March 7, 2025 • 40 mins
In this insightful episode, Clint Biggs shares his extensive experience in test engineering sales, discussing the critical intersection of technical expertise and customer relationships. With over 30 years in the industry, Clint provides valuable insights into sales engineering, team collaboration, and career development for engineers.
Main Topics:
- Test Engineering Across Industries
- Sales and Engineering Collaboration
- Building Professional Relationships
- Sales Engineer Compensation and Incentives
- Effective Communication Strategies
- Value-Based Service Delivery
Clint Biggs is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Testeract, a company specializing in automated test systems. Since March 2023, he has driven revenue and market growth, notably overseeing the merger of SOLUbit into Testeract.
Previously, as President of SOLUbit, Inc. (October 2015 – May 2024), Clint led significant growth, expanding the team and tripling revenue. The company served industry leaders like Agilent Technologies and Intel, providing solutions across mechanical, electrical, and software engineering disciplines.
At National Instruments, Clint held leadership roles over a 23-year tenure, including Principal of Key Accounts & Sales Excellence and Department Manager for Americas Services & Support, where he led over 250 engineering professionals.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Park University, graduating Magna Cum Laude. Clint is recognized for his leadership development, strategic growth, and aligning engineering with market needs.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Clint Biggs (00:00):
You know, you remember the old school, you
know, calculator watches. Youknow, you could buy those things
for, you know, 10 bucks. Andthen you contrast that with
something like a Rolex, that allit does is tell time, where's
the value, the values inwhatever the consumer is
ultimately choosing. So again,that's, that's the world that
the salesperson is in.
Aaron Moncur (00:32):
Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast
today, we have the pleasure ofspeaking with Clint Biggs,
Senior Vice President of Salesand Marketing at tester act with
over three decades of experiencein sales leadership and a proven
track record in driving growthand innovation, Clint has been
instrumental in shapingstrategies that bridge the gap
(00:53):
between engineering solutionsand market needs. Clint, thank
you so much for joining ustoday. Absolutely.
Clint Biggs (01:02):
It is great to be here with you, and I appreciate
the discussion.
Aaron Moncur (01:06):
All right, maybe you can tell us just a little
bit about your background andsome of the companies that
you've worked for.
Clint Biggs (01:13):
Yeah, absolutely, so. But yeah, by way of
introduction, I have spentreally the entirety of my career
in the test engineering space. Iinitially, coming out of school,
really wanted to focus onelectronic design, computer
development, things of thatnature. And really kind of found
(01:35):
myself by circumstance, in arole with National Instruments
way back in 1992 spent 20,almost 24 years of my career at
NI in a variety of roles. A lotof that in around sales, sales
development, applicationsengineering series, a variety of
(01:57):
roles in that regard. And reallykind of fell in love with the
idea of test engineering, andultimately what that means.
Following my time at at NationalInstruments, I went out on my
own, and rather than focusing onindividual product resale or
product sales as then I wasdoing, I focused more on
(02:18):
solution development. My companywas solubit, headquartered out
of Colorado Springs, and enjoyedthat for another eight or nine
years before merging ouroperations in with Tesseract,
and enjoyed that for the lasttwo years. Oh,
Aaron Moncur (02:34):
interesting. I didn't realize that so you were
acquired by tester act. Itsounds like that's correct.
Okay, very cool. When you sayTest, test engineering, what
kind of testing are youreferring to? Typically, we do a
lot of testing, and it's always,almost always mechanical
testing. You know, how muchforce does it require to move
(02:56):
this lever, that sort of thing.
What kind of tests are you mostfamiliar and comfortable with I
love that question.
Clint Biggs (03:05):
The kinds of tests that we do are really all of the
above. And it's electrical test,it's electrical, mechanical
test, it's simulation. In somecases, it's really the whole
gambit. It's a beautiful andthis is part of why I've enjoyed
my career. I think in testengineering, we're not focused
on any one industry per se, sosemiconductor, prisons or
(03:27):
transportation or aerospace, wereally service all of them the
when you look at the the focusof test engineering,
specifically, the question is,does your company, or do you
individually, make something,and if you make something,
particularly something that'sgoing out to the consumer world,
(03:48):
you need to test and validatethat that doing exactly what you
think and expect. And so really,the experience and the
opportunity to market that goesaround test engineering spans
the breadth of anyone or anycompany that makes really
anything. So is
Aaron Moncur (04:05):
this anything from like, you know, an inexpensive
consumer product, maybe a cellphone case or something like
that, through medical devices,through a sophisticated defense
system, like all of the above?
Yep, that's
Clint Biggs (04:19):
absolutely right.
So take, take the first examplethere, you know, inexpensive
cell phone cover. You know,whatever the case may be, what
are the things that you may beinterested in looking at that?
Well, one may be the tensilestrength of the material. You
know, at what force or at whatangle, do do these things bend
or break? Looking fordurability, right? You want to
be able to say, for instance,you've got the most durable
(04:41):
product on the market. You testand figure that out. It may also
be things like, maybe the waythe material looks and wears, is
it able to maintain its colorand its pattern and other
aspects of that? So sometimesit's. It's literal physical
tests. And these are the thingsthat, for instance, you guys
(05:02):
work quite a bit in as you'relooking at that, but sometimes
it may be non contact visionbased measurement systems. And
again, everything in between isfascinating, and
Aaron Moncur (05:15):
you do this all internally correct.
Clint Biggs (05:18):
So with Test Track specifically. And one of the
reasons why I was so excited tomerge in here and work with the
team that we have. We're notjust a group of really good test
engineers that build testsystems. We are that. But for
us, we've built enough testsystems out there that we've
learned the lessons that we needto learn in order to shorten
(05:41):
that process up. And a big partof that is the creation of a
standardized test framework inthe software side that you know
that really gives you a 30 to50% start on any given test that
you may ultimately wind updoing, the the device that you
may be testing, or the thingthat you ultimately interested
(06:01):
and that's always going to beunique to a given manufacturer
or given customer, but theapproach to testing that is is
relatively the same. You've gota design, you've got some
requirements, you've got somespecification that you also need
to approach. You're going tohave some hardware pieces. How
do you interface to it? How doyou communicate to it? Then
you're going to have some commonsoftware pieces. How do I want
(06:22):
to visualize that? Want tovisualize that? How do I want
the operator to interact withit? And and as much of the
commonalities you can take andand deal with, and, um, in a
standardized or modular way upfront, the faster you're going
to be ultimately developing thattest. And that's that's really
the exciting part for me.
Aaron Moncur (06:40):
Now, does Test Track focus mostly on building
custom systems that you thendeploy at a customer site or
receiving customer product,whether it's software or hard
goods products, performing thetesting and then providing a
report, it's more
Clint Biggs (06:57):
the former. So for us, the the most common
engagement would be a designengineer, a production engineer,
R and D just, just more broadly,and they got an idea, and, you
know, what are the steps to takethat idea ultimately to markets?
You're going to go through somelevel of simulation and some
level of characterization, andthen you're going to validate,
(07:19):
you know, maybe a proof ofconcept that ultimately goes
with that. And at some point youstart building up potential
articles, release candidates,first articles will tend to call
that at the point you'recomfortable with that, you move
really more into production,where you're moving, you know,
testing masses of these thingsand and the tests themselves,
the information you're lookingfor, ultimately, maybe the same,
(07:40):
but what you're doing with thatis different. And so in our
case, we want to collaborate andconsult with with these
engineers to get them throughthat process as fast as they
can.
Aaron Moncur (07:54):
How about things like inspection or metrology,
measuring? Does that fall in orout of scope of what test track
does help me
Clint Biggs (08:03):
understand that a little bit more so metrology,
you know, calibration,
Aaron Moncur (08:09):
like CMM inspection, you're putting a
part on a coordinate measuringmachine and pulling discrete
dimensions off of it to see if Apart is within tolerance or out
of tolerance. It's kind of testadjacent. I guess. I think
that's probably not the kind ofwork that test direct does. Is
(08:30):
that accurate?
