One of the most impactful lessons I’ve learned is that selling technical products to economic buyers isn’t about diving deep into features, it’s about translating complexity into value. Economic buyers care about business outcomes. They want to understand why your solution matters, not how it works. And while technical validation is important, it rarely seals the deal on its own.
Here are a few things that have helped me and my team be more effective when selling up the chain:
- Lead with business impact, not architecture. Start the conversation with outcomes. Is it going to reduce churn? Shorten time to revenue? Improve compliance? Make the value clear before you get into the “how.” This frames your technical story in a language the economic buyer understands—and buys.
- Map the solution to strategic initiatives. If you’re not aligning your pitch to something that already matters to the business, it’s just noise. Find out what strategic goals the buyer is trying to hit and position your technical differentiators as enablers of those goals.
- Be ruthless with simplification. Your job is to make the complex feel easy to understand. Analogies, visuals, and even customer stories go a long way in connecting the dots. Think of yourself as a translator or as someone who can move fluidly between technical depth and executive clarity.
- Reinforce their metrics. Economic buyers live in the world of KPIs, ROI, and business cases. Tie your proof points to their numbers. Whether it’s cutting costs or increasing scalability, speak in terms of measurable results.
Sales engineers play a critical role in the buying process, especially when it comes to gaining trust and building consensus. But we have to meet economic buyers where they are. If we can position ourselves as business problem-solvers, not just product experts, we’ll be invited into more strategic conversations and drive more impact. Let’s keep sharing what’s working and help each other move from feature-focused to outcome-obsessed. Would love to hear what’s working for you, too.
