10 consejos para ser un ingeniero de soluciones exitoso

Take an accomplished military career — then add in a passion for learning, an esteemed Golden Hoodie, and a kindergarten game of Show-and-Tell. Together, you’ve got David Nava: a Lead Solution Engineer who has built his career around solving Salesforce customers’ hardest problems.

Learn more about David’s career journey below — plus, his 10 tips for success if you’re looking to grow into a solution engineer.

Interested in a career in Sales? Join our Talent Community today!

So, let’s start with the basics. What is a solution engineer?

With so many similar-sounding roles in the technology industry and the Salesforce ecosystem, it can be challenging to keep them all straight: solution architect, consultant, and engineer. I get it!

Put simply, a solution engineer (SE) gets prospective (and current) customers excited about the potential of solving their business problems with Salesforce by helping them imagine the realm of the possible through technical discussions, presentations, and demos.

How did you get into solution engineering?

I started as a solution consultant at Salesforce, implementing platform and cloud solutions for customers. I was and still am very active on social. An account executive on my future team saw one of my LinkedIn posts and asked if I was interested in an SE role on the Global Public Sector Department of Defense team. Coming from a Navy background (20 years of active-duty service) and learning I’d get to help introduce Salesforce to the military — this was immediately interesting.

I wasn’t too familiar with what an SE did, but after looking it up, I applied. It turns out it was my dream job, and I didn’t even know it. Just goes to show that developing your brand and networking can pay off in unexpected ways.

Why do you love working at Salesforce?

Do you remember Show-and-Tell in kindergarten, when you'd bring something special from home to school and stand in front of the class to share it with everyone? I LOVED those days. During that moment, I could share a part of myself with others and bring them into my world.

Every time I demo for a customer, I recapture that nostalgia as I show them what I built and tell them about the value of Salesforce. That's a big part of why I love working at Salesforce. It's a collaborative space to share my creativity, ideas, and designs with the world and to help them fall in love with the Salesforce platform, as I did.

Read on for David’s top 10 tips to become a successful SE — whether you’re just starting your career journey or looking to deepen your learning.

1. Technical enablement (a.k.a. continuous learning)

The first thing is technical enablement, which is taking responsibility for your own learning and professional development in a technical field. This means actively seeking out resources and staying curious to expand your knowledge and stay competitive.

One of the best places to start is Trailhead, which offers interactive modules and challenges covering a wide range of technical and non-technical topics. Leveraging Trailhead to learn how to build functional solutions to solve common business challenges is how I developed and maintain my technical proficiency.

2. Product, feature, and functionality expertise

Strictly speaking, certifications aren't required to be a SE. However, they are helpful tools for learning about Salesforce Clouds, features, and functionality.

The first thing is technical enablement, which is taking responsibility for your own learning and professional development in a technical field. This means actively seeking out resources and staying curious to expand your knowledge and stay competitive.

One of the best places to start is Trailhead, which offers interactive modules and challenges covering a wide range of technical and non-technical topics. Leveraging Trailhead to learn how to build functional solutions to solve common business challenges is how I developed and maintain my technical proficiency.

That said, customers ask questions all the time, and you can't always predict them. The thing is, no one can know everything about the platform. It's simply too vast. But you absolutely have to know where to go to get the information. It's perfectly OK to let the customer know that you'd like to research their question in more detail to provide the best possible answer.

3. Empathetic/active listening

Active listening is essential during customer discovery sessions, as it allows the SE to understand the customer's requirements and pain points, gain valuable insights, and build trust and rapport for a more successful partnership.

For example, a partner asked me to give an existing demo to a prospective customer. However, they also mentioned that the demo lacked one essential feature: a dashboard addressing specific data requirements for different personas. After asking and receiving answers to my discovery questions, I built the dashboard, which ended up wowing the customer and helped close the deal.

4. Creative exploration

Creative exploration is the process of generating and evaluating multiple ideas to address a customer's needs, which involves iterative brainstorming, prototyping, and testing.

My favorite methods for engaging in creative exploration are:

• Diagramming the solution architecture and potential design paths on the large whiteboard in my office
• Building simple prototypes to share with my team and/or the customer
• Leveraging my colleagues’ opinions on the options that I've come up with

5. Relationship building

SEs must build relationships with many external and internal stakeholders, including product managers, subject matter experts, and sales reps.

All these positions ensure the presentation, demo, or technical response best enables the customer’s vision.

As for external stakeholders, SEs need to understand a customer’s or partner’s needs, pain points, and challenges to develop innovative solutions that help set their company apart.

6. Internal branding and cross-team collaboration

Internal branding is the ongoing process of sharing the value you bring to an organization by building your reputation, networking across business units, and helping accomplish your professional goals.

Developing a strong internal brand helps you align your professional goals with your personal values and interests and establish a reputation that celebrates your uniqueness.

7. Creating sustainable products

Reusability is related to sustainability, which is one of our core values at Salesforce. Building reusable, sustainable solutions as an SE means that your demo or presentation can be applied to other use cases and customers, reducing future workload and freeing up time to pursue business value in other ways.

A recent example is a demo that I built for a sales play. To ensure reusability, it didn't align with a specific industry or customer — instead, the personas, script language, and demo components were created without branding and addressed inclusive requirements. This allows other SEs to copy the products and create bespoke experiences with minimal effort.

8. Staying current despite the rapid pace of change

It's no secret that technology doesn't stand still, especially at a company where innovation is one of our core values. If you stop learning, you compromise your ability to deliver innovative, cutting-edge solutions for your customers.

For product knowledge this comes from Salesforce certification maintenance, absorbing the release notes three times per year, getting hands-on by completing new Trailhead modules and projects, building new apps, and regularly consuming blog and video content from technical thought leaders.

For customers, it means getting back into relationship building. Sales professionals must build trusted advisor relationships with their prospects and customers by reaching out to them periodically to offer guidance and insight.

9. Storytelling

Storytelling is an essential skill — humans are naturally drawn to stories that elicit an emotional response.

As an SE, being able to bring your audience on an emotional journey is crucial to delivering a message that is both engaging and relatable. By mastering the art of storytelling, SEs can influence and inspire their audience to remember and act on their message.

10. Process management (be your own PMO)

To manage time effectively, try the following:

• Scheduling and focusing on tasks without interruption during specific periods (focus time)
• Grouping similar tasks together to limit context switching (batching)
• Breaking down larger tasks into smaller, achievable goals (micro goals)

It's also important to communicate and collaborate with team members to streamline workflows, take breaks to prevent burnout and manage energy levels to maintain focus.

Ultimately, accountability, like motivation, is most effective when it comes from within. I hold myself accountable because I set the bar high and take exceptional pride in my work. I don't want to let myself or my customers down by creating anything that doesn't meet my rigorous standards for excellence. I can maintain these high standards because I'm passionate about what I do. If you're struggling with holding yourself accountable, that should tell you something about the nature of your role and your relationship with it. Find something you love doing, and self-motivation will come.

And, if you’re ready for something new at Salesforce, join our Talent Community today.

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