Clint Biggs (08:31):
Yeah, I think your language is appropriate. It's
test adjacent. We would workwith and support something like
that. But the most common usecase is someone needs to
someone, this case, an engineer,design or technician operator,
wants to move beyond theindividual manual range of
pushing a button on a on adigital multimeter, or turning a
(08:53):
knob on a scope or something,taking a reading and then
manually doing something withthat. And instead, if we could
say, okay, what are all themeasurements, all the steps that
you need to do. What does youknow? What does that script
ultimately look like? That testprocedure? Let's automate that
and run through that asaccurately and as fast as
possible, and make sure thatwe're capturing the data,
(09:14):
providing the reporting and aninsight with that data that they
ultimately need.
Aaron Moncur (09:19):
Terrific. Okay, you've worked between sales and
engineers for a long time. Whatare some of the biggest
challenges that you've seen whenwhen sales and engineering teams
try to collaborate?
Clint Biggs (09:32):
Oh, that is great question.
Aaron Moncur (09:34):
Let's open up a can of worms here. Hi. It is. So
Clint Biggs (09:38):
my own experience has been built around the
concept that really goodengineers can go out and be
really good account managers andgood sales managers. And the
reason for that is ultimately,there's this desire to get in
and understand what theircustomers are doing and why
they're doing it that way, sothat you can all. For them, the
(10:00):
best solution. And so kind ofputting my sales hat on here, I
am a huge proponent of justfundamentally a needs based
selling approach. Thetraditional image of what a
sales professional looks like,probably for most people, smells
like a car salesman or a realestate agent or something like
(10:21):
that, where they're pushingsomething on you that really you
probably don't want, you know,they took a notional idea that,
you know you made the mistake ofwalking onto that parking lot,
and you know you're going to getthe what's it going to take to
put you into this 78 CutlassSupreme, you know, today, and
that is the most horrible salesexperience you can have. And you
contrast that with more of atechnical sales, or kind of
(10:46):
these engineering sales that wehave here, and it is more
consultative, and your goalultimately is to go into these
places, understand what they'retrying to achieve before you
ever get to the recommendationside of things. And it's an art,
it's a science, and it's alltogether fulfilling.
Aaron Moncur (11:05):
How does the business behind that work?
Because it takes a lot of timeto really understand at a deep
level what a customer is goingthrough, right? So not even
necessarily specific to testdirect, but just generally based
on your experience in theindustry, are are these
consultative approaches,typically like paid engagements,
(11:28):
just to understand what's goingon, or is this just cost of
doing business, where anengineer to engineers go out,
meet with the customer and spendhowever long it takes to really
understand the problem anddevelop candidate solutions.
Clint Biggs (11:43):
Yeah, it's a good combination of both, which,
going back to your previousquestion, is why I think
engineers that choose more of abusiness approach to their
careers and that want to enterinto the sales world, I think do
so well because you can, you cancover a lot of ground
technically with what thecustomer is trying to do just on
(12:05):
a given sales call. If youunderstand fundamentals of
electrical measurements, ofmechanical you know, tests, and,
quite frankly, my ownexperiences, it kind of doesn't
matter if you're an electricalengineer or mechanical engineer
or computer engineer or anaerospace engineer biomed
doesn't really matter. The coreis, is that you've got the
capacity of seeing and learningand understanding problem
(12:28):
solving, and you've got thetechnical basis that you can
ultimately build on. Now, thatsaid, there is only so far you
can can take a given salesengagement, and at some point
you really do need to enter intothat space where you're doing
probably more of a proper designengagement, and that's where you
roll up your sleeves and eithertake a statement of work or a
raw set of requirements andreally dig into what the
(12:50):
solution is going to be, eitherstanding that up by yourself or
maybe, you know, workingcollaboratively with your
customer in the case, but Itreally is a bit of a bridge
there. My own humble opinion is,the further you can take it in,
that sales engagement, that selfqualification effort, the better
(13:10):
you are, and certainly the moresmooth it works later.
Aaron Moncur (13:19):
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(14:28):
your experience, can youidentify any trends or patterns
where there aremisunderstandings between sales
teams and engineering teams?
What are some of the commonmisunderstandings that occur
there.
Clint Biggs (14:43):
Well, I'm gonna probably grind a little bit of
my own personal axes I gothrough here, please. I'll give
you a bit of a macro trend thatI've I just it's it's in not
just this industry. It's in theworld at large anymore, but it
certainly comes into play when.
When you start looking at theinterchange between engineers
and and sales in our industry,for instance, and the issue,
(15:06):
quite frankly, is over, overdependence upon operational
efficiency, operational process.
We happen to live in a worldwhere we don't want, really for
anything. We have information atour fingertips. People go and
find to get what they want. Andthat is a beautiful, beautiful
(15:27):
thing that's out there, but, butmany times, companies will take
that idea and say, Okay, I'mgoing to force my customer base,
potential customer base, thepublic at large, to approach me
a certain way, to have to jumpthrough these hoops to get
certain information, or to, youknow, heaven forbid, if, you
know, pick a phone call and youget the automated self serve
(15:51):
thing, or you go to theirwebsite and you have to navigate
20 different things just to geta simple question answered or
something. And we created anover dependence of that. And
again, that's a personal petpeeve of mine. I it flies in the
face, ultimately, of where Ifeel you need to be, one as a
salesperson, but particularly asa sales engineer, and that is
(16:14):
building relationships, buildingrapport, and meeting the
customers where they want to bemet. Some of them want to at an
arm's length and 100% okay, youwant to service that. But if
that is your only approach, boy,you're really going to mess that
up and secondarily, just if Ican kind of stretch that a
little bit internally. Sometimesthere's a little bit too much
(16:35):
reliance on process as well,which forces people to swim in
lanes. Right. In my experience,the the best engagements that
you're going to wind up having,the most successful projects
that you're going to wind upputting are out there or where
the right people arecollaborating the right way. And
quite honestly, nobody cares howmuch you know until you know
(16:58):
they know how much you care.
Like you got to engage. And soright? Big question for me, for
sure,
Aaron Moncur (17:05):
I have to agree with you there. I remember many
years ago, we had a pretty rigidprocess for how we created and
assigned tasks to engineers, andat some point, we did an audit
on this process, and what welearned was that, for the most
part, people were not followingthat process, and things were
going well, like the work wasgetting done efficiently, but we
(17:28):
weren't using that process. Andwhat we learned was most of the
communication, it was justhappening with conversations,
you know, people at the officesitting next to each other,
talking about what needed to bedone, and that's how the
information was getting passedback and forth, as opposed to,
like, filling out this detailedtask in a task management
(17:49):
application and assigning it toa specific person. And, you
know, all the communicationgoing through this, this purpose
built application, it reallycame down to just conversations
between people, and that seemedto work really well. So we
didn't altogether abandon thatprocess, but we definitely
loosened it and relaxed it andsaid, okay, just make sure that
(18:09):
the work gets done. And here's atool that you can use, but if it
works better for you, just tohave a conversation, great. Just
do that. And that seemed to workwell. We do everything with and
through people. So your pointabout building relationships is
very important, for sure, in asales role. But you know what?
We're all we're all sellingsomething at some point. So it's
(18:31):
important for all of us,especially us engineers who
don't like to go out in daylightand interact with human beings,
to understand how to developrelationships with other people.
What are, what are some pro tipsthat you can share for how to
develop relationships with, youknow, new people.
Clint Biggs (18:50):
That's also a really good question. I would
say step one kind of built intothe questions you have. You have
to put yourself out there insome regard, a lot of people, I
don't want to say, hide that. Alot of people kind of hide
behind the keyboard, you know,live in this, you know, kind of
digital world where here you andI are, you know, miles and
(19:13):
states apart from one another,having a very good dialog here,
and it's fantastic, but it's notthe same as if you and I were
sitting across, you know, thepaper from each other little
cafe and just having a, youknow, a discussion there.
