the problem. But you kind of have to, as a salesperson or an engineer working with a customer, you kinda have to tell, show them it solves their problem, but how are you gonna show them what solves, how it solves their problem without understanding the problem? So basically it's, it's a conversation. A discovery is a conversation between. Two or more people where we're asking open-ended questions, we're sharing information between us and the customers to capture what is important to them. And the first thing that I like to ask my when I meet them is, why are we even meeting today? nobody wants to meet with salespeople. Do you like salespeople?
Aaron Moncur:not particularly.
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah. And I'm sure if I ask that question to people listening, they're gonna say, not really. Like I would try. I'd rather avoid a salesperson. If I, if I can. So when you show up on a discovery call and you ask them like, why are we even meeting today? They're gonna share a lot of information. Now the framework that I teach is like, it's, by the way, I'm not sharing any secrets. Everything's available online. There's a lot of different frameworks and you can use whichever one you want. for me, I'm trying to understand why they're trying to, like, why are they trying to talk to me? What are, why they're trying to buy? Uh. system, what is the problem that they're trying to solve with that system? Because once I figure that out, then I can actually offer a good solution. The other thing I'm trying to understand is, is the person I'm talking to, do they have the ability to actually purchase? You've probably talked to people where you show up, they come and ask you a billion questions, and then at the end of the call, they're gonna say, all right, well, let me take this information to my boss, who can then make a decision.
Aaron Moncur:Which is super frustrating, right? Because at that point I know, okay, this is not the person who's going to make the decision, and, and how do I get in touch directly with the person who is making that decision?
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah. But not to sound like a, a ho or anything, but that's your fault,
Aaron Moncur:Right.
Ramzi Marjaba:right? That that's something you could have found out at the beginning of the
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. I didn't do my due diligence.
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah. You, we need to find out like. And sometimes it's insulting to ask someone like, Hey, if I were to, uh, if I were to offer you the, the quote at the price that you want, would you be able to buy? Nobody wants to like, yeah, of course I would be able to buy. Who do you think I am? I'm, I'm important. you can always ask the same question in a more diplomatic way. Right? Who else is involved in the decision making process, right? It's a simple question, and most of the time we'll give you an answer. So I, I like to figure out everything upfront in terms of like of, of buying before I start digging into the problem. Once you figure out the mechanics of when they need this buy, uh, who's gonna be able to purchase, what are, what is important to them in terms of metrics, right? If you are, if you would like to do some research, I'm gonna share, uh, a couple of acronyms. Met. Pick bant. Or medic. Okay. You can search them up. They're all the, the same framework but with the different, uh, marketing terms around them. But whichever one that you like to use, you can use it. But once you figure that out, then you can talk about the technology. And most of the times, one last thing. Most of the times they don't care how you solve the problem, as long as you solve the problem.
Aaron Moncur:Let's talk about, uh, bent real quickly. This is, uh, one of the acronyms that you just shared, and this is the one that, for whatever reason has stuck in my mind. Maybe it's because it's the shortest one, BANT. What does that stand for?
Ramzi Marjaba:Yep. Uh, budget, authority, need, timeline, and the reason it's stuck in your head because it covers all your bases and it's easy to u easy to
Aaron Moncur:Right?
Ramzi Marjaba:So.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Understand the budget, understand who's the authority, the decision maker, what is the need that they have and the timeline, what, when do they need to make a decision?
Ramzi Marjaba:Or is there a need?
Aaron Moncur:Is there.
Ramzi Marjaba:tell you this, the biggest competitor you have is not another vendor. It's do Nothing. Right? Which means they didn't really need a, a solution.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Ramzi Marjaba:they thought it would be cool. They liked it. They liked the idea of having it, but didn't really solve a problem. So like Netflix. We talked about B2C earlier, buy, uh, business to consumer versus business to buyer. Which business would buy Netflix?
Aaron Moncur:Uh, another business. I mean, what do you mean? Which business? Like
Ramzi Marjaba:which, which
Aaron Moncur:what company out there right now would buy Netflix?
Ramzi Marjaba:Not acquire the company Netflix, but buy the service. Netflix.
Aaron Moncur:Like the video streaming service,
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:uh, probably not many companies out there. This is a,
Ramzi Marjaba:solve a problem. It, it's cool,
Aaron Moncur:doesn't solve a business problem. Yeah.
