In episode 24, Greg explores a conversation with Akshat Srivastava who currently holds the role of solutions architecture leader at Amazon Web Services. Akshat shares his interesting perspective on the presales process based off his years of experience in the industry and what led him to the creation of the SENY- Sales Engineers of New York. Greg and Akshat share their thoughts on the need for more solutions engineers and why softwares companies need to look past a person's experience when considering them as a potential software engineer.
Greg Dickinson 0:21 So welcome, everyone to the convenience factor Podcast. Today Akshat is my guest. And it's really exciting to talk to him. He's been in the solution engineering space for a very long time. It's kind of his career. Akshat just want to just introduce yourself to the audience real quick and kind of walk us through what you're doing today, and maybe a little bit about your past would be really helpful to kind of set the context for our conversation.
Akshat Srivastava 0:52
Greg, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. My name is Akshat Srivastava. I'm a Solutions Architect leader at AWS. And prior to this, I have worked at companies like M particle, Cisco AppDynamics, and I have been in the pre sales industry for upwards of about seven, eight years now. I AWS I manage a team of pre sales engineers, we also call them solutions architects focused on the financial services and insurance enterprise sector here in New York City. By have been in the industry because I really love this job. And the reason I love this job is because sales engineering solutions, architecture is the one field where I can put many hats on, I can be a part of the sales cycle, I can also be a part of product development, I can talk to engineering, I can talk to customer success is really the one field which allows me to stay close to my customer and impact them at the highest level possible. In July 2018, I had recently left AppDynamics from a sales engineer position, and I really loved loved my team at AppD, I loved my job. And when I when I left to join a startup, known as M particle, I was only the second kind of hire in New York area over there in the presales industry, and I was the first one they hired to actually be attached to major accounts and enterprise accounts. So here I am leaving a company where with all my friends and I was I was suddenly thrown in the in the world where I had to learn a lot of new things. And I realized that at the time in New York, there was no Meetup group, no help community, no mentor mentoring community that I could go to with questions around the challenges I'm facing in a completely new organization, right. And I realized that a lot of challenges I had faced when I started at AppDynamics, were the same kind of challenges I was facing at M particle. So it ended up happening that I used to call my friends att AppDynamics and ask them questions around how do I how do I tackle this challenge? And the challenges can be around a bunch of things that pre sales engineers have challenge challenges with such as, how do I get enabled quickly on this new product? How do I figure out the demo flow? what should be my story? How do I build champions? How do I work with the new, new account reps? I don't really know these people, how do I build trust? You get the point. There's a lot of challenges. And so I actually did not find any any resources in New York. And I was talking to my friends at the time in the pre sales industry. And I was like, You know what, let's start a meetup community and go around, gathering people in a bar. And just talking about pre sales in 2019. What happened is we had our first event at Salesforce offices, and one of the co founders Owen McLeod, I knew him from New York essing circles. So he joined and he was really helpful in, in getting our organization to the next level. We had we started having panel discussions and the community just took off we have a Slack channel now with about 900 people on we have the meetup group with over 1000 members. We recently had an event, at Yext headquarters thanks to Lexi Bohannon, who's heavily involved. She's the VP of pre sales at Yext and we have a lot of folks involved here shout out to Eric Glick, who's my co founder Sam Pena, who's my co founder, of course, Owen McLeod. So we're, we're really proud of where the community has come. And we have an a very active Slack channel with a bunch of discussions happening there. There's a channel called mentors. So what we're doing for the community is a lot of news. Folks who have never been in pre sales but they want to come into pre sales they can have just a question asked and mentors channel in our slack and yeah, we'll help them out. So that's a quick overview but that's...
Greg Dickinson 5:12
thats when you found that SENY? sales engineer in New York right? And so I think, yeah, well that's how I met you know, two years ago or something my one of my associates who when I'd travel, I forget what location you were at. You always had great locations and good pizza. Right. I moved to South Carolina about five years ago. And kind of, you know, the one thing I miss out of the New England area is pizza. Right? So I always love to hear your events and and yeah, shout out to Lexi Ron and Alexei well, and I think, you know, big advocate, and I think you, I think, you know, great for starting that, right? Because I think one of the one of the kind of areas that I want to kind of peel back the onion with you on is the fact that, you know, if you if you talk to some people, right, they view, you know, when you were talking about solution engineering, I got goosebumps tomorrow, because that's what I how I started my career, right? And I just love it, right? I mean, there's so many aspects of being able to be in front of somebody and being able to help them understand your product and be able to, you know, be that thought leadership, etc. And I think, you know, your community helps people because the job is so big, right? I mean, I, you know, I'm not going to pick on sales or inside sales or other aspects, right. But think about, you know, solution engineering excellence that I talked about all the time, and, you know, all the all the different aspects of what you need to do. And today, I think the role of social engineering is, you know, 10x, what it was when I did it in the 90s, in the early 2000s, right, because I think the product, and the product experience has become so much more important for a number of reasons, right? So have like, even seven or eight years, are you seeing like that, that that change? I mean, you created a group for mentorship. Clearly, you had some areas, I think you hit on four or five of them that you wanted to go to other people say, hey, you know, how do I do this? I mean, geez, as simple as, Hey, I got a new sales rep. How do I deal with that? Or how do I get followership? So countless people are getting a little bit on that topic for a moment, because I think that's a really cool, you know, topic for people to appreciate is the roles change, I think it's, it was always important. In my eyes. When I was solution engineer, I thought it was the most important job because it was mine, it was me, but you know, now I look at it and say, you know, it's evident, it's obvious I can, I can build, you know, many, many reasons why, what do you think?
Akshat Srivastava 7:26
So, I mean, I mean, listen, like, there's a lot of people in the SENY community out there who are very proud of what they do. And they'll be like, Hey, this is the most important job. You know, it's a really important job. But I'm not gonna say it's the most important job in a company, because I think a lot of other jobs are also important. I think I would place it equally at the equal importance. So we need a product solid product team, we need solid engineering. We need solid sales account executives, and we need we need a good SEO team. So I would I would like to say that we are very important. Yes. But I'm not going to take it away from from other teams.
Greg Dickinson 8:03
Oh, that's fair. Yeah, absolutely. And listen, the one thing that makes software so cool is it's a team sport, right? I mean, a lot of other industry, you can have a really great product and have everything else be bad. And it still sells right. But in software, marketing has to be good sales has to be good to practice, because social engineering has to be good. And you know, except for so I think you're right. But I think the challenge is that you have to juggle, right are greater today. Right? Your need of excellence is is needed in more areas than it was seven years ago when you were adept at in?
Akshat Srivastava 8:35
Yeah. I would say yes, that the industry has become more crowded, there's a lot more specialist specialist products. I mean, all my demo is one of them. Right? So from our sales engineer perspective, we really need to understand where we're lacking, and we need to leverage these products to help better our game. So in that sense, for sure, I would say it is it is more complex now. But it's also easier in terms of once you get to know how to use, you know, the products out there to help pre sales, it will become easier, as well. So in the the other thing is that it's a very competitive market now. You know, there's a lot more sales engineers as well. And there's a lot more many more products to sell, there's more competition. So with all those things that challenges, of course increase.
Greg Dickinson 9:29
Yeah, yeah. No, I think that you know, that the product experience becomes, you know, front and center where, you know, in when I did it, right, the salesperson did their thing. They kind of held the demo hostage until they got everything they wanted, and that, you know, then there was a dud demo, and then maybe a scripted demo chapter where today. Right? You know, to your point, you and I talked a while back about your recruiting right and how that's a challenge right with with the openings that you have and so forth. And I think that's the reason there's 25,000 job openings on LinkedIn, for engineering job Just in the computer technology space, right? If you if you just search pre sales engineering, job openings are 75,000. Right across every industry. So I think, you know, that's kind of a telling point that, hey, there must be more need for right the job and more need for that. Right? I mean, are you seeing that in your role of of you having to build your team and recruit and retain and those kinds of areas is that common for you to?
Akshat Srivastava 10:25
Yeah, there's a lot of jobs opening, I know, we have many wrecks open in the Northeast with AWS. Obviously, if anyone's listening to this podcast and looking for pre sales job, we're hiring big time. It is a challenge, because there's a lot of people looking for a job with no pre sales experience. And it's kind of funny that we have so many pre sales positions open, and everyone's in states that states that, hey, we need a prior pre sales experience. So I would urge the hiring managers here to kind of be open to the future candidates, right, be open to mentoring, folks, if if the position is kind of a starting role, so if it's a entry level sales engineering role, I personally, would be totally fine with with hiring someone without any pre sales experience, as long as they are meeting the technical bar, they are good communicators, they understand what it takes to sell something, and they're willing to learn. Other than the other than that, I would say, a person who can work, you know, independently person who can show that they delivered results and, and and who take ownership of their work with so what I'm getting at here is we need to bridge this gap of hiring, you know, problem and the talent pool. And the reason people always complain about pre sales, not, you know, jobs, that there's there's a shortage of talent is because we're always looking for talent, who has who has some pre sales experience, I think it's it's up to us hiring managers, to, you know, be open to candidates, you know, who are open to learn.
Greg Dickinson 12:08
Yeah, no, I'm with you. 100%. I mean, listen, when I, I got my first job at Ariba in 1997. You know, technically, I was never an enterprise sales period, I worked for a small company, a reorg computer reseller, we happen to have some eCommerce technology to help us do our job. And I was responsible for showing that right to, but yeah, we were a hardware company we sold, we were a reseller, I took my first job at Ariba. And, you know, and I learned, right, I learned from a lot of other people that had done it before I learned from their experience. And then as I hired, right, I insisted on mentoring and, and growing that team, because, you know, I mentioned the running
Akshat Srivastava 12:45
this is a this is an emergency for the Brooklyn subway shooter.
Greg Dickinson 12:52
Well, that's a tragedy. So let's, we'll take a moment out for that for sure.
