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Probe and Discover: Coaching for Impact with Ramzi Marjaba (2/2)

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What does it mean to coach someone? Is that the same or different from being a people manager? Ramzi Marjaba is back to delve deep into the process of coaching. This week in episode 308, we discuss the roles of mentors, managers, coaches, and how their skills might overlap. Ramzi will share the reasons he is passionate about coaching others and the qualities of an effective coach. We also talk about how making tasks look easy can mask the hard work behind them.

Original Recording Date: 12-07-2024

Ramzi Marjaba is a returning guest and the man behind We the Sales Engineers. If you missed the first part of this interview with Ramzi, check out Episode 307.

Topics – Making Things Look Easy and Keeping a Brag File, Defining Coaching through What Coaches Do, The Skills of a Coach, Managers as Coaches, Parting Thoughts and the Future of We the SEs

2:51 – Making Things Look Easy and Keeping a Brag File

  • A software developer would practice building software every day. A sales engineer, on the other hand, is not practicing doing demos every day. They might do a dry run before a customer meeting to prepare, but that is likely it.
  • Ramzi shares a story of preparing a customer demo to illustrate how salespeople and sales engineers might not truly understand each other’s roles and the work each requires.
    • A salesperson scheduled Ramzi to do a “quick and easy” demo to show interoperability with other solutions a customer was using.
    • Ramzi met with the customer before the demo happened to make sure he understood the customer’s expectation.
    • “I went in. None of their products worked. So, if we’re doing an interop, and their product doesn’t work in the middle of a demo, whose fault is it? The sales team, more specifically, the SE.” – Ramzi Marjaba
    • Ramzi did some interoperability testing with the customer, and they decided Ramzi would do a demo just to show how the product works and ignore the interoperability part.
    • Ramzi prepared a demo based on the prep done with the customer, and it went great.
    • On the way out of the meeting where Ramzi did the demo, the salesperson asked Ramzi why it took so much preparation to do a demo that was just a few clicks.
  • Nick references David Zweig’s book Invisibles about highly skilled people who, if they are doing their job, you might not know even exist. Likely this is how workers in IT feel when they’ve put forth large amounts of effort to accomplish a task that seems simple.
    • “That’s the big thing. If you’re good at your job, you make things look easy. And one of the things engineers or technical folks in general struggle with is letting people know about the work that they’ve done.” – Ramzi Marjaba
    • Ramzi provides the contrast between former colleagues who would work on the hardest problems that came to the team and someone who would close the most tickets due to finding known issues. The person who closed the most tickets would send out e-mails to let people know how many tickets were closed and would also get all the praise.
    • Ramzi was speaking with an SE manager recently who suggested keeping a brag file in which you document your accomplishments and the impact they’ve made on your company. This can easily be shared with your manager to demonstrate the work you have done and make a business case for a raise or promotion.
    • John likes the emphasis on practice and quantifying the level of effort we put in to make something look simple.
      • We can quantify the level of effort in retrospect for a career advancement file. It’s important to document how the work we’ve done impacted more than just us (our team, a customer, the greater organization, etc.). How did what we did help the team accomplish something?
    • Ramzi says if we have trouble keeping the brag file or sense our manager might not value our work, we can CC our manager on communications about the work we’re doing. The CC is not to escalate to your manager but to keep them informed.
      • “You can do both. You can make sure your manager is in the loop while at the same time figuring out how to say how great you are without coming off as an arrogant person.” – Ramzi Marjaba, on communicating our accomplishments to our leaders in multiple ways
      • John calls this calibrating your self-promotion. You want to be informative enough to let your manager know what you’re doing so they can evaluate your performance without being someone who is looked upon as an arrogant self-promoter. Open communication with your manager and asking for feedback can also help.
      • By keeping your manager informed, Ramzi says you are doing them a favor. A manager of sales engineers may be managing 12 people at the high end. Ramzi has seen support teams with 20-30 people under a single manager.
      • “Support teams…we had 20 people, 30 people on the team. They are not going to know what everyone is doing. They are going to have feelings about what everyone is doing unless you show them exactly what you’re doing. If you make it easier for them to understand what you’re going through, they don’t have to feel about things. They don’t have to worry. They don’t have to wonder.” – Ramzi Marjaba, on keeping your manager informed of the work you do