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah. I mean, I, I want to entertain my people. Is that a business problem? Not really. Like you, you see a lot of companies that have foosball in the, in their, uh, especially like high tech companies, foosball or ping pong, uh, tables in their, uh, waiting rooms or rest areas. But it's not really solving a business problem other than, Hey, I'll entertain my employees. But yet you kind of have to have some form of problem to to buy
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Um. There's something I've been thinking about recently, and maybe it would be interesting to talk about this briefly here on the podcast. So I, I was in Boston, uh, a few days ago last week, and, uh, while we were there. I, I met with an attorney, um, who really wasn't part of like my business trip there. We just happened to, uh, be in the same place at the same time and, and got to talking. And this attorney works for one of the, the largest, um, law firms in the nation. And, uh, they're, uh, I assume very expensive, you know, cost a lot of money to engage with this firm. And he was telling me that their first year associates. So right out of law school, no real experience, maybe an internship or something. But first year out of law school, uh, associates are making a quarter million dollars a year, and I thought that was. Just amazing that a company would pay a quarter million dollars a year to basically, uh, a newbie that didn't really know how to do anything yet. And I, I asked myself, why in the world would clients be willing to pay that much money to a law firm that they can afford to pay first year associates a quarter of a million dollars? And, uh, the, the answer I I, I probably shouldn't disclose too much, so I'll be a little bit vague here with, with, uh, the rest of this. Anecdote. Uh, this firm has a mechanism for unlocking a lot of cash for companies, hundreds of millions of dollars. And there aren't many firms out there who can do this and, and this firm can. So if you're the client and, and you're asking yourself, oh, is it, is it really worth paying this firm, you know, whatever it is, I don't know, a million dollars, $2 million to, to solve this problem for me? And you realize, well, they're gonna unlock hundreds of millions of dollars for me. Yeah, of course I'm gonna pay them a small percentage of that, a million bucks, 2 million bucks, whatever it is. And, and it just, it struck me. That if, if you, as the sales engineer can position yourself between the money and the customer, then uh, it, it becomes much easier to, to do a deal. Um, I'm sure you have thoughts or, or nuances on that, but do you find that to generally be the case or, or am I missing anything like obvious or, or large here?
Ramzi Marjaba:Well, generally speaking, in order to make a sale, you have to save the company, the customer money, save them time or reduce risk, preferably all
Aaron Moncur:Or unlock new money.
Ramzi Marjaba:But yeah, and when you save them time, that's the way for them to go out and. Get more money, but just you have to show them how to do it. Right. You have to kind of explain it to them. Sometimes. Uh, sometimes the obvious is not so obvious. So yeah, like basically these are the three or four things that you have to do in order to be able to sell anything. And we talked about reduce risk, that that's like insurance. Who wants to pay for home insurance? Not many people, but most people are sure are glad. If something this, the catastrophic happens to their house, they get paid back. Obviously like home insurance companies might try to get away, get out of it, but in general, let's say an ethical company will, it will make that payments that you've been putting in worth it. So. Yeah, I agree with that. You either have to make them more money, you have to save them some money, save them time, reduce risk, and companies would buy the, the problem is how do you do that better than the competitor, Because you and the competitor in many cases, are gonna have similar ways of doing things. Take for example, a Toyota and a Honda. They're both good cars. They both do similar things, but I probably insulted audience who loves Toyota or loves Honda in this one statement because there's some form of preference for one or another, but they, they do the exact same thing. So how do you show the customer that you do it better than the other one? Discovery. If you discover properly, you understand in depth their problem. If you build good relationships with the people who are involved in the decision making or using the product. You'll probably have a better chance of selling your product.'cause people buy from people they like. People buy from problem solvers. If I have to go out and solve my own problem, I, why do I need you?
Aaron Moncur:Right.
Ramzi Marjaba:hey, if I have two, if I have two or doing the exact same thing and not solving any of my problems, I have to go out and figure it out, then sure. But then I'll play them against each other to figure out who gives me the best price for what I need.