There's, there is no substitute,fundamentally, for for human
interactions, like real humaninteraction. So, you know, my
(19:38):
single best advice, I guess, forengineers that that may be a
little bit more introverted isis just understand that there's
nothing wrong with beingintroverted. There's nothing
wrong with wanting to get in andfocus on a job and move forward.
But I always like to say we arenaturally analog creatures and
(19:58):
trying to fit ourselves in.
Squarely in a digital world.
Just it doesn't work. You haveto, you have to put yourself out
there a little bit. So there'sall sorts of clubs and things
that are there. Yeah, there'sall sorts of still areas. I'll
give you kind of an old schoolone that I saw thrive at
National Instruments back in theday. And that was, you know, the
(20:20):
old Toastmasters club, you know,learning the basic skills for
standing up and speaking infront of a crowd, never
something that I wanted to do,never something I had interest
in. But at the point that mycareer started going a certain
way, I realized the value in it.
And it turned out, hey, it was,it was pretty darn fun. The
other side of that, quitehonestly, is you're going to
wind up meeting a lot of peoplein your career, and if you this
(20:41):
is good advice just in general,not not just for engineers, but
if, if you can remember to justmaintain a relationship with
them after the project. Youknow, maybe you're maybe you're
connected on LinkedIn orwhatever. Send them notes from
time to time. Actually look atthe at the prompts, it'll give
you their birthdays or whatever.
(21:03):
Those small touches actuallymake a difference in heaven. But
forbid, if you ever findyourself on the outside of a job
looking in one of the otherdifferences that's in our world
today, nobody cares aboutresumes. You're not winning
anything by paper resumes.
Everything is done throughreferral and by maintaining your
networks and actually havingsome semblance of the genuine
relationship, you'll serveyourself well there
Aaron Moncur (21:25):
too. Well said, well said, let me take a short
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(21:50):
The podcast is also sponsored bythe wave, an online platform of
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more at the wave. Dot engineer,and we have the privilege of
speaking with Clint Biggs today.
Clint, can you think of a timewhen sales and engineering
really came together well tosolve a problem for a customer?
(22:13):
Is there a story that comes tomind that you can share
something like that
Clint Biggs (22:21):
in our world that is literally business as usual.
So let me, let me start byanswering that question by
saying, again to me, the worsttechnical sales process there is
when the salesperson only caresabout uncovering a lead,
receiving the PO and thenthrowing a project over the wall
(22:44):
to another team. And you know,there's language and roles that
are out there that go with that,but it but, but the idea of
actually having accountmanagement really is the goal of
sales, as opposed to just purePOS and revenues is a big
difference maker. And so attesra Act, for instance, our
teams stay engaged completely onprojects. We're just working
(23:07):
with a group. I'll probablyleave them unnamed at the point,
but they're a major governmentprime contractor, and we're
looking at thrust vector controlsystems, rocket gimmel to
somebody, for lack of a betterword. And again, these are
complex engagements, complexproblems and and on the one
(23:27):
hand, it's quote unquote easyfor the for the salesperson, the
sales engineer, in this case, togo and talk with them, get the
initial requirements, talk theminto an idea of a solution with
the team. But no, no, we staycompletely engaged in, and when
problems invariably surface, isthat account manager, they're
helping to make sure theyunderstand and have the
customers interest at heart andunderstanding where the project
(23:50):
management team has cometogether, creating some some key
solutions and and literally, wejust went through an example of
that just this past week. Andyou know, you put yourself out
there a little more because it'sthe right thing to do with the
customer. And everybody wins. Ittruly is a win. Win. You make
someone successful. It comesaround.
Aaron Moncur (24:11):
In your opinion, what do you think is the
relationship between sales andmarketing? Oh,
Clint Biggs (24:17):
that is two sides of the same coin. For sure. Are
all salespeople, good marketers?
Absolutely not. And I'm probablyin that definition. I'd like to
think that I've got cool ideas,marketing ideas, but I don't.
And are all good marketers? Goodsalespeople? No. But
fundamentally, you're movingtowards a common goal, and that
is generating awareness of whoand what you're doing, either
(24:40):
whether it's a product or aservice or whatever the case may
be, and then ultimately craftingmessages that resonate with
people so they understand whythey should care about that for
themselves, individually andreally at that point, you know,
marketing is generally the tipof the stair that regard. Going
out and and capturing thatawareness, or those leads, for
(25:03):
lack of a better word, you know,the general expression of
interest in whatever it is thatyou're doing. And it's typically
the salesperson's responsibilityto then convert that interest
into, you know, business,whatever that is. But the
reality is that is a hand inhand role sales informs the
marketing side on what they'reseeing and what they're doing,
(25:24):
and marketing informs sales onkind of the larger macro. And by
the way, in the interest ofengineering, some of the
absolute best marketers I'veseen also have engineering
backgrounds, and it's becausethey see and approach things
from a logical perspective andand they're looking at, what
does this product or serviceactually solve? And let me think
of all these derivatives and howit's going to play out there,
(25:46):
and, and how do I put thatlanguage that somebody would
appreciate? And so it's, it's avery viable career for someone
that perhaps has gone to schoolto be an engineer, to then
pursue a technical marketingrole, Mark Holms role, you know,
marketing communication just aswell as it might be for a Field
Sales Engineer or something likethat.
Aaron Moncur (26:08):
Yeah, this next question is is not specific to
you in any way, and hopefullyyou're comfortable answering it.
But if you're not, that's fineas well for engineers who are
listening to this thinking, huh?
You know, sales engineer, maybeI'd like to try that out. What,
what is the money like for asales engineer? Like, how does,
how does a salary and bonus workfor a sales engineer, what's the
(26:33):
earning potential versus, like,a straight up salaried engineer?
Yeah, fantastic
Clint Biggs (26:41):
question, and I'm 100% comfortable talking about
that. In general, sales folkshave the I have a hat bump a
higher earning potential, andthe reason why is because
there's inherent risk that alsocomes with that. So traditional
sales jobs, many times, will be100% commission. My experience
(27:07):
is in the technical sales world,and particularly in the test
engineering world, theautomation world, such you know
that you're in that's not a goodcombination. And people tend to
be engineers, tend to be muchless risk tolerant in that kind
of regard. So typically, andI've seen this play out across
(27:27):
the full 30 plus years of mycareer, typically what you're
going to wind up seeing is somesort of combined on target
earnings model, which means theengineer is going to receive
some portion of their salaryusually about 60% it'll range
between 50 and 70% but a 6040model is probably the most
(27:47):
typical. 60% of that targetsalary is guaranteed base. And
they're just like, this is foryou going out doing your job,
and this is to make sure thatyou're doing all the other stuff
that goes ultimately with that.
And then you'll have like, 40%or so of your target salary at
risk. And that's contingent uponhow well you're able to achieve
your quota, your goals, therevenue goals that the company
needs you to bring in. And youknow, it's a it's a direct
(28:10):
prorated portion. If you hit 50%of your your quota, a lot of
times you'll make 50% of that.
It's not always that way.
Sometimes it's, you know, moreof you know, a curve that goes
on with that. But almost allplans also allow for and gladly
pay accelerated rates once youexceed your goals. So usually,
earning is ultimately Unlimited,but from a salary range depends
(28:33):
upon which industry, which rolesyou'll get in. But you know,
100,000 200,000 you know,$300,000 those are not unheard
of numbers as as a salesengineer.
Aaron Moncur (28:48):
Well, that's great. Thank you for walking
through that. Let's talk aboutincentives, because I think
sales engineers have incentivesthat are often different than
the actual engineer doing thework, right? Sales Engineer,
they want to make the salebecause that's where, like you
said, maybe 40 or somepercentage of their income is
(29:08):
coming from. And then theengineer, I mean, the engineers
incentive is, just do a goodjob, right? Complete projects on
time, on budget, workefficiently, manage your time.
How? What are some goodsolutions to align the
incentives of the sales team andthe engineering team? And do you
(29:28):
see problems arise based ondifferent incentives very often
or for the most part, that'sjust not an issue.
Clint Biggs (29:35):
No, yeah, that's absolutely an issue. And let me
kind of take a step back thesuccessful sales engineer in a
perfect world is always meetingor exceeding their their quota,
their sales goal. But if you'reif you're meeting that goal 100%
of the time, you know, you couldargue maybe the goal isn't high
enough, and organizations aren'tdumb, you know, they're going to
(29:58):
put numbers out there thatthey're. Innovation needs, but
they also want to stretch youright? And so those things kind
of go in play. And so you'realways kind of navigating that.
The reality is sales people arenot just responsible for
revenue, they are alsoresponsible for feedback. They
are many times the voice of thecustomer back into the
(30:20):
organization. And so there'sother ways that that they are
adding value back in, andthere's other metrics and KPIs
or whatever that need to becaptured and pulled back in as
well. So you can look at a givensales job and say, Hey, let's
boil this down to, you know, aset of activities or metrics.
And this kind of gets into that,that over processing that I was
(30:41):
talking about earlier. But, youknow, they could say you need to
do a certain number of customercalls a week, or you need to do
a certain number of demos orvisits and and those are fine
proxies for what you have outthere. But really, the ultimate
goal is to say, Okay, what's itgoing to take the to achieve
your revenue goals? You know,within, you know, reason and
(31:01):
what's it, what's it going totake to capture this feedback in
a way that allows us toaccelerate our own development
internally? You know, you'rehearing the features that the
customer needs. You hear theseother things. So that's a really
long background. Ultimately, getto your question of, how do you,
how do you then incentivizethat? And the simple answer for
(31:21):
people is, well, we'll sellguys, they only respond to
money. Well, they, I mean, it'strue, they do respond to money
many times that one of thedriving courses of people
perhaps choosing that. But it'snot always that way. There is
recognition, there is engagementthat goes to that sometimes has
nothing to do with money. Andfor engineers, I find that that
(31:43):
seeing that successfulcompletion go around, and, you
know, getting to, for lack of abetter word, a customer
satisfaction score, a netpromoter score, from that
customer that says, Yes, youguys really took care of us, and
we're going to recommend you,and getting that referral, that
there's a lot of a lot ofinteresting metricing and
(32:03):
valuing that goes around thosetypes of thought lines. Very
Aaron Moncur (32:06):
thoughtful answer.
Thank you. Yeah, what advicewould you give to an engineer
who wants to be to improve hisor her ability to communicate
effectively with the sales team?
Yeah,
Clint Biggs (32:29):
the best thing that I would say is don't just speak
in facts. I mean, engineers lookat facts and detail and and
again, it's, it's a it's apretty black or white world many
times. And just understand that.
Again, the sales person thisregard usually has a foot in
that world, but then a foot inthis, this other analog world of
(32:51):
the customer, that's, it's notabout a fact, it's about what
that person cares about. So letme kind of define that a little
bit. It would be easy to assume,for instance, that the more
features your product or servicehas, the more valuable it is.
And that couldn't be furtherfrom the truth. You remember the
old school calculator watches.
(33:16):
You could buy those things for10 bucks, and they did all sorts
of little cool things orwhatever. And then you contrast
that with something like aRolex, that all it does is sell
time, where's the value, thevalues and whatever the consumer
is ultimately choosing. And inone case there, you know, it's
about the materials, it's aboutthe procedure, it's about the
whatever. And the importantthing is to understand that. So
(33:38):
again, that's, that's the worldof the salesperson is in what
does that end customer, or thepeople that we're interested,
what do they care about? Andit's, it's taking some of these,
you know, truths or or bits ofinformation that engineer hands,
and putting it in a way thatthose people care about. So if
(34:01):
an engineer wants to learn towork better with sales or to
communicate better with sales,speak more than in closed
sentences. Like, open endedquestions are good, open ended
answers are good. Like, like,have a bit of a dialog and and
ultimately, try to understandwhat's what's really
Aaron Moncur (34:18):
important.
Terrific, so you've worked witha lot of different industries
over the years. Does yourapproach change much based on
industry, or is it always kindof the same process that you go
through? Yeah,
Clint Biggs (34:32):
each industry has its particulars, for sure, I
will tell you you get to, forinstance, consumer electronics
and semiconductor. It is aboutspeed to market, and they are
ringing every bit of profit.
They can't have a system. Theywill grind on you. One of the
things that's that's a truereality that every engineer on
here probably needs tounderstand is nobody likes
(34:53):
paying for your time. Nobodylikes paying for your time. They
will pay for a product andusually not argue. With you. But
if it's your time, they're goingto argue, you know, you can do
this in a week. You should beable to do it in four days, by
golly. And you're going to godown that route. And some
industries are just harder onyou than others that way. So in
consumer electronic,semiconductor, it's pretty
(35:14):
brutal. There you get into themedical space, the biomedical
space, for instance, it's notabout that. It is about probably
more accuracy and lack offailure than anything else. And
so you move into the moreheavily regulated industry. So
I'll say, like medical or likeaerospace, for instance, nobody
is interested in how manyairplanes Boeing can run out the
(35:37):
the you know, their hangers in agiven year, they're more worried
about what's the quality of theairplanes going out of there.
And so those things will comeinto play. Now the approach in
test engineering, fundamentally,is the same. What is it that you
need to test? What kind of datayou ultimately want? Is it
digital data? Is it analog data,the visual data? You know, are
(35:58):
these kinds of things, and whatdo you want to do with that
data? So I can overly simplifyit that way, but again,
ultimately, what they care aboutis making sure that it's
reliable or it's robust, or it'sfast, or it's cheap, or some
combination of those things.
Aaron Moncur (36:15):
When you said nobody wants to pay for your
time, that that really resonatedwith me. I mean, we we get that
because we sell our timebasically at the end of the day,
and so we've certainlyexperienced some some of that. I
wonder if you have any pro tipsabout what, what has test rack
done? Or you personally to toovercome that and to package
(36:38):
your time in a way that it'smore of a product or productized
service, as opposed to justselling hours?
Clint Biggs (36:45):
Yeah, you've got to get yourself away from
commoditizing. And so everyengineer again on here will
probably resonate with this aswell, but you don't want to be
and also ran like you can go toupworks, wherever, and say, Hey,
what's, what is it? You know,what's the hourly range for a C
(37:07):
Plus Plus programmer out there?
And you're, you're gonna seethere's a C of those folks. And
if all you care about a C PlusPlus programmer, there is no
differentiation out there.
They'll, they'll talk abouttheir experience and different
things. But, but to somebody outthere looking at that who's
actually paying for the time,they probably don't care about
that so much. And and the moreyou move yourself or your
service towards a commodity, themore you're going to have
(37:28):
pressures around what people arewilling or not willing to pay
for that time, the more you canshow the uniqueness of what
you're bringing. And again, it'snot, it's not just experience
that's a part of it, but it's,the value of what you're doing
in terms of the in deliverableto the customer. So in my case,
if we're going to talk abouttest, there's a bunch of people
(37:49):
out there that can help themtest their widget, but if I can
help them test their widgetfaster or with more quality or
whatever, and I've got a proventrack record, that farmer to
sell that and it's, it's a valuebased engagement, as opposed to
a commodity based engagement.
Yeah,
Aaron Moncur (38:04):
that's great.
Clint, this has been wonderful.
I think that you've shared a lotof information that most of us
engineers just never reallythink about, right? Because
we're not, we're not in thesales space, but we probably
should at least have a basicknowledge and understanding of
and I think that's what you'vegiven us today. So thank you so
(38:25):
much. You're
Clint Biggs (38:26):
welcome. Thank you for having me. This has been
fantastic. This is a greatseries. You're very kind to
allow me to contribute a littlebit here. I hope that it is
helpful, and would love to hearfrom you or anyone else that
they may have following onquestions. Well,
Aaron Moncur (38:41):
that's a great segue into the last question,
which is, how can people get intouch with you? Absolutely,
Clint Biggs (38:47):
I am on LinkedIn, Clint Biggs at test rack. Find
me.