10:27 – Defining Coaching through What Coaches Do

  • How much of a manager’s work is performance management, and how much is coaching?
    • Ramzi says he’s not really had a manager who has coached him. One manager did try but ended up being more of a mentor than a coach.
    • Nick and John have both had managers who coached them.
    • “I think managers should coach. The problem is there’s a power structure…. How do you differentiate between ‘John is saying this because he cares about me’ versus ‘John is saying this because he’s my manager at this company, and he has to tow the company line?’ So, there is that struggle, and lots of great managers can figure it out.” – Ramzi Marjaba
    • From what Ramzi has seen, most managers don’t coach.
      • A manager might use a 1-1 more to figure out if an SE is doing their job rather and for checking in on key performance indicators (KPIs) than making the 1-1 a time for the individual to own the agenda.
      • “A coaching session the individual should set the agenda, not the manager or the coach. What is it that you want to achieve? What is it that you want to talk about today?” – Ramzi Marjaba, on coaching sessions
      • Some individuals may not feel comfortable being vulnerable with their manager, thinking the manager may use it against them in a performance review. It does not mean managers will do this, but people will have that fear.
      • Ramzi feels SE managers (and any managers) should try to coach employees, but there could be a limit to the effectiveness of a manager’s coaching. Employees may choose to keep certain things to themselves.
  • John suggests we define coaching and shares the definition he was given from new manager training.
    • When someone asks for help with something, coaching means you would talk the person through the process of learning how to do it rather than giving the answer.
    • John gives the example of submitting an expense report and talking through what isn’t clear, what the person tried, etc.
    • “The way I see coaching is…a form of guiding people to come up with their own methodology or their own conclusion or their own way of doing things or their own next steps based on the goals they provided to you.” – Ramzi Marjaba
    • Does coaching have an overlap with mentoring?
      • A mentor has specific experience to share who can provide guidance on going through the same / a similar experience.
      • Coaching is more about helping someone envision the next steps they should take to get closer to a goal.
      • Suppose someone wants to become a salesperson in the next 2 years. Ramzi would want to know why the person wants that in the first place.
      • “Let’s come up with the steps. What are the steps that you need to take? And these are not things that I’m telling that person. They need to come up with the steps. If I think that they’re wrong, I can guide them or nudge them or ask them clarifying questions so that they can see what the right path is versus me telling them.” – Ramzi Marjaba, on the role of a coach compared to that of a mentor
      • Ramzi feels mentors might not be trained to mentor or have an obligation to do it. Senior members of a team might be assigned by the manager to mentor less experienced members of the team.
    • Does a coach need to have the same experience as a mentor and take a slightly different approach, does the coach not need the experience?
      • Ramzi says the coach doesn’t need to have the same experience as the person is trying to get.
      • “A mentor is someone who is right in front of me who can grab me and pull me up, and most of them just reach back and try to grab me. And if they can’t, they just walk away…because there is no obligation. The coach is standing next to you trying to ask you questions so you can pick the right path. And usually, it’s more of a formal relationship. If it’s not a manager, in external coaching there is usually money involved…. My success as a coach is related to your success as an individual. I don’t see mentors thinking that way.” – Ramzi Marjaba
      • Ramzi says coaching is more formal between two individuals, and mentor is a best effort kind of relationship.
      • “A mentor can tell the person exactly what to do to get to where they are. A coach’s job is to help the individual build the plan, their own plan, for success.” – Rami Marjaba
      • Ramzi shares a common scenario of someone coming to him wanting to get a job as a sales engineer. He might let that person know one of the most common ways to get a job is through referrals and that they can connect to people on LinkedIn to build the relationships to ask for the referrals. But Ramzi would guide the person he is coaching through setting a target for how many people to connect with on LinkedIn per day. This allows the person to be more successful than setting the target number for them.
      • According to Ramzi a coach can help someone build a plan of action, while a mentor might only tell someone what they should do.
    • Does a coach also hold someone accountable for the goals they set?
      • Ramzi tells us it’s more than that. If someone doesn’t accomplish a goal they set, a coach will try to figure out the symptom or the reason why. Maybe the goal needs to be adjusted or the way in which the person is trying to achieve their goal needs to be adjusted. If the goal was reaching out to people on LinkedIn, maybe the person was spending too much time typing out the message to send people and needs to use a template they can copy and paste.
  • Ramzi reminds us that if we help someone by providing a valuable service it is ok to accept payment for that help.
    • Ramzi offers paid coaching services and meets with some clients on a monthly basis. He really enjoys coaching and has been doing it for a number of years.
    • Being a successful coach allows Ramzi to coach more people over time.
    • We wouldn’t ask a business like Cisco if they provide routers merely for the love of routers. It is for a business.
      • Ramzi mentions people often have a different perception of someone posting a paid service they offer on LinkedIn versus a business like Cisco.