Aaron Moncur:How do you discover the. I will say the business problem and, and let me explain what I mean by that. When I speak with our customers, generally it's engineers who contact pipeline and they say, uh, we have this manufacturing process that's currently manual and it's too slow, and operators make errors. And the, the quality of the product is not perfect and we wanna automate it to eliminate those errors. And so to do this, we want a machine that does X and Y and Z. It does material handling and it does vision inspection, and it does assembly. That's not really the business problem. Right? And, and most engineers I talk with, they don't, they're not privy to like the, the commercial reasons behind this. Like, how much money is this actually gonna save them, or how much new revenue is it going to unlock? And, and I always have a hard time getting to that. Like, I, I might ask them, what's your budget for this? What do you wanna spend on it? And sometimes people tell me and sometimes they don't. Um, but, uh. Uh, it, it seems like most people I talk to don't really understand the, the commercial reason behind the request that they come to me with. So how do you handle situations like that?
Ramzi Marjaba:I mean, that's, that's a fair question and a lot of it is because a lot of that what's happening with you is because of the bottoms up selling, right? We're selling to users who can't make decisions. They may, they may influence the decision, but they cannot make the final decision, So we, as people trying to solve a problem. If we wanna solve a business problem, we have to talk to the people who have the business problem, which are the manager, director, vp, C-I-O-C-E-O, whoever it is in that chain, CTO, right? They know what the business problem is. So what we would need to do is when we're working with the bottoms up approach, our goal, my goal is not to sell to them. My goal is to get them to like me enough that they want to introduce me to their boss. Right. So the business problem here doesn't affect the individual, but what does it affect, like, all right, I'm a, I'm a individual contributor. I am working on this product that broke, and now I have to do things manually, and instead of going home at five o'clock to see my family, I'm staying here till seven every night for this next week to do things that the machine should have done and couldn't do. my business problem is I'm not spending enough time with my family. I'm gonna get divorced. My, my wife, uh, like is, doesn't like me anymore. What, whatever it is that, uh, the problem is, hopefully it's not the case. So you can help him or her with that and maybe get them to, get them to introduce you to the hiring, to the manager decision maker and try to find out what the problem is for them, and then get them to introduce you. So it might take a little bit longer. But then when you get to the end, you probably have a better chance of closing the deal than it to go into limbo.
Aaron Moncur:And even when you're speaking with a non-decision maker, chances are that person wants something. Right. Uh, whatever it is, it's, it's probably not. Necessarily the same as, as what the business wants, but that person wants something. Maybe it's recognition within the company may, maybe it's a, a, a future raise or something. If they do a good job on this project, they want something. To what degree do you spend time trying to understand specifically when talking with a non-decision maker, like what is it that this individual gets out of the deal? What do they want and how do I help them solve that so that I can then solve the business problem and, and get the project?
Ramzi Marjaba:I, I, spend as much time as I need to. I, I don't think I can give you a definitive answer, but I'm trying to understand how it affects them. Okay. You mentioned. You are having all these issues, how I know, how I understand how it affects the business, how does it affect you personally? What's it doing to you? And like, and then based on that, you can first off show empathy, build a relationship. And I'm not talking, talking about faking it, right? I'm actually be genuinely interested in knowing like how does it affect you and how can it help you with your problems? So I spend enough time for them to get me to meet with the higher ups
Aaron Moncur:This is something else that I've learned from you. The, the important and, uh, and, and application of empathy in the sales process. And like you said, legitimate, genuine empathy, not, not fake, um, empathy. Uh, what place does empathy have in selling?
Ramzi Marjaba:everywhere. Just to be clear, empathy doesn't mean doing what the customer asks you to do. In my opinion, empathy just means understanding where they're coming from when they ask for something. Alright?
Aaron Moncur:And
Ramzi Marjaba:Just because they ask for extra. Go ahead.
Aaron Moncur:are there some ways that you commonly show that empathy?