Aaron Moncur (38:52):
I'm Aaron pipeline. Generally, you're
welcome. You like what you heardtoday. Please share the episode
and how your team can leverageour team and I will welcome
advanced manufacturing processand help you on automated
machines. Terrific, and thankyou so much. Complimented with
product design and R D services.
Visit us at Team pipeline.us. Tojoin a vibrant community of
(39:15):
engineers online. Visit thewave. Dot, engineer, thank you
for listening. You.
You know, you remember the old school, you
know, calculator watches. Youknow, you could buy those things
for, you know, 10 bucks. Andthen you contrast that with
something like a Rolex, that allit does is tell time, where's
the value, the values inwhatever the consumer is
ultimately choosing. So again,that's, that's the world that
the salesperson is in.
Aaron Moncur (00:32):
Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast
today, we have the pleasure ofspeaking with Clint Biggs,
Senior Vice President of Salesand Marketing at tester act with
over three decades of experiencein sales leadership and a proven
track record in driving growthand innovation, Clint has been
instrumental in shapingstrategies that bridge the gap
(00:53):
between engineering solutionsand market needs. Clint, thank
you so much for joining ustoday. Absolutely.
Clint Biggs (01:02):
It is great to be here with you, and I appreciate
the discussion.
Aaron Moncur (01:06):
All right, maybe you can tell us just a little
bit about your background andsome of the companies that
you've worked for.
Clint Biggs (01:13):
Yeah, absolutely, so. But yeah, by way of
introduction, I have spentreally the entirety of my career
in the test engineering space. Iinitially, coming out of school,
really wanted to focus onelectronic design, computer
development, things of thatnature. And really kind of found
(01:35):
myself by circumstance, in arole with National Instruments
way back in 1992 spent 20,almost 24 years of my career at
NI in a variety of roles. A lotof that in around sales, sales
development, applicationsengineering series, a variety of
(01:57):
roles in that regard. And reallykind of fell in love with the
idea of test engineering, andultimately what that means.
Following my time at at NationalInstruments, I went out on my
own, and rather than focusing onindividual product resale or
product sales as then I wasdoing, I focused more on
(02:18):
solution development. My companywas solubit, headquartered out
of Colorado Springs, and enjoyedthat for another eight or nine
years before merging ouroperations in with Tesseract,
and enjoyed that for the lasttwo years. Oh,
Aaron Moncur (02:34):
interesting. I didn't realize that so you were
acquired by tester act. Itsounds like that's correct.
Okay, very cool. When you sayTest, test engineering, what
kind of testing are youreferring to? Typically, we do a
lot of testing, and it's always,almost always mechanical
testing. You know, how muchforce does it require to move
(02:56):
this lever, that sort of thing.
What kind of tests are you mostfamiliar and comfortable with I
love that question.
Clint Biggs (03:05):
The kinds of tests that we do are really all of the
above. And it's electrical test,it's electrical, mechanical
test, it's simulation. In somecases, it's really the whole
gambit. It's a beautiful andthis is part of why I've enjoyed
my career. I think in testengineering, we're not focused
on any one industry per se, sosemiconductor, prisons or
(03:27):
transportation or aerospace, wereally service all of them the
when you look at the the focusof test engineering,
specifically, the question is,does your company, or do you
individually, make something,and if you make something,
particularly something that'sgoing out to the consumer world,
(03:48):
you need to test and validatethat that doing exactly what you
think and expect. And so really,the experience and the
opportunity to market that goesaround test engineering spans
the breadth of anyone or anycompany that makes really
anything. So is
Aaron Moncur (04:05):
this anything from like, you know, an inexpensive
consumer product, maybe a cellphone case or something like
that, through medical devices,through a sophisticated defense
system, like all of the above?
Yep, that's
Clint Biggs (04:19):
absolutely right.
So take, take the first examplethere, you know, inexpensive
cell phone cover. You know,whatever the case may be, what
are the things that you may beinterested in looking at that?
Well, one may be the tensilestrength of the material. You
know, at what force or at whatangle, do do these things bend
or break? Looking fordurability, right? You want to
be able to say, for instance,you've got the most durable
(04:41):
product on the market. You testand figure that out. It may also
be things like, maybe the waythe material looks and wears, is
it able to maintain its colorand its pattern and other
aspects of that? So sometimesit's. It's literal physical
tests. And these are the thingsthat, for instance, you guys
(05:02):
work quite a bit in as you'relooking at that, but sometimes
it may be non contact visionbased measurement systems. And
again, everything in between isfascinating, and
Aaron Moncur (05:15):
you do this all internally correct.
Clint Biggs (05:18):
So with Test Track specifically. And one of the
reasons why I was so excited tomerge in here and work with the
team that we have. We're notjust a group of really good test
engineers that build testsystems. We are that. But for
us, we've built enough testsystems out there that we've
learned the lessons that we needto learn in order to shorten
(05:41):
that process up. And a big partof that is the creation of a
standardized test framework inthe software side that you know
that really gives you a 30 to50% start on any given test that
you may ultimately wind updoing, the the device that you
may be testing, or the thingthat you ultimately interested
(06:01):
and that's always going to beunique to a given manufacturer
or given customer, but theapproach to testing that is is
relatively the same. You've gota design, you've got some
requirements, you've got somespecification that you also need
to approach. You're going tohave some hardware pieces. How
do you interface to it? How doyou communicate to it? Then
you're going to have some commonsoftware pieces. How do I want
(06:22):
to visualize that? Want tovisualize that? How do I want
the operator to interact withit? And and as much of the
commonalities you can take andand deal with, and, um, in a
standardized or modular way upfront, the faster you're going
to be ultimately developing thattest. And that's that's really
the exciting part for me.
Aaron Moncur (06:40):
Now, does Test Track focus mostly on building
custom systems that you thendeploy at a customer site or
receiving customer product,whether it's software or hard
goods products, performing thetesting and then providing a
report, it's more
Clint Biggs (06:57):
the former. So for us, the the most common
engagement would be a designengineer, a production engineer,
R and D just, just more broadly,and they got an idea, and, you
know, what are the steps to takethat idea ultimately to markets?
You're going to go through somelevel of simulation and some
level of characterization, andthen you're going to validate,
(07:19):
you know, maybe a proof ofconcept that ultimately goes
with that. And at some point youstart building up potential
articles, release candidates,first articles will tend to call
that at the point you'recomfortable with that, you move
really more into production,where you're moving, you know,
testing masses of these thingsand and the tests themselves,
the information you're lookingfor, ultimately, maybe the same,
(07:40):
but what you're doing with thatis different. And so in our
case, we want to collaborate andconsult with with these
engineers to get them throughthat process as fast as they
can.
Aaron Moncur (07:54):
How about things like inspection or metrology,
measuring? Does that fall in orout of scope of what test track
does help me
Clint Biggs (08:03):
understand that a little bit more so metrology,
you know, calibration,
Aaron Moncur (08:09):
like CMM inspection, you're putting a
part on a coordinate measuringmachine and pulling discrete
dimensions off of it to see if Apart is within tolerance or out
of tolerance. It's kind of testadjacent. I guess. I think
that's probably not the kind ofwork that test direct does. Is
(08:30):
that accurate?
Clint Biggs (08:31):
Yeah, I think your language is appropriate. It's
test adjacent. We would workwith and support something like
that. But the most common usecase is someone needs to
someone, this case, an engineer,design or technician operator,
wants to move beyond theindividual manual range of
pushing a button on a on adigital multimeter, or turning a
(08:53):
knob on a scope or something,taking a reading and then
manually doing something withthat. And instead, if we could
say, okay, what are all themeasurements, all the steps that
you need to do. What does youknow? What does that script
ultimately look like? That testprocedure? Let's automate that
and run through that asaccurately and as fast as
possible, and make sure thatwe're capturing the data,
(09:14):
providing the reporting and aninsight with that data that they
ultimately need.