21:14 – The Skills of a Coach

  • What are some of the skills a coach needs to be successful as a coach?
    • Ramzi says they need a lot of life experience, and they need to be good listeners who can probe deeply into what people really mean when they answer a question (which is not always what they say).
      • Asking good questions is important to help people to get to the bottom of a problem and to help them build a vision.
    • A coach also needs to be able to convince people of something through asking questions.
      • Ramzi says this is the same as what sales engineers do. This is doing a discovery.
      • “You’re doing a discovery, and you’re helping…the individual build a solution in his or her own brain so that they can commit to doing whatever it is they need to do to achieve their goals.” – Ramzi Marjaba
    • Ramzi coaches mainly SEs but also coached some salespeople. If he’s coaching a salesperson, for example, he might be trying to help them figure out what they are missing as a result of losing a number of deals in a row.
      • As a coach, Ramzi would focus on helping his clients become better sales engineers or better salespeople.
    • Ramzi says many times, improving as an SE or a salesperson has nothing to do with working with customers but rather is about internal relationships. Here are some of the patterns Ramzi has noticed:
      • When people tell Ramzi they want to work with him to get better at doing demos for customers, the coaching conversations usually aren’t actually about demos. They are about doing better discovery. Poor discovery leads to poor demos. Have you ever watched someone do a demo for you but not cover anything you cared about as a customer? It probably means no one did any discovery in advance of the demo.
      • Some SEs run into problems interacting with salespeople (an account manager or multiple account managers). In a tough market, an SE might get blamed by an account manager for losing a deal because of a demo or some other reason.
      • Ramzi mentions the SE lifecycle of recruitment, onboarding, and continuous learning. Sometimes an SE can hit a point of stagnation, feeling they are bored with performing the same activities and wondering what to do next. In these cases, Ramzi works with people to find ways to make the job more fun while becoming an even better SE. These clients are usually SEs who have reached the point of boredom and don’t want to go into sales (as a salesperson) or SE management.
      • Nick says this last scenario of fighting against boredom isn’t so different from what Ramzi did with the podcast to keep learning.