Ramzi Marjaba:I, yeah. When I'm in, if I'm in a one-on-one meeting, I can say like. I can ask about them and I just try to understand them and put myself in their shoes. Also, I repeat and rephrase what they say, especially if there's a problem. Say, you mentioned that this is causing me some grief because you have to stay later than usual and your, I'm sure like your family misses you. I wanna see you. That's I, because I understand what the problem is. One thing that you and I worked on is through email. Sometimes we expect the customers to respond. Like we send a follow up email. It's like, Hey, can you tell me about this? Like, where are we in the process? And I try to ask you to put yourself in their shoes. Is your job to buy stuff or is your job to make stuff with whatever you have? Your job is to make stuff with whatever you have. So when you have a salesperson just bombarding you with, Hey, hey, can you gimme an update? Can you gimme an update? Can you gimme an update? It doesn't feel great like I already have a job now I have to to this guy who just can't leave me alone. A little empathy will tell you like, Hey, I know you're busy. I know you're probably busy doing a million things and putting out so many fires whenever you have the chance. I'd love to get an update on this just so I know how I can help you with the next steps. Right? You're showing them that you understand their job is not to talk to you. You're showing them that you understand their Jo, they're busy with other things and you're asking for some time, but you're also showing that you want to, like, you're not asking because you're trying to sell, which you are, but you wanna sell, but you also wanna help at the same time. That's also possible, It's hard to sell without helping. So I want to help you gimme some answers so I can go out and help you with that information or with whatever you need at this moment in time.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, there. There have been numerous times when I've come to you and said, Ramzi, I did this thing for this customer, and the response or, um. The input back from the customer is, is not what I wanted. What do I do? And, and you'll respond to me by saying, well, why should the customer do that? What's, what's in it for them? And that, that's always helped me reframe, uh, or, or recontextualize that situation of, you're right. Yeah. What is in it for them? Why should they like, do this thing that I want them to do if, if it's really in their best interest and it's something they see great value in that. They're probably just gonna do it because it's good for them. But if I'm not getting the response I want, maybe I need to spend some more time thinking about what it is the customer wants and needs.
Ramzi Marjaba:And you'd be doing a disservice. If you don't show them how you can help. Right. Sometimes we don't wanna sell. We're engineers, right? Background of engineering, it's not, we don't want to go push ourselves on our customers. We don't want to go tell them what they're doing is wrong or, just make them feel bad anyway. Or try to get them to feel like, I'm trying to sell you this thing, but at the same time. If I'm not consultative, if I'm not telling them what you're doing is not helping you, or you could be doing it in a better way, a disservice to them. Right? The same way, like I was talking to a friend of mine who does cold calls, right? That's not the best or the most glamorous jobs he gets the most like people hate him. It's like, why are you calling me? Why are you calling me? Swearing at him or whatever it is that they need to do to feel better in the moment. But if he reaches out to 10 and all and none of them hang up with him and he helps one, if he had not called that one, it would've been a disservice to that person. Yeah, sure. He pissed off 10 other people, but it's part of the job, their job as well to receive calls when they get into decision making positions. Maybe he could have done a better job trying to help them understand what he does, maybe he couldn't. And there is just no need. But the fact of the matter is if he didn't call those nine to get to that 10th and help him or her, that's a disservice to that one person, so,
Aaron Moncur:I wanna go back to the acronym Bent and in, in particular the letter B budget. Talk about that for a little bit because I, I think this is one area where, um, we get tripped up. Uh, very often salespeople get, get, uh, get stuck, right? When I go into discovery phase, one of the first questions I ask is, what's the budget? I might not frame it exactly like that. I might say something like, what does it make sense to spend on this? Or, or what is the, uh, what are you gonna save by by having this solution? Something like that. But I wanna understand ultimately what, what they're willing to spend on this and, and. I completely understand why the, uh, the customer might feel this way, but sometimes they feel like, well, I'm not gonna tell you what the budget is because if I tell you what the budget is, you're just gonna tell me that's what the, that's what it costs. You know, maybe my budget is$250,000 for this machine, but maybe you can do it for 150,000. And if I. Tell you the budget's two 50, you'll just tell me that, uh, the cost is two 50. But if I, if I, you know, maybe I'm being a little sneaky and I say, ah, the budget's 150, maybe you'll do it for a hundred thousand less than, than you would have otherwise. Um, and, and I, again, I completely understand, uh, uh, you know, that side of things from, from my end. The reason I'm asking is because if I ask you what the budget is and you come back and say, ah, our budget is$50,000 and I know it's a $200,000 build, I can very quickly say, thank you so much for letting me know, Mr. Customer. I don't think this is an area where we can help you. The, the, the budget just doesn't match with what it's gonna cost to do this. And at that point we can either rescope the project, which we've been able to do in the past, or, you know, part ways amicably and know that this particular. Opportunity wasn't, wasn't the right fit. Um, but how do you coach sales engineers to go about that conversation?
