Re: Sales Engineers

[Dan Brinegar <vr2link -at- VR2LINK -dot- COM>]

Sales engineers are usually *engineers* who *sell* things to other
engineers.... they speak the same language as the people who might buy the
products they're selling.  Most-often seen in heavy industrial fields.... a
sales engineer can find out what the customer needs, and go back to the
factory and get such a thing made.

In the worst case, you can't tell a marketing puke salesman what you
*really* need out of the  Quantum Confabulator he's trying to sell you, and
get a straight answer as to whether-or-not *his* actually does that sort of
thing.

What's this got to do with techwriting? I've worked at a place or two where
techwriters write what the customer sees before the sales engineer goes out
to the customer... I've been at a place or two where the engineers were
laughing themselves sick over technical info slapped into a datasheet by a
"writer" who had no clue what the stuff said;  and got it spectacularly
wrong  (think of the "micro-mu" character dropped in a conversion process
--  a technical writer, knowing the stuff's never gonna be reviewed before
it goes out the door, might think to check whether that IsoCompensator chip
runs off 55 *volts* or 55 *microvolts*) duh-boom!

>------------------------------
>Date:    Thu, 7 May 1998 15:50:34 -0400
>From:    Carole Vanderhoof <carolev -at- BRUDERHOF -dot- COM>
>Subject: engineer
>
>I know one company that has "Sales Engineers"
>duh
>
>------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------
Dan BRINEGAR, CCDB Vr2Link
Performance S u p p o r t Svcs.
Phoenix, Arizona

"This is not a fat guy in a wheelchair;
  it's a new telecommuter saving tons on auto insurance."