Trusting the Sales Rep - Behind Symmetry's Technical Expertise | Symmetry Blog

When you contact an electronics distributor, you want to know that the sales team can speak your language. You’re looking for someone that is not only helpful with your concerns but also understands them.

While not all sales representatives have a formal education in electronics, good distributors know how to train their sales teams so that sales representatives can acquire the knowledge they need to navigate the engineering world.

Rather than relying on sales representatives to learn the technology they sell on their own time or “along the way,” the best distributors take proactive steps to involve their staff throughout the training process, giving them all the information they need to help engineers find the right product or be able to recognize missing products on an engineer’s bill of materials.

Symmetry's Supplier Trainings and Whiteboard Lectures

Applications Engineers Tyler Wojciechowicz and Augustine Nguyen giving a lecture on Bluetooth

Some of the ways Symmetry trains their staff are through frequent supplier trainings and whiteboard lectures. There is no better way to learn about the products than from the experts themselves, and we make it easy for our sales team to become well educated in electronics, modules, and components.

During a typical whiteboard lecture at Symmetry Electronics, our in-house applications engineers present a specific topic we specialize in. This includes many of the technologies we offer, like Bluetooth, GPS, video, power converters, audio, sensors and timing.

Our applications engineers also present block diagrams of general applications, and quiz the team on the kind of components the application would need, product lines that would fill that need, and what those products do for the overall application. In this way, the sales team is trained to not only know the solution to a buyer’s problem, but understand why it is the solution. This comprehensive level of knowledge among our sales team is one of the benefits of being a specialized distributor.

Our supplier trainings, on the other hand, are conducted by our suppliers, who bring in representatives periodically to review new products, technologies, and refresh our team on any engineering topics related to the supplier. All our sales representatives attend these supplier trainings to fully immerse themselves into the technology that they deal with.

The ability for Symmetry to teach each topic in-depth is only possible because of our specialization in wireless, IoT and video. Because we maintain a focused line card, we can devote more time and attention to each of our lines that is simply not possible at a broad line distributor.

Clint Davis, Inside Sales Representative at Symmetry Electronics, shares his appreciation for the training that Symmetry provides to their sales staff:

“The trainings are valuable as they help us develop subject knowledge and expertise. The knowledge Symmetry gives is essential in technical sales.

The whiteboard trainings that the applications engineers provide bring practical and applicable engineering knowledge to us in an easy conversational manner. It translates well and can be quickly employed when talking to customers. Basics of circuitry, brainstorming and especially the exercises wherein we dissect products and match their components with our product line are excellent resources. They improve our cross-selling abilities and delight the customer as we exhibit our technical understanding of their desired products and applications.

Manufacturer/Product line trainings also help us gain a more comprehensive understanding of our line card, emerging technologies in the industry and how to answer the needs of the IoT and Wireless landscape.”

It’s not enough that our sales representatives are providing great service – being able to communicate with engineers using their language is just as important, if not more. You can rest assured that when speaking with a Symmetry sales representative, you can trust them to guide you on the right path towards a successful design.