Ramzi Marjaba:I, it's a very hard conversation. Nobody likes talking about money, so it's not. You can flat out go out and ask what the budget is, and you might get conflicting responses, but, and there are many ways to do it. It's, it's hard to teach in like in general how you do it, because every scenario is different. There are some scenarios where you go out and ask what the budget is and they say, you know what? I don't want to tell you. At which point do you tell them? Well, I understand you don't want to tell me. I wouldn't want to tell me either. But the fact of the matter is, you and I are both gonna spend some cycles on this and we wanna make sure we're in the same ballpark. Otherwise, we're gonna get to the end and I'm gonna give you a $3 million quote and your budget is 5K, and then neither one of us is happy. So there a range you can give me? Right. So there are ways to, to talk about it, but also we can talk about how much, uh, throughout the conversation you can gleam out some information. Do you have a budget? Is this even budgeted for? When are you looking to purchase this order? Because if they tell you, oh, we're looking to purchase this order in, uh, or in Q4 2025, or Q3 2025, about to get into Q4. We're looking to b uh, looking to buy this in q uh, in Q1 of 2026. Oh, great. So you have time to budget for it or is it too late? Are you in the planning process? Oh, we're in the planning process. Okay. That gives me an understanding of the timeline. So they're not gonna put it in the PO for another four months or three months even more because don't know when in Q1 it could be March. So throughout the conversation, and it's very hard to interrogate the customer, so you're gonna have to have a conversation with the customer and. Explain why you're asking, and if they cannot give you a response, you can tell them. Just so you're aware, this project can go between 150 K and and $500,000 because we don't know the specifics yet. Does that sound reasonable? Are we in the same ballpark? Right. And then they can give you information. So there are many ways to do this. In the end, it's depends on your relationship with that person that you're talking to. If it is, is it repeat customer? Have you built trust with 'em in the past? Is it the first time talking? There are many variables that we will guide you in which way to talk to them about money.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. The, the compromise that we've found works pretty well for us is, um, we, we spend some of our time understanding what the project and they spend some of their time describing to us what the project is, the scope of work, the requirements, the features it needs to have that sort of thing. And, and we can roughly estimate what we think it's gonna cost. It's not gonna be a detailed quote that, um, uh. They can place a PO against, but it's gonna be a rough budgetary range, you know? All right. Thanks for spending an hour or two with us giving us a overview of the scope of work. Based on what we heard, we, we spent a couple hours of our time just talking internally and doing some rough concept design work, and we think it's probably between two and $300,000. Is that, are we in roughly in, in the right ballpark and in that way? You know, we don't put in a ton of our time before knowing if we're aligned on budget and they don't put in a ton of their time, but they're also getting something right. They're not just giving us, here's the budget, like we're giving them a number that, that we have some confidence behind. That's, that's been like a pretty good, that balance for us.
Ramzi Marjaba:One thing I would add to that is you're able to show them how much they would save as well. Hey, this is, this is how much it would cost us on average to build this in general, because our discussion we've had in the past, we believe it would save you this amount of money. Right, That will also help them understand that it's not just, I'm not just paying X amount. There's a, the returns, it will save me x this, this much amount as well. So that will make my decisions easier. generally speaking, I like to get that information from them. Right. A lot of, uh, well, why would you trust a salesperson who tells you, I'm gonna save you $500 per day, you would. if, if a, if the salesperson asks you, based on the information that we have, and if we can fix this for you, how much do you think you would save? How much more money would you make? How much more time would you have to do other things that can make you money? All this goes into the information that I can then show them in the, uh, in the initial proposal.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Yeah. E exactly. And a lot of customers are, they might know, they might not know exactly like what the, the budget is per se, but they do know that if we have this solution. Uh, we could take three of our operators who are currently working on this process and put them somewhere else that's more, a more valuable use of their time. So effectively they're, they're saving the salaries of, of three, uh, operators, right? And then, you know, based on that, you can make some rough estimates about how much money they're gonna save. And then, does it make sense, given the investment required to produce this, this solution?
