Strategic Solution Engineer​/Sales Consultant

Position: Strategic Solution Engineer/ Sales Consultant
Location: California

Our Company Elsevier is a global information analytics company that helps institutions and professionals progress science, advance healthcare and improve performance for the benefit of humanity. We serve the research, academic and clinical communities through the application of technology and analytics to content. In this way, we empower those communities to contribute to social progress, to enhance human well-being and to share and expand the breadth of human knowledge.

Purpose of the Job Solutions Engineers work with Account Managers - Solutions to grow sales opportunities within a region and/or market and take them to close. They focus on understanding, documenting and validating with the clients what are the customer’s needs and success criteria and how Elsevier can help to achieve them. They leverage a deep domain expertise and in-depth technical skillset to explain the benefits of Elsevier’s Academic Information Systems portfolio (and the wider Research Intelligence portfolio) to potential clients through demonstrations and sales presentations, then set milestones for testing during pre-sales and validating customer feedback.

Pre-sale:
Prepares persona-tailored in-depth presentations and technical demos, informed by their in-depth needs analysis with the customer. Engages with Product/Marketing to ensure understanding of latest features and product roadmaps to be leveraged during sales conversations.

Sales:
Review opportunity and account information in CRM to meet with Account Manager - Solutions and prepare for demo/technical discussion. Conduct demo and log all project requirements and customer needs in CRM.Post-sales:
Gathers insights from customer, Customer Success and Account Manager – Solutions on demo and value story and engages with Implementation Manager to ensure successful hand-off.

Key Result Areas / Primary Accountabilities Drive technical sales process - Meeting with clients to discuss their software solution needs. Conducting detailed client discovery focused on the customer needs analysis & solution development in alignment with the Account Managers. Effectively communicating the value proposition to clients.

Support Account Manager - Drafting and delivering presentations with in-depth information on targeted software products, reflecting an in-depth understanding of client needs and how Elsevier solutions can fit in. Supporting the Account Manager with all technical related queries. Supporting User Group meetings, conferences, working closely with Marketing team on formulation of use cases, value proposition & client endorsement.

Drive tender process - Understanding of tender requirements, lead technical tender requirements and responses, close cooperation with tender team on tender write-ups.

Design solution and overall proposal to meet client needs and realize success & satisfaction - Perform the more technical parts of the sales process and design to the client’s needs and promised functionality of the solution, thereby achieving a high customer satisfaction based on client success metrics. Contribute to Product roadmap discussion and strategy; strategizing with the Sales & Product team to create feasible software solutions.

Provide support during implementation and post-installation – Ensure translation of client needs via handover to the implementation team & customer success manager; support the Implementation Manager and Customer Success Manager as needed in delivering a successful implementation.

Play an active role in generating referrals and reference customers – As a trusted partner during the pre-sales and handover process, aiming to have highly satisfied clients who generate referrals and become active reference customers. Support the finding of new potential clients through their network.

Qualifications – (education, competencies, skills, experience)
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering or Management Information Systems or similar field5+ years of sales experience as a Solution Engineer/Pre-Sales Consultant or similar

SaaS / Software as a Service experience is a plus.

Publishing expertise, experience with publishing systems and workflows is a…