Date: 11th Jan 2025
A year and half back, my now colleague, Mitali called me to say that she is taking up a job as an Application Engineer
I was very happy for her and congratulated her. She then asked me a question, "You have been an AE for many years. What do you think is the biggest attribute a good AE must have?"
I didn't have to think for long, "Patience" was my immediate answer..
"Ahh, I do have a lot of patience" came the response
Today as colleagues we have had the chance to work on many assignments and engagements together and just out the blue, she came up again to me and said, "I still remember your feedback. An AE really needs to have a lot of Patience.... I still have a long way to go."
Patience is a virtue that we all need to cultivate, but why is more applicable to the AE role. Well for starters, it's a customer facing role and many a times, you have to rely on an external party to provide you with the inputs to help you do the job - its could be the sharing of files that you need, or a meeting slot to discuss the upcoming project
Many a times, customers and other external parties have a lot of work and tasks pending and you happen to be on #4 or #5 in the list of their priorities - you can't force their hands, so you simply have to wait
All this waiting has its unique advantages - a good AE starts to develop the virtue of 'timing' - what to say and when to say it so that it creates the required impact
I shall have more to follow in the coming posts....
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