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah, that's the concept of total cost of ownership, right? The cost of ownership is how much money you have to spend and how much money you're gonna save. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Yeah. Uh, going back to discovery has, can you think of a, uh, a situation, um, uh, where a question you asked really changed the course of that discovery and, and like unlocked a deal that maybe wouldn't have happened otherwise?
Ramzi Marjaba:I mean. I feel like that happens all the time. Be, a lot of times customers come in with their preconceived notions of what they want. They don't know why they want it. They, they just, they heard from something or they saw a marketing thing online that said This can solve problem X, and they think that's their problem. So throughout the discovery, you're asking questions to understand what the problem is, and if in the end. You can figure out that your problem isn't X, it's Y. Then it shifts the entire conversation away from that product to another product or solution or service, or a bigger solution or service. So I feel like that happens in every single call, and sometimes it does the opposite. Sometimes it's like, oh, you don't have a problem, or We don't have a problem that I can solve. me point you to someone who can.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Yep. Um, a, a thought that I've had probably the past, I don't know, six to 12 months or so, is that w. What we really need to be selling to our customers is revenue for them, right? Like at, at the end of the day, they don't really care about the machine or the fixture or the product or, or whatever the the solution is. It's the, it's a business. They're running a business and businesses need to. Generate revenue and profit to stay in business, and that's kind of the goal of every business. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't businesses out there who are altruistic and have humanitarian programs, things like that, that are also important to them. Of course. Absolutely. But without that revenue, without that profitable revenue. They cannot remain in business to, to do these humanitarian things, these, um, wonderful things for, for other people. So that's how I've been thinking about it, is how can we sell profitable revenue to our customers, uh, in an amount that is, you know, more than the investment they'll need to make for the solution. That's been a helpful way to think of it for me.
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah. It's, it's selling a business outcome, right? It's, uh, I'm not selling an automated machine. I'm selling you an extra 7,000 units that you can go ahead and sell to your customers.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Ramzi Marjaba:That will make you money. And that's a big point that you mentioned, that even altruistic companies need to make money. They're probably selling something to someone so that they can actually make money to give to charity. And as engineers, we, some of us, I know I did of money as evil, right? Like, uh, I got my first raise, I'm like, I didn't, I don't want it. I don't like this is, this is wrong. But as a company, if you're not, if you're not doing the proper job selling, that means you can't pay for your employees. If you don't raise your prices where every, all the prices around you are being raised against you, you're, you're doing this disservice to your employees. doing a disservice to your customers.'cause sooner or later you're gonna run outta business and not gonna be able to support them with whatever they already bought from you. And that's a different topic we can go into. I just wanted to throw that out there.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Uh, tangentially related there, i, i, it made me think of a interview I did with Andy Wells. This was several years ago. He's, uh, let's call him a mature gentleman who owns a manufacturing business, has for many, many years, and just an, an amazing human being. Uh, one of the, I would say one of the most. Uplifting and, um, just positive interviews I've ever done. And he talked to me about their marketing and, and he said that they tried a lot of different things with their marketing, you know, typical things, putting ads in trade magazines, things like that. And none of 'em really worked very well. And, um, something they started doing kind of on the side. Was, uh, they were in an area that was pretty poverty stricken. And, and they would bring individuals from the community in and train them on, on how to run these machines, you know, a milling machine, lathe, CNC, things like that. And they would give them jobs and, and. Turned them into productive members of society. And many of these individuals had criminal records and, and felonies and, uh, no other company would hire them because, you know, they have these procedures in place. Oh, we can't hire you. You have, you have a record, whatever. And Andy thought, well, let's see what we can do here. And, and so he'd bring these people in, train them. Anyway, it turned into this wonderful program. Um, it, it worked out well for the company. It worked out well for the individuals, and, and he turned that into their marketing. When, when he'd go and talk with a, a company, um, he'd spend the first five minutes telling the company about, you know, this is how we can help you from a, a technical standpoint. This is the, the business outcome that we can do for you. And then he'd spend the rest of the time talking about this program that they had and, um, uh. I, I remember listening to that and, and, and then asking him, I said, Andy, don't you feel wrong ever? Like, like you're exploiting these people to, to sell your, you know, your, your product, your service. Um, and, and he said, well, I mean, how did it make you feel after I told you this story? You have to listen to him tell it. It was, it was really, was. Inspirational. And I said, it made me feel incredible. It made me feel like I want to do that kind of thing. It made me feel like I want to give back to my community in that way. And he said, okay, is, I mean, is that a bad thing? And I was like, oh, you're right. You know, if, if you didn't share that story, yes, it was part of their marketing for business, but it was also just like this. Inspirational, uplifting story, and I thought, yeah, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have this, um, you know, this, this desire to give back and do good that you helped me feel with that story. So, kind of tangential, but, um, uh, it was kind of along the lines of, of what you were saying when it comes to, to, to selling.
Ramzi Marjaba:And like, I don't know what the outcome was for that gentleman, but also think about it, even if you did nothing. Uh, for your community. After that, you felt good and then people move on. They don't have time to get sucked back into their own, uh, world. He probably had more money to hire more of such people and give them an opportunity to
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
Ramzi Marjaba:So yeah, it's a disservice to your own people to not raise the prices, to not try to sell more. Uh, yeah, the, I'm bringing this up and I'm kind of harping on it, is because most people don't like They think of it as an evil thing. I don't wanna do the hard sell. I mean, you don't have to do the hard sell if you solve a problem. Right, or I don't want to negotiate prices, right? If they ask me for a, for a 5% discount, I'll just give it to them. Well, that's 5% or whatever. Like you could have, you could have, uh, reduced it down to 2% discount and that money could have been going to a raise for some one of your employees.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Okay, so if we bring this back to kind of the core elements, right? Um, probably a lot of the engineers listening to this are not selling, uh, uh, are not selling a piece of equipment or a device or some software. They're engineers. In the trenches, right. Doing the engineering work. But like we talked about in the beginning, you're, you're always selling something. So if we can bring this back to kind of the, the core fundamentals, especially for those engineers who are not actually selling a, a product, a service. They're just, they're actually doing the engineering work, but they need to. Promote their ideas. They need to sell their ideas to whoever their boss, their manager, their supervisor. What, what are like the core elements of the, the sales process, the discovery phase and such that the, the, these engineers working as individual contributors should know to, to, you know, best promote their ideas and, and help their company.
Ramzi Marjaba:So the sales process usually starts with a lead, then switch to qualification, discovery, and then you go through the selling and negotiation, closing the deal. I think it changes a little bit when you're an internal individual contributor, and I would say it starts with an idea, right? You have an idea that would make someone's life better and you want. To run it by your bosses to figure out if they're gonna let you do that, right? Is that kind of what we're talking about? Right. Okay. So I would say the first thing is, is, again, qualification and verification. You wanna verify that idea who, who would benefit from this? Who would care about this before you even take it to your boss, right? If I'm making something that will help team. Speed up their, their, uh, know, their, they create automation. Let's talk about easy motion, right? You, you started with that. Let's say it's some, one of, one of your people's ideas that ca came up with that, one I wanna understand like, what does this do for me? What does, what would this do for the team? Oh, it will help speed up their automation. They won't have to do a thousand test cases for r and d or they won't have to, they will reduce their r and d time from days to hours, right. Okay. Who would benefit from that? I need, now I need to build the business case, so I'm also doing a discovery, maybe not with another human being, but I'm, I'm trying to discover what it would do for other people, and that could include talking to other human beings. Right. Maybe I'll talk to you for a little bit, like, Hey, what would happen if I reduced the, the r and d time from days to hours? How would that benefit the company? Would you be able to hire more teammates That would help me do other things? Alright, cool. so if I do that, would you let me run with it? If I have an idea like that, would you let me run with it? And so person tied it back to what's in it for you. It's never about what's in it for me when I'm trying to sell you something. It's what's in it for you when I'm trying to sell you something. And in this case, I'm selling you an idea that will help you speed up your process by days.
