Riding Shotgun

Todd LaFavers has been a long time solutions engineer in the data analytics space, from his days with Cognos, Oracle, and now ThoughtSpot.  Todd spent part of his career focusing on value engineering, and has more recently become a proper “sales guy” at ThoughtSpot, both of which we explore in this episode.

Today's guest is Taylor Culver, founder of XenoData Partners, a management consulting firm with a focus on data strategy. Taylor has worked with software companies in a number of capacities - customer, partner, consultant, and salesman. In this episode we explore what has worked well for Taylor in driving success in the various roles he has held throughout his career.

David Gordon is a long time solutions engineering leader for over 30 years across several different companies and industries.  These days David leads a team of teams in support of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting North America. David and I became quick friends after we met during an interview while at Alfresco, and have stayed in touch ever since.  Listen here for a long view of David's experience in the role, and his unique perspective on what makes a successful SE! David can be found on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/h-david-gordon and Twitter at @H_David_Gordon.

Scott Davis is a long time solutions engineering leader with over 20 years of experience in the role across several companies, and is currently bringing his considerable expertise to bear on behalf of Atlassian. In recent years, Scott relocated to Sydney Australia, which we explore in this conversation.   I asked Scott to be my first guest on the show since he played an integral role in my career: he enabled my transition from post-sales consultant to pre-sales solutions engineer for the first time in my career, and mentored me on how to perform the role very well. I've never looked back since.   In this conversation, Scott describes how he discovered the role of sales engineering in the first place, what he loves about it, and best practices advice for working with prospects and customers as part of a team focused on delivering value. Scott can be found on Twitter at @jhabiteici.

Welcome to the “Riding Shotgun” podcast, where it is my goal to surface the best practices of successful solutions engineers, consultants, and account executives who all take turns riding shotgun in a quest to deliver value to their customers.  I’m your host, Brian Robinson.  Over the course of the next several months, I will be interviewing veterans of the trade to discover what drives them, why they do what they do, and what strategies and tactics they use to drive success.