Talk:Sales engineer

Debate
Hello, I am new to Wiki-editing, so please point out my faults gently.

The Sales Engineer article presents the work of a sales engineer in only one sphere. I know this because it has been my occupation for 3 decades. The focus of the article is on sales which have an IT connection, this ignores the sales of the many products and projects of other types. For example, I sold epoxy resins and composite materials; to do so required both considerable technical knowledge and sales ability. My job title was Sales Engineer. I suggest broadening the article to include such examples. RobertSeviour (talk) 11:24, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

OK... What is the matter with the article? - Bogus Exception
 * Everything. The lack of an intro section, the tone, the informal style, the section titles (name and capitalization), the use of the second person, etc. Read the Manual of Style. And please sign your entries.--Boffob (talk) 17:51, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. But there are some parts of your objections that cannot probably be met. For example: This article does not cite any references or sources.. This role is new, and as such has virtually no places to site or use as reference. I was lucky to find the DOL site. Any other searches reveal businesses that want to sell the services of a Sales Engineer, or have a job posting looking for one.

Unfortunately, the title is being mis-applied, or even mis-used, which is why I created this page in the first place. Before I did, this page was directed to Field_Application_Engineer, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

So I'll work on formatting per your original wtf, but there may not be a lot that can be done with references beyond whhat I already submitted. -pat (Bogus Exception) User:Bogus_Exception --Bogus Exception (talk) 16:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a piece of advice (and by the way, I think the article doesn't look that bad), I've found that there are 3 basic rules that mean the difference between whether an article is kept or deleted. An article should be notable, in that you can show that the subject "matters"; an article about the Prime Minister of England is okay, an article about your dog isn't. Your information must be verifiable, in that you can back up your information with references. Wikipedia doesn't care so much about whether something is "true" or not, as long as you can cite something that says that it's true. If you can't do that for whatever reason then the article just doesn't belong in Wikipedia; this encyclopedia is not for original research. Finally, you have to have reliable sources both to verify the information and to establish that it's notable. Examples of reliable sources are books published by experts on the subject matter, or articles from trusted newspapers and magazines.


 * Right now you do have references under the "notes" section but it would help if they were in-line. In other words, instead of just listing sources that back up the whole article, you should state exactly what they back up. For example, the article states, "Initially, the products or services a company sold were easily understood by sales reps, who could represent these without assistance on sales calls." You could then reference "The Evolving Sales Engineer" for that particular statement, and it would be difficult in the future for someone to challenge the validity of that information. The guideline on citations is a good place to start for fixing that. Good luck on the article. --  At am a chat 19:19, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Citations...
Now that I've established a beach head, I'll continue to work on it per the requirements. Regarding citations, I have stopped just short of citing my own work on this subject, as the moderators/editors might feel it was cheesy or inappropriate.

Simply because someone has written a book that includes information about the topic does not mean it is true/right/correct. If I were able to cite my own work, then this article would be filled with citations-my work is no more/less valid than anything in any other book/article.

For something like what we're talking about here, these rules don't completely apply. They rule out blog articles and websites, for example. Am I a 3rd party simply because I am a, and write about, Sales Engineer[s]? If I weren't a Sales Engineer myself, would I qualify as a secondary or tertiary source per this?

I can't even find where the title "Sales Engineer", in the modern context at least, originated. Without this, could the job title not actually exist (per citation rules)? Could one argue that I've made the whole thing up? If I put my ideas into a book, would it then qualify as valid per the self-published guidelines? What about self published via a blog? How can I (per the guidelines) prove/imply that I am a "recognized expert"? LOTS of people think I'm an expert (been at it, and writing about it, for over 10 years), but should I make the assumption that the editors/moderators here will agree?

If simply copying original info that is published in thousands of places, the exercise its simple. With subject matter like this, though, there is no clear path. I feel as though I need to keep trying different things until something isn't shot down.

Bogus Exception (a.k.a. Pat Trainor) --65.75.18.151 (talk) 18:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 05:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)