Aaron Moncur:It was interesting that you brought up Easy Motion. Um, for those of you who don't know, uh, shameless Plug, go check out our website and look at Easy Motion. It's a really cool product for very, very easily programming, automated motion and uh, and other things. Anyway, I. This was an, uh, an internal project for us here at Pipeline, and we worked on it for like a year and a half and it didn't quite work and we basically had abandoned it. You know, we put a lot of time and money into developing this thing and it, it mostly worked, but, but not quite. It was a little buggy and so we just, you know what, we're just gonna shelve this. Like we can't keep. Pouring money into it. And one of our engineers approached me and he said, you know what, I, I have some ideas for how we can make this work and, and I think it, I think it's gonna work. And I was like, ah, you know, we've already spent so much time and money, I, I don't wanna do this. And he said, just gimme two days, gimme two days to work on it, and if I can't produce, you know, this result, by the end of two days, I'll never bring it up again. So I said, okay, fine. Two days, let's see what you can do. And sure enough, two days later he came back and he had this, this one element working. And then he said, you know what, I, I think that this other problem we've been having, I think I know how to solve that as well. And I was like, ah, there's no way that other problem we've been working on forever, and we just can't figure it out. He says, gimme two days. Two days, and, and let's see what I can do. Okay? Two days go for it. Two days later he comes back. It's solved. And I, I, I bring that up because I think that's such, especially for the individual contributors out there. Don't try to sell the farm all at once. Bite off little, you know, little demos that you can do. Little, little, um, uh, pieces of proof that you can bring to your leadership, your, your manager, um, to incrementally show them like, Hey, this idea has merit. It can work. It was really effective when my engineer did that for me.
Ramzi Marjaba:So why did you give him two days?
Aaron Moncur:Because I really wanted it to work, and, and he gave me enough hope that maybe he knows something. The other engineers who are working on this didn't know and he can make it work.
Ramzi Marjaba:So you wanted the outcome
Aaron Moncur:I wanted the outcome. Right. I I, okay. Yeah. Lemme back up. The reason I wanted it to work was because I, I think it, it's, uh. Fantastic product that other companies need and, and we can sell and, and make money. That was the business outcome I wanted.
Ramzi Marjaba:Right. So you wanted that. And he also reduced the risk
Aaron Moncur:Yes.
Ramzi Marjaba:just two
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Ramzi Marjaba:uh, let me work on this problem. He didn't say, let me work on everything. I'll fix it
Aaron Moncur:Right.
Ramzi Marjaba:two days, he would've said. That's not gonna happen in
Aaron Moncur:I.
Ramzi Marjaba:days, he said, gimme, he broke it down to the first problem two days and then the second, and he earned trust, right? Sometimes you talk in sales like you earn the right to the next meeting. That's sometimes that's all you can get. You don't always earn the right to sell within the first meeting. Sometimes you just earn the right for the next meeting. He earned the right for the next problem to solve.
Aaron Moncur:Yep, absolutely. You. You usually can't go straight from A to Z, but oftentimes you can go from A to B, and if B looks good then then you have an opportunity to go to C and then D and eventually Z,
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah, and the more trust you earn, whether with your boss or with your customers, the more leeway you get to try things.
Aaron Moncur:right? Yep. All right. Well, man, this, uh, close to an hour has gone by really fast. This was fun. I knew it would be, uh, Ramzi. What, what else do you want to say that we haven't talked about yet?
Ramzi Marjaba:Don't be afraid of just learning more about sales. I think sales would help in any way, in any aspect of life, whether you're trying to buy a car, buy a house, get a girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. It will help in all of those aspects and you can apply different, different. methodologies to any aspect of your life and you'll, your life would be easier as far as I'm concerned. Again, if you do it honestly, authentically, and with known nefarious uh, goals.'cause at some point you're gonna get found out and you're gonna pay for the cons. You're gonna pay the consequences of those actions if you have. you have goodness in your heart, I guess it'll be very useful to you. And it's a tool like anything else could be used for good, could be used for bad. If you use it for bad, you're gonna get found out sooner or later and you're gonna be outed.
Aaron Moncur:Ethical selling.
Ramzi Marjaba:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:All right. Where can people find you, Ramzi? How can people get in touch with you?
Ramzi Marjaba:My website is we, the sales engineers.com. You can, uh, connect with me on LinkedIn, Ramzi Mebo, or uh, you can email me at Ramzi at we the sales engineers.com. If you're like, uh, Aaron in the same boat and looking for some help, just reach out. I'm happy to help. You know, no strings attached.
Aaron Moncur:Awesome. Alright, Ramzi, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Ramzi Marjaba:Thank you for having me.