But I think the you know, the idea was, you know, as I ended up running all of pre sales for Rebbe, you know, the, the need to mentor, I think you're exactly right. I mean, I think I think oftentimes people look at, oh, let me see that on your resume or your CV, right? And I think you still need to look at is, hey, do they have the characteristics, right, the ability to get in front of an audience and building the list and not talk all the time, the ability to, to solve problems in a creative way, and then being able to map that back to your solution, right, as opposed to Hey, yeah, I've done this for 10 or 15 years, I think there's a, there's lots of other roles, I know. And I last thought up IPRS, there was customer success, wanted more ability to demo to their customers or do a product to their customers. And, and my organization didn't write support customers. So I wouldn't say go hire some fresh people were mental them will train them will use a lot of internal tools, which is kind of a prerequisite of omit them, right. And the idea of I can use that library to help gain knowledge internally, etc. You know, and it hats off to you at AWS, that we're at AWS shop, we use a boatload of your tools to make the ability of searching video possible. Right. And it's it without AWS, there's no minimum I can desert we get access to such great technology and innovation. But I think that's, that's let's just pivot one area. Right. So I think on the on the hiring, mentoring, the role has changed. What is your opinion? On the you know, I'm getting ready to publish this blog that I that I wrote that I think the role of of I called solution engineering, pre sales, solution engineering, whatever it needs to be elevated a little bit right and, and not looked at as quote unquote, the demo shop, look at it more as the solution engineer, what's your thoughts on that?
Akshat Srivastava 14:44
So can you explain a little bit more about that?
Greg Dickinson 14:47
Yeah so my hypothesis is that the product has begun. We live in a product centric buying experience, right product, lead product, etc. is kind of more important to the buyer than it was, you know, years ago. or some some, some buyers bought SAAS products and then didn't get didn't dig in and took a lot of trust a lot of faith. And then when they ended up using the product didn't meet all their expectations. So I see now the buyer wanting to understand more about the solution. And I mean the product, what it can do, how it does and what about scalability? What about security? What about upgrading? And like all that, you know, what about the location? Right? All that is part of the product experience in my definition. And I and I think that's become very important to this product centered buyer. And therefore, you know, organizations need to look at the solution engineering department as critical to revenue as opposed to attacks on the sales cycle. Right, the demo, I think it's beyond the demo, it's now a product experience that's kind of really pivotal to revenue generation
Akshat Srivastava 15:55
100%, I mean, the buyer has evolved as well, for the last three years now, this is the third calendar year, we are in kind of a pandemic, where we're getting out of it, we have shifted to mostly, you know, online selling, it's changing back now. And we have realized that a lot of time, we have limited attention from the buyer, you have the buyer always Googling something, you know, your competition is out there publishing reports and whatnot. So you have a buyer, who is who has less attention span, who is busier, who has access to more data, whether it's online, whether it's reviews, so whenever you're demoing something, you better have, you know, have the best shot at the demo number one, and number two, be really careful as to what you put out there online, or in your demo. Because if you're not accurate, that can really be you know, that can really come out really soon. So, in that sense, right? You're absolutely right, that we are going towards the product. You know, that buying experience.
Greg Dickinson 17:01
Okay, cool. Good. Hey, so, um, emotionally, I think we'll just circle right back. Right. We're kind of at the end of the at the time. And I think you know, I think for those that have not are in the in the Northeast in general, right, I think you need to check out the s&p why. And I'll tell you why. When I first started working with AWS, right, we built momentum from the ground up. I used to go to coffee shops and lofts, except for the AWS hosted right, and I was able to gain, you know, kind of walk in and there'll be some smart person sitting there to answer my questions. And, and then I can also sit there and listen to other people's smart questions and smart answers, right. And I think you really are able to, that's a great attribute that AWS has put into practice what they call them officially, it's been a while since I've been but but I used to go to them all the time. My CTO lives in Queens, and he used to hustle over and be able to sit through and you know, in these these loft type things are these coffee hour things. I think what you've done with SME, why's the same thing, right? It's this idea of, of bringing people together. It's non, you know, competitive in nature, just hey, you know, how do you how do you up your game? How do you get better at this? How do you fix this problem, right? And people are willing, your meetings are always great. So you know, I just want to thank you for doing that. And I want people to you realize that community is kind of important, right? It takes a team, it's a team effort to get and your team doesn't have to nearly be all in your team, reach out right and be able to pay it forward and help other people because I promise you if you're in this career, there's going to come a day when you're gonna go, Gosh, I wish I had the answer to this or is there a better way or a different way? Right. Am I speaking the gospel hear?
Akshat Srivastava 18:43
Absolutely. You are. Yeah, I was smiling the whole time.
Greg Dickinson 18:46
Great. Super. Hey, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Any closing remarks to the audience that you want to give a shout out to as people listen to this. We're right on target for time. So you got a few seconds, anything else?
Akshat Srivastava 19:01
That said you've covered everything, I just want to say thank you to everyone who is part of SENY and thank you to Doug for connecting me with you, Greg. And I always appreciate Doug being at our events and we are happy to partner with Omedym.
Greg Dickinson 19:17
Great, thank you. Let's talk soon
Transcribed by https://otter.ai