Today I started the morning meeting with Gary Smith. I don’t really remember all the technical position names everyone has but I understand what everyone does generally. So Mr. Smith works in post sales so after a sales is nearing completion he is the person who builds a plan. So on much money it costs to send a crew in and install the software or other service costs. Mr. Smith needs to know almost every software SAS sells just because the sales people will come to him and ask him if the sale can get done. The job is a lot of hard work and I think I would prefer to just selling things. Then I had a meeting with JoAnne Grafinger who kind of manages the sales people using a software called Orion. I also figured out that she lives right down the street from me which was crazy. After that I went to lunch with Kristen Somers and her team. They work in more of a pre-sales support role at SAS. So. the team asked more questions about my aspirations during lunch and just filled me in about what they do and the perks of the job. Later, I had a meeting with Robert Latham who also works in pre sales. Pre Sales tends to support sales and if I learned one thing today, it is that there needs to be teamwork in sales. You need pre-sales, sales, and service all working together to close a deal. I met a young guy 3-4 years out of college named Bryan who works under Mr. Latham. He is a sales engineer/ Systems Architect which is code name for making pretty graphs using SAS software. Honestly he has a pretty cool job. These graphs are then used by the AE or accounting executive to use. I got to see some SAS software in the works and some projects they are working on. These projects actually are helping the government save lives which is amazing. So today I learned that sales is about teamwork and that everyone has to work together to succeed. I love it because I love working with people and having social interactions. I still would prefer just the sales role because while pre-sales and services seem cool, it doesn’t compare to the actual sales people.
How SAS “sells” software in a nutshell.