As an employee in a network solutions company, you'll have a role in the sales, support, implementation, or management of your company's products or services (or both). Most of these positions are “customer facing,” meaning you'll be working with customers in person or by phone. You'll need above-average people skills because you'll be representing your company in front of customers and prospective customers, often with a sales executive but sometimes alone.
In this chapter, you find out about a variety of networking-related roles in network solutions provider organizations.
As a pre-sales engineer, you accompany sales executives on sales calls to clients and prospective clients, explaining the wondrous features of the hardware products, software products, consulting, and other services that your company provides. You'll be looked upon as the expert in the room who can take your salesperson's comments deeper with real-life examples about how your company made other clients successful.
This job, however, entails a lot more than just smiling, nodding, and tossing in an occasional tale or two:
For more information on the role of a networking consultant, see Chapter 12.
As a part of the sales organization, you'll probably have a sales quota, a commission, or other incentives such as spiffs (cash or non-cash rewards) to help your sales executive sell as much product or service as possible.
If you work with more than one sales executive, you'll have to decide who to help when two sales executives want you to attend a sales meeting at the same time in different locations. Even when everyone in a company can view their coworkers' appointment calendars, sometimes conflicts are unavoidable. Good negotiation skills are required so that you can artfully explain why you are attending one salesperson's meeting instead of another.
You'll also need to attend training sessions about your company's products (including new features and information on size, scope, and price). These sessions will add to your expertise and give your customers confidence that you really do know what you're talking about when you help them imagine success with your products.
If you work for a value-added reseller (VAR), you need to gain expertise in each of the products that your company sells. In larger companies, you might have to be familiar with products from dozens of different manufacturers!
As an implementation engineer, you install and configure your company's product in the customer's environment. Often, you visit the company's headquarters or other locations where the product will be installed or used. For a cloud-based product, you may still be on-site to work face to face with the customer's employees to get the product up and running correctly and perhaps provide informal training.
A job as an implementation engineer is great when things go well, but sometimes you will have unanticipated challenges, such as the following:
These situations will draw on your relationship and negotiation skills. You'll need to stay cool, help your customer separate emotion from fact, and keep your customer at ease and give him or her confidence in your ability to solve the problem. You are, after all, the expert in all things about your product and your organization — but make sure that you know who in your organization can help you in a crisis.
As an expert in one or more of your company's products (or other companies' products if you work for a value-added reseller), you receive calls for assistance from a customer who is having some kind of difficulty.
Like an automobile mechanic whose customer complains vaguely about a rattle, your customer's call for help may include imprecise or ambiguous descriptions of a problem. Your skills as a kind, empathetic, expert listener and troubleshooter will guide you as you ask key questions to get to the root cause of the problem.
Customers are not often in a good mood when they're having difficulty with a system. What's more, they may be under pressure to get systems up and running again, and your product's problem may be standing in the way. You'll need to stay cool and collected, keeping the customer confident in your company's ability to stand behind them and solve their problem.
If you're in luck, your company will have good information to help you troubleshoot your customers' problems, with a knowledge base (KB) or other references to guide you. As you gain expertise, you may be contributing to the knowledge base, helping your colleagues and those who follow you. If your company doesn't have a good KB, you might struggle for a time in your support role until you gain more knowledge and expertise in the inner workings of the products you support for your customers.
A managed services provider (MSP) is an organization that provides services to customers who do not have the resources to perform these services on their own. An MSP will provide one or more of the following services to its customers:
A position in an MSP is a great place to start a networking career because you are exposed to enterprise tools and mature processes, and are surrounded by networking and security experts with a lot more experience than you.
“When it rains, it pours.” This saying by a table salt manufacturer applies to the MSP business. Boredom can give way to frantic intensity when two or more customers have serious issues simultaneously. This type of job can be a bit like that of an airline pilot: interesting and challenging at takeoff and landing but boring in between. But in an MSP, as when flying an airplane, constant diligence is key.