24:28 – Managers as Coaches

  • Nick thinks the right manager can be a good or even a great coach because the goals can be aligned to make the manager successful in doing it. Would Ramzi consider a role as a people leader and how that might be the same or different than being a coach?
    • Ramzi would agree an SE leader can be a great coach, but it does not mean they are.
    • He has thought about going into SE management but also mentions being in a small market in Ottawa, Canada.
    • John may be an exception to this rule, but Ramzi feels in general it is easier to get promoted inside an organization into a people management role than applying from outside the company.
      • John highlights the previous reference of crossover skills in SE roles between companies.
    • Ramzi mentions there have been no opportunities to become an SE manager within his organization. His goal going into the role at his current company was to become an SE manager, but it did not happen.
      • The company is not in a hypergrowth mode with new teams popping up, so the opportunities have not been there for Ramzi.
    • As an external coach, Ramzi is beholden to no one except his clients. They are the stakeholders, and this makes life easier.
      • This is different from a people manager at a company who has their employees (members of the team the manager wants to make happy) and their own maangement chain as stakeholders. That situation is more complex.
      • If a people manager gets a decree from leadership that is likely to make members of the team unhappy or frustrated, a lot of the time the people manager has to go through with it because of the mandate from above.
      • John says part of the role of the people manager is filtering and choosing the important battles to fight. A manager may choose to fight something that is a 10% increase in work / effort for the team that has minimal return, for example.
      • “When you are paying a coach, one of the things that you are paying for is their direct honesty and the fact that you are the stakeholder. You can be more honest with a paid coach than maybe with a manager.” – John White
      • As we discussed, people might feel being vulnerable with a manager could be used against them. This is especially true when you do not have a strong relationship with your manager.
      • Ramzi is a pretty blunt person and is honest with his manager 95% of the time. Most people may not be honest with their manager that much of the time. The remaining 5% might be reserved for looking for job opportunities outside the company. If Ramzi was interested in another role inside the same company, he would communicate that to his manager and ask that person to help him get it. Ramzi feels his manager would in fact help him get a different role inside the company, but not every manager is going to be willing to do this. The level of honesty and transparency you decide on with your manager will depend on the manager.
      • “He’s not just serving the engineers. He needs to serve the business. And he’s going to have to balance the benefit to the business versus the benefit to his people…. I’m not balancing anything. My main priority is the people.” – Ramzi Marjaba, on the role of a manager vs. that of a coach

30:27 – Parting Thoughts and the Future of We the SEs

  • Why should Ramzi keep doing with the SEs, and what is his vision for the future?
    • Selling something to a customer helps solve a problem, but it doesn’t change the person’s life.
    • When Ramzi helps an SE learn how to do better discovery or to build a better relationship with their salespeople co-workers, it significantly improves the person’s life.
    • “I have a bigger impact on a person’s life by being their coach than by being a salesperson, which is why I still do We the SEs and why I coach.” – Ramzi Marjaba
    • Ramzi doesn’t want to put himself in a position of needing to sell a coaching service to financially support his family. He can lose clients now due to the fact that he has a full-time job to avoid having to work with clients who aren’t very nice or aren’t a good fit.
    • There are many potential paths forward with We the SEs.
      • Ramzi gives an example of some consulting work on how both salespeople and sales engineers can work together in a more streamlined sales process.
      • Ramzi plans to continue coaching and looking at ways to take on more clients.
  • What is Ramzi’s advice for effectively having a side hustle and making sure you give time to both it and your full-time job?
    • You don’t want to create a conflict of interest, but doing something that is related to the work you do for your job makes it easier to justify the time commitment.
    • Something that makes you better at your job can get you raises at your current job or opportunities to work elsewhere.
    • Having a side hustle / side gig is also for branding purposes so people know who you are. This could lead to more people wanting to connect with you.
    • If your side hustle is completely unrelated to your work, focus it on something you enjoy. If you then try and turn it into a business, your hobby might disappear.
      • Ramzi heard a story about someone who loved skiing but then decided to start a clothing brand, which they started to hate because it kept them from skiing. Pick something you would enjoy doing as your side project.
    • Ramzi does like having multiple income streams but does not want to sacrifice health or mental wellbeing in the process.
    • “I went through a period where I almost burned out and almost quit We the SEs altogether, which was part of the reason I stopped doing the podcast.” – Ramzi Marjaba
  • Since Ramzi almost burned out, what are some of the warning signs that a person might be close to burning out?
    • When Ramzi saw he had podcasts scheduled, he had a negative reaction to it (mentally and physically).
    • Listen to your body’s reactions.
  • To follow up with Ramzi on this discussion…
    • Connect with him on LinkedIn – Ramzi Marjaba.
    • Visit the We the Sales Engineers site
    • Subscribe to the [We the Sales Engineers Podcast].(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-the-sales-engineers-a-resource-for-sales/id1378292171).
    • Check out @WeTheSalesEngineers on YouTube.

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