Aaron Moncur (09:19):
Terrific. Okay, you've worked between sales and
engineers for a long time. Whatare some of the biggest
challenges that you've seen whenwhen sales and engineering teams
try to collaborate?
Clint Biggs (09:32):
Oh, that is great question.
Aaron Moncur (09:34):
Let's open up a can of worms here. Hi. It is. So
Clint Biggs (09:38):
my own experience has been built around the
concept that really goodengineers can go out and be
really good account managers andgood sales managers. And the
reason for that is ultimately,there's this desire to get in
and understand what theircustomers are doing and why
they're doing it that way, sothat you can all. For them, the
(10:00):
best solution. And so kind ofputting my sales hat on here, I
am a huge proponent of justfundamentally a needs based
selling approach. Thetraditional image of what a
sales professional looks like,probably for most people, smells
like a car salesman or a realestate agent or something like
(10:21):
that, where they're pushingsomething on you that really you
probably don't want, you know,they took a notional idea that,
you know you made the mistake ofwalking onto that parking lot,
and you know you're going to getthe what's it going to take to
put you into this 78 CutlassSupreme, you know, today, and
that is the most horrible salesexperience you can have. And you
contrast that with more of atechnical sales, or kind of
(10:46):
these engineering sales that wehave here, and it is more
consultative, and your goalultimately is to go into these
places, understand what they'retrying to achieve before you
ever get to the recommendationside of things. And it's an art,
it's a science, and it's alltogether fulfilling.
Aaron Moncur (11:05):
How does the business behind that work?
Because it takes a lot of timeto really understand at a deep
level what a customer is goingthrough, right? So not even
necessarily specific to testdirect, but just generally based
on your experience in theindustry, are are these
consultative approaches,typically like paid engagements,
(11:28):
just to understand what's goingon, or is this just cost of
doing business, where anengineer to engineers go out,
meet with the customer and spendhowever long it takes to really
understand the problem anddevelop candidate solutions.
Clint Biggs (11:43):
Yeah, it's a good combination of both, which,
going back to your previousquestion, is why I think
engineers that choose more of abusiness approach to their
careers and that want to enterinto the sales world, I think do
so well because you can, you cancover a lot of ground
technically with what thecustomer is trying to do just on
(12:05):
a given sales call. If youunderstand fundamentals of
electrical measurements, ofmechanical you know, tests, and,
quite frankly, my ownexperiences, it kind of doesn't
matter if you're an electricalengineer or mechanical engineer
or computer engineer or anaerospace engineer biomed
doesn't really matter. The coreis, is that you've got the
capacity of seeing and learningand understanding problem
(12:28):
solving, and you've got thetechnical basis that you can
ultimately build on. Now, thatsaid, there is only so far you
can can take a given salesengagement, and at some point
you really do need to enter intothat space where you're doing
probably more of a proper designengagement, and that's where you
roll up your sleeves and eithertake a statement of work or a
raw set of requirements andreally dig into what the
(12:50):
solution is going to be, eitherstanding that up by yourself or
maybe, you know, workingcollaboratively with your
customer in the case, but Itreally is a bit of a bridge
there. My own humble opinion is,the further you can take it in,
that sales engagement, that selfqualification effort, the better
(13:10):
you are, and certainly the moresmooth it works later.
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(14:28):
your experience, can youidentify any trends or patterns
where there aremisunderstandings between sales
teams and engineering teams?
What are some of the commonmisunderstandings that occur
there.
Clint Biggs (14:43):
Well, I'm gonna probably grind a little bit of
my own personal axes I gothrough here, please. I'll give
you a bit of a macro trend thatI've I just it's it's in not
just this industry. It's in theworld at large anymore, but it
certainly comes into play when.
When you start looking at theinterchange between engineers
and and sales in our industry,for instance, and the issue,
(15:06):
quite frankly, is over, overdependence upon operational
efficiency, operational process.
We happen to live in a worldwhere we don't want, really for
anything. We have information atour fingertips. People go and
find to get what they want. Andthat is a beautiful, beautiful
(15:27):
thing that's out there, but, butmany times, companies will take
that idea and say, Okay, I'mgoing to force my customer base,
potential customer base, thepublic at large, to approach me
a certain way, to have to jumpthrough these hoops to get
certain information, or to, youknow, heaven forbid, if, you
know, pick a phone call and youget the automated self serve
(15:51):
thing, or you go to theirwebsite and you have to navigate
20 different things just to geta simple question answered or
something. And we created anover dependence of that. And
again, that's a personal petpeeve of mine. I it flies in the
face, ultimately, of where Ifeel you need to be, one as a
salesperson, but particularly asa sales engineer, and that is
(16:14):
building relationships, buildingrapport, and meeting the
customers where they want to bemet. Some of them want to at an
arm's length and 100% okay, youwant to service that. But if
that is your only approach, boy,you're really going to mess that
up and secondarily, just if Ican kind of stretch that a
little bit internally. Sometimesthere's a little bit too much
(16:35):
reliance on process as well,which forces people to swim in
lanes. Right. In my experience,the the best engagements that
you're going to wind up having,the most successful projects
that you're going to wind upputting are out there or where
the right people arecollaborating the right way. And
quite honestly, nobody cares howmuch you know until you know
(16:58):
they know how much you care.
Like you got to engage. And soright? Big question for me, for
sure,
Aaron Moncur (17:05):
I have to agree with you there. I remember many
years ago, we had a pretty rigidprocess for how we created and
assigned tasks to engineers, andat some point, we did an audit
on this process, and what welearned was that, for the most
part, people were not followingthat process, and things were
going well, like the work wasgetting done efficiently, but we
(17:28):
weren't using that process. Andwhat we learned was most of the
communication, it was justhappening with conversations,
you know, people at the officesitting next to each other,
talking about what needed to bedone, and that's how the
information was getting passedback and forth, as opposed to,
like, filling out this detailedtask in a task management
(17:49):
application and assigning it toa specific person. And, you
know, all the communicationgoing through this, this purpose
built application, it reallycame down to just conversations
between people, and that seemedto work really well. So we
didn't altogether abandon thatprocess, but we definitely
loosened it and relaxed it andsaid, okay, just make sure that
(18:09):
the work gets done. And here's atool that you can use, but if it
works better for you, just tohave a conversation, great. Just
do that. And that seemed to workwell. We do everything with and
through people. So your pointabout building relationships is
very important, for sure, in asales role. But you know what?
We're all we're all sellingsomething at some point. So it's
(18:31):
important for all of us,especially us engineers who
don't like to go out in daylightand interact with human beings,
to understand how to developrelationships with other people.
What are, what are some pro tipsthat you can share for how to
develop relationships with, youknow, new people.
Clint Biggs (18:50):
That's also a really good question. I would
say step one kind of built intothe questions you have. You have
to put yourself out there insome regard, a lot of people, I
don't want to say, hide that. Alot of people kind of hide
behind the keyboard, you know,live in this, you know, kind of
digital world where here you andI are, you know, miles and
(19:13):
states apart from one another,having a very good dialog here,
and it's fantastic, but it's notthe same as if you and I were
sitting across, you know, thepaper from each other little
cafe and just having a, youknow, a discussion there.
There's, there is no substitute,fundamentally, for for human
interactions, like real humaninteraction. So, you know, my
(19:38):
single best advice, I guess, forengineers that that may be a
little bit more introverted isis just understand that there's
nothing wrong with beingintroverted. There's nothing
wrong with wanting to get in andfocus on a job and move forward.
But I always like to say we arenaturally analog creatures and
(19:58):
trying to fit ourselves in.
Squarely in a digital world.
Just it doesn't work. You haveto, you have to put yourself out
there a little bit. So there'sall sorts of clubs and things
that are there. Yeah, there'sall sorts of still areas. I'll
give you kind of an old schoolone that I saw thrive at
National Instruments back in theday. And that was, you know, the
(20:20):
old Toastmasters club, you know,learning the basic skills for
standing up and speaking infront of a crowd, never
something that I wanted to do,never something I had interest
in. But at the point that mycareer started going a certain
way, I realized the value in it.
