Belleflex Technologies is a Pennsylvania Manufacturer. They Specialize in precision engineering and manufacturing for critical applications. I worked for 9 months at Belleflex as an engineering coop. Over my time I got to be a part of and see the sales team in action. Each member of my team was a mechanical engineer. The salesmen would spend their time working on specially designing engineered solutions for customers. Our team worked very closely with each customer. In this context a salesman actually does a lot more than selling, including engineering consulting. Our customers loved the input and help we were able to offer and in some cases relied on our expertise.
In class we talked a lot about bad stereotypes of sales people. I think that technical sales is the purest version of what a salesman should be. The salesman helps the customer to identify problems and propose solutions, in this case literally design custom solutions. We can disprove the misconception that a customer needs to know what they need before working with a salesman. With custom engineering being an expected part of the experience, a customer relies on the salesman to tell them what they need.
For Belleflex our technical salesmen were the most successful.Customers kept coming back again and again. Once a trust relationship has been made customers are often willing to come back with bigger orders for important projects. Often being profitable on a first order with a new company was not the priority. First orders were a chance to build a relationship focused on helping the customer succeed.
rodriguezer23 
deleonardislm24
I find it super interesting how applicable sales principles were to your role in mechanical engineering, especially with the general sales principles you were able to find from it. It is so important to build a relationship of trust before selling because it breaks down the entire barrier, and not only allows for more effective communicating when hearing about details, but it also just makes the salesperson much more trustworthy in general and guides the customer to being more open. I can definitely appreciate how you mentioned that salespeople, specifically with good intent and without plans of deceiving, can help the misconception of slimy salespeople and help customers find things they hadn’t seen before.