FRDD16

Director of Business Development

Software bootcamps for an AE looking to understand tech better

Pretty much what the title says. I'm an AE selling SAAS/financial services involving software, and I'm often lost when the technical aspect of the conversation happens. We have sales engineers and all that, but I want to educate myself so that I'm not as lost in these conversations. So to be clear, I'm not looking to become a software engineer or coder, just want to up my education so I can follow along in technical conversations, and potentially be able to answer technical questions.

Has anyone taken a bootcamp or course that adequately gave them this ability?

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10 comments

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Use free or cheap tools like Codecademy

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

I did the JavaScript track when I was working in APIs and python/ruby on rails for fun.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

What did you think of it?

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

ChatGPT
[Teach me about X software at the level of a Harvard professor. Give me a course syllabus.] Then ask for the lessons, tests and a final exam.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Ask the SEs. Buy them lunch and have them walk you through it in terms you understand.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

I would try to nail down exactly what you ar e trying to learn, and the , youtube

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

Bootcamps are pretty much useful, so give it a shot!

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

I would try to nail down exactly what you are trying to learn, and then, YouTube

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

I would look internally, I would assume there is some partnership your company already has that could be a solid option

numbrsRfun

Relatively Simple process, but does require work...

1) Go to youtube - search for the topic/software/technology & "overview"
2) Sift through the results/fine tune the search until you get high level overviews (this can take awhile, but it's important)
3) Look through results and find videos 5min-10min long
4) Watch the video first, use your judgement to determine if it seems comprehensive at a high level
5) When you find the right video, you will know - use it to make an outline of what you want to know
6) Outline should be bullet points, 1 to 3 words is possible
7) Repeat search for the items in each bullet point, looking for overview videos of them on youtube
8) Same process as the primary topic, but these are now sub topics
9) Bullet point the overviews of the sub topics
10) These will be a little longer, 3 to 7 words
11) Repeat again, search for overviews on these
12) Bullet point the overviews out into secondary sub topics
13) These bullet points should be detailed - short sentence

Now you have a comprehensive outline of the material you are looking to learn. Search within each of the secondary sub topics to gain a deeper understanding. Recommend taking notes in a digital repository so you can reference them, or just use word or google doc. Try to put your notes in YOUR WORDS. When done, put it in an app that can read it back to you. Tada! You just taught yourself a tech subject.

-The outlining process will take a solid work day to do properly the first time
-The more you do this, the faster it becomes, eventually something you can do on a lunch break
-The learning at the secondary sub topic level will take time. The more complex the topic, the more often you will find yourself rewatching videos multiple times. It works though, so stick with it.
-Be prepared to have repeated tangent topic deep dives when you run face first into a technology wall -> Like learning about coding and then API's come up, or learning data analytics and data cleansing comes up. Those are monster sub topics that are entire verticals unto themselves.

Be patient, diligent and consistent and it will eventually all come together.

Lastly, you will never learn everything, so don't assume you have. Use the knowledge mostly as a means to follow dialog. You can surprise people with little nuggets, but don't pretend to be a solution engineer. A good solution engineer will run circles around the best of the best youtube researchers. So know your strengths and role and act accordingly.

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FRDD16

Software bootcamps for an AE looking to understand tech better

10 comments

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