How We Got There: David Young, Director of Solution Engineering, Pharma and Key Accounts at Salesforce

Salesforce Solution Engineers are like general contractors, according to David Young, who leads a team of them at Salesforce. They need skills like carpentry and framing and plumbing but also know when to stop and call in an expert. In the Salesforce world this might be knowing when to bring in a service cloud or an Agentforce expert. They need to know enough to see the business challenge and know who to tap for help.

I have always advocated that ISVs spend time thinking about SEs, even moreso than AEs, because the math just maths. AEs have shorter tenure at Salesforce than SEs. AEs have more ISVs reaching out to them than SEs. And AEs might have 1 or 5 accounts in the enterprise, but SEs often support multiple AEs which just multiplies the number of accounts that a single session with you could reach. 

We cover a bunch of topics, but here is a summary:

• What does an SE at Salesforce do?
• What type of person is an SE at Salesforce?
• How does David decide which ISVs to engage with?

• How do SEs learn about new ISVs?
• What are some dos and don’ts when ISVs are engaging with SEs? Shoutout to Myroad.io, who is doing a great job of it.
• What should an ISV know/do before they are “ready” to engage with Salesforce SEs?
• How do SEs work with SDOs and IDOs to demo Salesforce’s tech?

Thanks again to David for sharing with the community!

And thank you to Sam Yarborough for the intro. If any of you have a Salesforce AE or RVP that might give us the real talk, it’d be great to get their pov. 

This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications.ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals.