Pre sales engineer, what is a typical day?

discount81

I have an interview tomorrow for a pre sales engineer role, mostly servers/storage by the sounds of it.

How much 'sales' is usually involved ?

The money is great, but I am really not a sales person.

Freeguy

In my role, I do a lot of pre sales support / design for a security solution distributor. Generally, you are brought on sales calls as you have technical knowledge and the customer can trust you to design the best solution for them, not the best solution for your paycheck. So there is a lot of customer interaction, but not necessarily as sales. You are there to make sure everything that is being sold will integrate into their system without issue.

Often I find myself "selling" devices in that I have to tell them why the unit that I'm recommending is preferable (ie, Q: "Why should I pay extra for this feature?" A: "Because without that feature part Y won't properly communicate"), but I don't often get involved in the numbers game. I like to claim that they don't trust me with numbers, and I stay far away from pricing.

Also, look at it this way:

You are bringing the customer a new solution, rather than fixing what is broken. That alone makes it worth looking into in my opinion!