Angela L. Martin · SLED Playbook

How Sales and Systems Engineering Win Together

Partnership mechanisms

Sales leaders talk about partnering with engineering. Few of them attach a signature, an owner and a cadence to it.

1. Three commitments I make to the engineering organization

# Mechanism How it works Owner Cadence
1 Dual-key proof-of-value gate No proof of value starts without two signatures, mine and the systems engineering leader's. The engineering key cannot be overridden. If we disagree, the proof of value stays blocked and goes to both our leaders. A proof of value that starts without both keys is a miss on me, written up and counted. Sales leader plus SE leader, co-signed Decided within five business days of the request
2 Shadow-forecast check Before every Thursday commit call, the covering engineer gives a viability read on each Stage 4 and 5 deal: technically viable, yes or no, and what would change the answer. Where the rep and the engineer disagree, the deal stays out of commit until the gap is closed in writing. Once a month I ask the SE leaders the same question on the top ten deals so the pattern is visible above the deal level Sales leader, visible to the SE leader Weekly before the Thursday commit call, plus monthly with the SE leaders
3 T3/B3/N3 debrief After every customer meeting with an engineer in the room: top three things that worked, bottom three not to repeat, next three actions with names and dates. Five minutes, logged on the opportunity, in both directions Rep runs it, engineer co-owns, I inspect it Immediately after each meeting

Everything below is a mechanism that can be audited, not a sentiment. I kept my own forecast and my own quota honest for six straight years, averaging 132 percent from 2020 to 2025 as a client solution executive at AT&T FirstNet, and these are the habits that came out of it.

Where the SE leads. The systems engineer holds the second key on every proof-of-value gate, and that key cannot be overridden. The engineer owns the weekly viability read that sits beside my forecast, the scope, staffing and end date of any proof of value, and the architecture teach-back that has to land before a rep is allowed to prescribe. After signature the engineer owns the first workloads live and the adoption signal that becomes next year's pipeline.
Entry evidence, all five required Tested champion EB interlock in writing Written success criteria Path to paper Scoped hours + end date AE leader key SE leader key commercial yes technical yes Dual-key POV gate both keys required either key can say no SE key not overridable POV starts Scoped POV hard end date Disagree both VPs, POV stays blocked
Two keys open the proof-of-value gate and either one can hold it shut. The systems engineering key covers the five evidence lines and cannot be overridden.
Sales pipeline Shadow forecast AE commit read stage and close date SE viability read viable, yes or no one number what would change it agree? yes Goes to commit one number I own no go look at the deal gap closed in writing not averaged
The systems engineer's viability read runs beside the sales pipeline, and where the two disagree the deal gets inspected rather than averaged.

How I can be held to this. Any engineer in the region can escalate to me directly if a proof of value started without a dual key, or if a rep skipped the debrief twice in a row. That is my miss, not theirs.

Where I have done this

The discipline is what I carried as a seller at AT&T FirstNet, six consecutive years over quota from 2020 to 2025 averaging 132 percent across $21.7M in bookings, and what I run today through Carahsoft at New Relic, where sourced ACR is up 130 percent and partner-sourced win rate up 212 percent. The mechanisms below are how I would run that same discipline across a sales team and an SE organization.

2. Two-way enablement

What I ask of engineering What good looks like
The unvarnished technical read Tell my rep early that a deal is not viable. An early, accurate no counts as a save, and I will say so in front of the rep
Shadow forecast honesty Rate the deal on technical viability only, insulated from quota pressure
Teach the architecture Walk my reps and me through the why behind a design, not just the configuration
Aspirational discovery Ask the questions reps cannot: what does this agency unlock six months after deployment
Early capacity flags Say when you are oversubscribed. I would rather re-sequence than burn you out
What I give back Owner Cadence
Stakeholder and political brief, written on the opportunity Sales leader or rep Before every first meeting
Monthly 30 minutes, both directions Engineer and RSM I bring stakeholder and budget context; the engineer brings architecture and constraints; either can call it
Commercial air cover in the room Rep Every meeting. Engineers are never asked to defend pricing or procurement

If any of the three is missed, the engineer names it in the debrief.

Top 3 what worked Bottom 3 do not repeat Next 3 names and dates 5 min both directions rep to engineer engineer to rep logged on the opportunity
Every customer meeting ends in a five-minute debrief that runs in both directions, so the systems engineer coaches the rep in the same sitting the rep coaches the engineer.

3. Proof-of-value entry criteria

All five are required before the dual key is signed.

# Criterion Evidence
1 Tested champion Champion has given Economic Buyer access and agreed to the test plan
2 Economic Buyer interlock In writing: criteria met means this moves to procurement
3 Written success criteria Agreed by the customer and tied to their top three business issues
4 Path to paper identified A named contract vehicle, or a named owner and a date for identifying one
5 Scoped effort and end date Engineering hours estimated and agreed, with a hard stop date

Pacing. Funded, scoped deals move through this gate prioritized by account tier. Vision-led deals with no budget line yet get architecture conversations, but no deep validation until commercial appetite, champion and scope exist. Telling the customer "not yet" is my job.

Requests in Demo and POV requests not yet scoped Dual-key gate five criteria, two keys Tested champion EB interlock Written criteria Path to paper Hours + end date both signatures few Scoped POVs with an end date a criterion missing Not yet AE tells the customer
The gate is a funnel that turns many demo and proof-of-value requests into a few scoped engagements with end dates, which is how systems engineering capacity is protected rather than rationed after the fact.

4. After the signature: the engineering role in adoption

Stage Engineering role My role
Deployment kickoff Validate that the design survives contact with production Keep procurement and the executive sponsor aligned
First 60 days Drive the first workloads live, confirm value criteria met Run the executive business review
Consumption Spot stalled adoption and under-used entitlement Reset the plan before renewal risk appears
Expansion Identify adjacent divisions and workloads from technical trust Convert that signal into qualified pipeline

In a subscription and consumption model a signature is a start, not an outcome. Adoption work is pipeline work, and I resource it as such. Post-sale engineering time is planned in the account plan, sized by the SE leader, and counted in the same capacity view as proofs of value, so it is never borrowed from the POV queue. Every recurring engineering touchpoint in this document (viability reads, the Friday sync, debriefs, teach-backs) is sized with the SE leader and shown in the same capacity view as proofs of value.

Footnote. The figures here come from a practitioner discussion on AE/SE partnership that I summarized; not verified data, directional only. Buyers report roughly 2:1 more value from the engineer than the rep during an evaluation; a healthy split is 51/49, where the rep owns the final commercial call with full respect for the engineer's technical authority; engineers average about 2.5x the tenure of reps, roughly five years against two, which where it holds makes them the institutional memory of an account. The T3/B3/N3 debrief and the shadow-forecast idea come from the same source. The owners, cadences and gates on this page are mine.