scope:

The present guidelines will aid presently employed sales engineers and their superiors in the determination of training and advanced training requirements. If missing knowledge can be supplied through extra occupational training, then the completeness and consistency of the areas of knowledge in the external training programs of training organizations can be reviewed against these guidelines.

An indispensible knowledge base for sales engineers today is knowledge in marketing, product and service programs, market operation, sales management, sales technique, proposal and procurement systems, after sales service, as well as corporate management and communication.

Universities, colleges and technical colleges can further use these guidelines as basis for a demand based structure of curriculums in sales engineering with a professional qualifying degree program.

In the training and advanced training of sales engineers it is practical to assume the concept of a market oriented company management, because this consists of a corporate culture in which customer is central to the company experience. This includes customer satisfaction and creation of competitive advantages as important principles for planning and achieving of market and company success

Along with the transfer of knowledge, the sales engineer's soft skills should be developed and strengthened through all phases of the training. Only in this way will sales engineers be able to effective apply their professional and methodical skills from the first contact to the sales closings in the constant areas of tension of the various rolls, attitudes, and interests of negotiating partners and competitors.