And it turned out, hey, it was,it was pretty darn fun. The
other side of that, quitehonestly, is you're going to
wind up meeting a lot of peoplein your career, and if you this
(20:41):
is good advice just in general,not not just for engineers, but
if, if you can remember to justmaintain a relationship with
them after the project. Youknow, maybe you're maybe you're
connected on LinkedIn orwhatever. Send them notes from
time to time. Actually look atthe at the prompts, it'll give
you their birthdays or whatever.
(21:03):
Those small touches actuallymake a difference in heaven. But
forbid, if you ever findyourself on the outside of a job
looking in one of the otherdifferences that's in our world
today, nobody cares aboutresumes. You're not winning
anything by paper resumes.
Everything is done throughreferral and by maintaining your
networks and actually havingsome semblance of the genuine
relationship, you'll serveyourself well there
Aaron Moncur (21:25):
too. Well said, well said, let me take a short
break here and share witheveryone that the being an
engineer podcast is brought toyou by pipeline design and
engineering, where we don'tdesign pipelines, but we do help
companies develop advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
product design and R D services,Learn more at Team pipeline.us.
(21:50):
The podcast is also sponsored bythe wave, an online platform of
free tools, education andcommunity for engineers. Learn
more at the wave. Dot engineer,and we have the privilege of
speaking with Clint Biggs today.
Clint, can you think of a timewhen sales and engineering
really came together well tosolve a problem for a customer?
(22:13):
Is there a story that comes tomind that you can share
something like that
Clint Biggs (22:21):
in our world that is literally business as usual.
So let me, let me start byanswering that question by
saying, again to me, the worsttechnical sales process there is
when the salesperson only caresabout uncovering a lead,
receiving the PO and thenthrowing a project over the wall
(22:44):
to another team. And you know,there's language and roles that
are out there that go with that,but it but, but the idea of
actually having accountmanagement really is the goal of
sales, as opposed to just purePOS and revenues is a big
difference maker. And so attesra Act, for instance, our
teams stay engaged completely onprojects. We're just working
(23:07):
with a group. I'll probablyleave them unnamed at the point,
but they're a major governmentprime contractor, and we're
looking at thrust vector controlsystems, rocket gimmel to
somebody, for lack of a betterword. And again, these are
complex engagements, complexproblems and and on the one
(23:27):
hand, it's quote unquote easyfor the for the salesperson, the
sales engineer, in this case, togo and talk with them, get the
initial requirements, talk theminto an idea of a solution with
the team. But no, no, we staycompletely engaged in, and when
problems invariably surface, isthat account manager, they're
helping to make sure theyunderstand and have the
customers interest at heart andunderstanding where the project
(23:50):
management team has cometogether, creating some some key
solutions and and literally, wejust went through an example of
that just this past week. Andyou know, you put yourself out
there a little more because it'sthe right thing to do with the
customer. And everybody wins. Ittruly is a win. Win. You make
someone successful. It comesaround.
Aaron Moncur (24:11):
In your opinion, what do you think is the
relationship between sales andmarketing? Oh,
Clint Biggs (24:17):
that is two sides of the same coin. For sure. Are
all salespeople, good marketers?
Absolutely not. And I'm probablyin that definition. I'd like to
think that I've got cool ideas,marketing ideas, but I don't.
And are all good marketers? Goodsalespeople? No. But
fundamentally, you're movingtowards a common goal, and that
is generating awareness of whoand what you're doing, either
(24:40):
whether it's a product or aservice or whatever the case may
be, and then ultimately craftingmessages that resonate with
people so they understand whythey should care about that for
themselves, individually andreally at that point, you know,
marketing is generally the tipof the stair that regard. Going
out and and capturing thatawareness, or those leads, for
(25:03):
lack of a better word, you know,the general expression of
interest in whatever it is thatyou're doing. And it's typically
the salesperson's responsibilityto then convert that interest
into, you know, business,whatever that is. But the
reality is that is a hand inhand role sales informs the
marketing side on what they'reseeing and what they're doing,
(25:24):
and marketing informs sales onkind of the larger macro. And by
the way, in the interest ofengineering, some of the
absolute best marketers I'veseen also have engineering
backgrounds, and it's becausethey see and approach things
from a logical perspective andand they're looking at, what
does this product or serviceactually solve? And let me think
of all these derivatives and howit's going to play out there,
(25:46):
and, and how do I put thatlanguage that somebody would
appreciate? And so it's, it's avery viable career for someone
that perhaps has gone to schoolto be an engineer, to then
pursue a technical marketingrole, Mark Holms role, you know,
marketing communication just aswell as it might be for a Field
Sales Engineer or something likethat.
Aaron Moncur (26:08):
Yeah, this next question is is not specific to
you in any way, and hopefullyyou're comfortable answering it.
But if you're not, that's fineas well for engineers who are
listening to this thinking, huh?
You know, sales engineer, maybeI'd like to try that out. What,
what is the money like for asales engineer? Like, how does,
how does a salary and bonus workfor a sales engineer, what's the
(26:33):
earning potential versus, like,a straight up salaried engineer?
Yeah, fantastic
Clint Biggs (26:41):
question, and I'm 100% comfortable talking about
that. In general, sales folkshave the I have a hat bump a
higher earning potential, andthe reason why is because
there's inherent risk that alsocomes with that. So traditional
sales jobs, many times, will be100% commission. My experience
(27:07):
is in the technical sales world,and particularly in the test
engineering world, theautomation world, such you know
that you're in that's not a goodcombination. And people tend to
be engineers, tend to be muchless risk tolerant in that kind
of regard. So typically, andI've seen this play out across
(27:27):
the full 30 plus years of mycareer, typically what you're
going to wind up seeing is somesort of combined on target
earnings model, which means theengineer is going to receive
some portion of their salaryusually about 60% it'll range
between 50 and 70% but a 6040model is probably the most
(27:47):
typical. 60% of that targetsalary is guaranteed base. And
they're just like, this is foryou going out doing your job,
and this is to make sure thatyou're doing all the other stuff
that goes ultimately with that.
And then you'll have like, 40%or so of your target salary at
risk. And that's contingent uponhow well you're able to achieve
your quota, your goals, therevenue goals that the company
needs you to bring in. And youknow, it's a it's a direct
(28:10):
prorated portion. If you hit 50%of your your quota, a lot of
times you'll make 50% of that.
It's not always that way.
Sometimes it's, you know, moreof you know, a curve that goes
on with that. But almost allplans also allow for and gladly
pay accelerated rates once youexceed your goals. So usually,
earning is ultimately Unlimited,but from a salary range depends
(28:33):
upon which industry, which rolesyou'll get in. But you know,
100,000 200,000 you know,$300,000 those are not unheard
of numbers as as a salesengineer.
Aaron Moncur (28:48):
Well, that's great. Thank you for walking
through that. Let's talk aboutincentives, because I think
sales engineers have incentivesthat are often different than
the actual engineer doing thework, right? Sales Engineer,
they want to make the salebecause that's where, like you
said, maybe 40 or somepercentage of their income is
(29:08):
coming from. And then theengineer, I mean, the engineers
incentive is, just do a goodjob, right? Complete projects on
time, on budget, workefficiently, manage your time.
How? What are some goodsolutions to align the
incentives of the sales team andthe engineering team? And do you
(29:28):
see problems arise based ondifferent incentives very often
or for the most part, that'sjust not an issue.
Clint Biggs (29:35):
No, yeah, that's absolutely an issue. And let me
kind of take a step back thesuccessful sales engineer in a
perfect world is always meetingor exceeding their their quota,
their sales goal. But if you'reif you're meeting that goal 100%
of the time, you know, you couldargue maybe the goal isn't high
enough, and organizations aren'tdumb, you know, they're going to
(29:58):
put numbers out there thatthey're. Innovation needs, but
they also want to stretch youright? And so those things kind
of go in play. And so you'realways kind of navigating that.
The reality is sales people arenot just responsible for
revenue, they are alsoresponsible for feedback. They
are many times the voice of thecustomer back into the
(30:20):
organization. And so there'sother ways that that they are
adding value back in, andthere's other metrics and KPIs
or whatever that need to becaptured and pulled back in as
well. So you can look at a givensales job and say, Hey, let's
boil this down to, you know, aset of activities or metrics.
And this kind of gets into that,that over processing that I was
(30:41):
talking about earlier. But, youknow, they could say you need to
do a certain number of customercalls a week, or you need to do
a certain number of demos orvisits and and those are fine
proxies for what you have outthere. But really, the ultimate
goal is to say, Okay, what's itgoing to take the to achieve
your revenue goals? You know,within, you know, reason and
(31:01):
what's it, what's it going totake to capture this feedback in
a way that allows us toaccelerate our own development
internally? You know, you'rehearing the features that the
customer needs. You hear theseother things. So that's a really
long background. Ultimately, getto your question of, how do you,
how do you then incentivizethat? And the simple answer for
(31:21):
people is, well, we'll sellguys, they only respond to
money. Well, they, I mean, it'strue, they do respond to money
many times that one of thedriving courses of people
perhaps choosing that. But it'snot always that way. There is
recognition, there is engagementthat goes to that sometimes has
nothing to do with money. Andfor engineers, I find that that
(31:43):
seeing that successfulcompletion go around, and, you
know, getting to, for lack of abetter word, a customer
satisfaction score, a netpromoter score, from that
customer that says, Yes, youguys really took care of us, and
we're going to recommend you,and getting that referral, that
there's a lot of a lot ofinteresting metricing and
(32:03):
valuing that goes around thosetypes of thought lines. Very
Aaron Moncur (32:06):
thoughtful answer.
Thank you. Yeah, what advicewould you give to an engineer
who wants to be to improve hisor her ability to communicate
effectively with the sales team?
Yeah,
Clint Biggs (32:29):
the best thing that I would say is don't just speak
in facts. I mean, engineers lookat facts and detail and and
again, it's, it's a it's apretty black or white world many
times. And just understand that.
Again, the sales person thisregard usually has a foot in
that world, but then a foot inthis, this other analog world of
(32:51):
the customer, that's, it's notabout a fact, it's about what
that person cares about. So letme kind of define that a little
bit. It would be easy to assume,for instance, that the more
features your product or servicehas, the more valuable it is.
And that couldn't be furtherfrom the truth. You remember the
old school calculator watches.
(33:16):
You could buy those things for10 bucks, and they did all sorts
of little cool things orwhatever. And then you contrast
that with something like aRolex, that all it does is sell
time, where's the value, thevalues and whatever the consumer
is ultimately choosing. And inone case there, you know, it's
about the materials, it's aboutthe procedure, it's about the
whatever. And the importantthing is to understand that. So
(33:38):
again, that's, that's the worldof the salesperson is in what
does that end customer, or thepeople that we're interested,
what do they care about? Andit's, it's taking some of these,
you know, truths or or bits ofinformation that engineer hands,
and putting it in a way thatthose people care about. So if
(34:01):
an engineer wants to learn towork better with sales or to
communicate better with sales,speak more than in closed
sentences. Like, open endedquestions are good, open ended
answers are good. Like, like,have a bit of a dialog and and
ultimately, try to understandwhat's what's really
Aaron Moncur (34:18):
important.
Terrific, so you've worked witha lot of different industries
over the years. Does yourapproach change much based on
industry, or is it always kindof the same process that you go
through? Yeah,
Clint Biggs (34:32):
each industry has its particulars, for sure, I
will tell you you get to, forinstance, consumer electronics
and semiconductor. It is aboutspeed to market, and they are
ringing every bit of profit.
They can't have a system. Theywill grind on you. One of the
things that's that's a truereality that every engineer on
here probably needs tounderstand is nobody likes
(34:53):
paying for your time. Nobodylikes paying for your time. They
will pay for a product andusually not argue. With you. But
if it's your time, they're goingto argue, you know, you can do
this in a week. You should beable to do it in four days, by
golly. And you're going to godown that route. And some
industries are just harder onyou than others that way. So in
consumer electronic,semiconductor, it's pretty
(35:14):
brutal. There you get into themedical space, the biomedical
space, for instance, it's notabout that. It is about probably
more accuracy and lack offailure than anything else. And
so you move into the moreheavily regulated industry. So
I'll say, like medical or likeaerospace, for instance, nobody
is interested in how manyairplanes Boeing can run out the
(35:37):
the you know, their hangers in agiven year, they're more worried
about what's the quality of theairplanes going out of there.
And so those things will comeinto play. Now the approach in
test engineering, fundamentally,is the same. What is it that you
need to test? What kind of datayou ultimately want? Is it
digital data? Is it analog data,the visual data? You know, are
(35:58):
these kinds of things, and whatdo you want to do with that
data? So I can overly simplifyit that way, but again,
ultimately, what they care aboutis making sure that it's
reliable or it's robust, or it'sfast, or it's cheap, or some
combination of those things.
Aaron Moncur (36:15):
When you said nobody wants to pay for your
time, that that really resonatedwith me. I mean, we we get that
because we sell our timebasically at the end of the day,
and so we've certainlyexperienced some some of that. I
wonder if you have any pro tipsabout what, what has test rack
done? Or you personally to toovercome that and to package
(36:38):
your time in a way that it'smore of a product or productized
service, as opposed to justselling hours?
Clint Biggs (36:45):
Yeah, you've got to get yourself away from
commoditizing. And so everyengineer again on here will
probably resonate with this aswell, but you don't want to be
and also ran like you can go toupworks, wherever, and say, Hey,
what's, what is it? You know,what's the hourly range for a C
(37:07):
Plus Plus programmer out there?
And you're, you're gonna seethere's a C of those folks. And
if all you care about a C PlusPlus programmer, there is no
differentiation out there.
They'll, they'll talk abouttheir experience and different
things. But, but to somebody outthere looking at that who's
actually paying for the time,they probably don't care about
that so much. And and the moreyou move yourself or your
service towards a commodity, themore you're going to have
(37:28):
pressures around what people arewilling or not willing to pay
for that time, the more you canshow the uniqueness of what
you're bringing. And again, it'snot, it's not just experience
that's a part of it, but it's,the value of what you're doing
in terms of the in deliverableto the customer. So in my case,
if we're going to talk abouttest, there's a bunch of people
(37:49):
out there that can help themtest their widget, but if I can
help them test their widgetfaster or with more quality or
whatever, and I've got a proventrack record, that farmer to
sell that and it's, it's a valuebased engagement, as opposed to
a commodity based engagement.
Yeah,
Aaron Moncur (38:04):
that's great.
Clint, this has been wonderful.
I think that you've shared a lotof information that most of us
engineers just never reallythink about, right? Because
we're not, we're not in thesales space, but we probably
should at least have a basicknowledge and understanding of
and I think that's what you'vegiven us today. So thank you so
(38:25):
much. You're
Clint Biggs (38:26):
welcome. Thank you for having me. This has been
fantastic. This is a greatseries. You're very kind to
allow me to contribute a littlebit here. I hope that it is
helpful, and would love to hearfrom you or anyone else that
they may have following onquestions. Well,
Aaron Moncur (38:41):
that's a great segue into the last question,
which is, how can people get intouch with you? Absolutely,
Clint Biggs (38:47):
I am on LinkedIn, Clint Biggs at test rack. Find
me.
Aaron Moncur (38:52):
I'm Aaron pipeline. Generally, you're
welcome. You like what you heardtoday. Please share the episode
and how your team can leverageour team and I will welcome
advanced manufacturing processand help you on automated
machines. Terrific, and thankyou so much. Complimented with
product design and R D services.
Visit us at Team pipeline.us. Tojoin a vibrant community of
(39:15):
engineers online. Visit thewave. Dot, engineer, thank you
for listening. You.
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