SALES ENGINEERING ACADEMY
Ronald Goovaerts at his desk

SALES ENGINEERING ACADEMY · FOR JUNIOR TECHNICAL SALES ENGINEERS IN EUROPEAN INDUSTRIAL SUBCONTRACTING

Stop chasing deals. Make the work come to you.

1-on-1 mentoring on your own live deals, from a strategic consultant closing €500K to €5M industrial projects.

Book your Get-to-Know Call

A free 1-on-1 with Ronald. Bring one deal you're stuck on.

Attract. Negotiate. Get paid.

You learned to sell. Nobody taught you to negotiate.

You've had your first wins, and you felt the rush. Now the quarter turns, everyone around you is performing, and the pressure lands on you. So you do what you were trained to do, and push.

Sound familiar?

  • End of the month, the number isn't hit, so you run after the deal. Jump, jump, jump, until they sign once just to make you stop, and then never again.
  • The purchasing director looks at you and asks why you're the most expensive in the room, and all you have is a discount.
  • The engineer asks something you can't answer. You have no clue what he's talking about, but you nod.
  • You're carrying one big deal, and one subcontractor you never checked could take the whole thing down with it.

Most of the juniors I meet don't hate selling. They hate pushing. And pushing is the only thing anybody ever showed them.

Attract. Negotiate. Get paid.

Attract.

You stop chasing and build a web of people who trust you, so the work starts coming to you, more like recurring income than a hunt every month.

Negotiate.

You read the whole room. The engineer who wants the best technical answer, the purchasing director who wants the lowest price, the person inside who can open the door, and the subcontractor whose reliability decides whether you get paid. You win the room before you win the buyer.

Get paid.

You verify before you trust, you spread your risk, and you only promise what you can deliver. This is the half almost nobody teaches, and it's the half that protects everything else.

And the fear of the senior buyer goes. You sit across the table calm, because you know what you're doing.

The method, in one picture.

A salmon swims against the current. The river is your market, and the current is the pull to push, chase, discount, and close too early. The salmon gets stronger by finding a way past whatever the river puts in front of it. That's the mentee.

The salmon model: Foundations builds the spine, Advanced adds the meat on the bone, read from tail to head.

The spine: Foundations.

The structure that holds everything up. How to read a negotiation, how to stop pushing, how to verify, how to hold your nerve with a senior buyer.

The meat on the bone: Advanced.

The strength to move against real current. Bigger projects, the whole stakeholder web, your own deck, income that repeats, the culture read, and getting paid at scale.

Finding a way.

This one runs through both. Being strong only gets you so far. What wins is finding a way past the dams and the falls that stop everyone else.

And the other salmon in the river? They're colleagues, not competition. There's enough water for everyone. What gets in your way is the river: the market, the tenders, the slow seasons. Never the people.

How the sessions work.

We don't do theory first. You bring a real, live deal, and we work it together in the session. I ask until you see what you controlled, what you didn't, and what to do next. The theory lives in the ebooks you keep, for before or after. And when a deal catches fire between sessions, you've got the mayday line. You call me, and we sort it.

Why Foundations always comes first.

You build muscle only once you can do the workout. Advanced moves on a weak base fall apart, and they can cost you far more. So Foundations comes first, every time.

Sales Engineering Mastery Mentorship Program

One program, in two parts. Start with Foundations, or take the full program from day one.

Foundations

Foundational Sales Engineering Mastery

€2,500

2 months · €1,250 a month

Get confident and protected in the deals you already run.

  • A setup call, then five sessions in weeks 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8
  • The six things that decide every negotiation: interpretation, interest and options on the clarity side, relationship, expectation and motivation on the trust side
  • Stop pushing, start attracting: what to do instead of the tenth follow-up
  • Verify before you trust: check the partner before you rely on them, and spread your risk so one customer can't sink you
  • Face the buyer: your own playbook for the questions you can't answer yet
  • Working tools you keep: Deal Sheet, Verification Checklist, Questions I Can't Answer playbook
  • The mayday line, throughout
  • At the end, your personal Base Blueprint and a one-page Cheat Sheet, built from your own sessions

At the last session I tell you honestly whether the jump to Advanced suits you now, later, or not at all.

Start with a Get-to-Know Call

Advanced

Advanced Sales Engineering Mastery

€5,000

4 months · €1,250 a month · after Foundations

Skip the average and go for the big, complex projects.

  • Intensive at the start, then tapering to monthly across four months
  • Skip average, go big: why the medium deals carry big-deal risk for small-deal pay, and how to qualify them out
  • The different game at the top: how €500K to multi-million projects are found, bid and won
  • Read the whole web: map every player and find the champion who defends you when you're not in the room
  • Build Your Deck: the capability you can offer with confidence, whether you're employed or independent
  • Income that repeats: think in years, not in this quarter's number, and forecast payments across the life of a project
  • The long game: keep relationships warm in the slow times, so the work multiplies when the market turns
  • Read the culture: the North says no in half an hour, the South never says no at all
  • Get paid at scale, and your Growth Blueprint and Cheat Sheet at graduation
  • Working tools you keep: Big-Project Qualifier, Stakeholder Web Map, The Deck, Portfolio Forecast, Progress Tracker
  • The mayday line, throughout
Start with a Get-to-Know Call

Recommended

The full program

Foundations + Advanced, booked together

€6,750

6 months · instead of €7,500, save €750

Both parts, back to back, with one baseline at the start and one honest review at the end.

  • Everything in Foundations and Advanced
  • A baseline of your business at the start: deal count and size, pipeline mix, how much is recurring, how long deals take, how much sits with one customer
  • A review against that baseline at graduation

What I aim for with you. On the full program, my aim is at least 30% more deals across your portfolio, and because the deals get bigger, anywhere from 2x to 10x the money. I'm straight about two things. It depends on you showing up and doing the work, so I set your specific target only after Foundations, once I've seen how you work. And big deals take time. At month six your pipeline should show it, and the money lands over the following 12 to 18 months. So it's an aim I work toward with you, and I won't guarantee it.

Start with a Get-to-Know Call

If your employer has a training budget, we can split the invoice between you and the company.

TAILORED TEAM MENTORING PROGRAM

Leading a team of sales engineers?

I also work with teams, built around your people, your sectors and your live deals. The format, the length and the size depend on what your team needs, so we start with a conversation.

Talk to Ronald about your team

For you if:

  • You're a technical sales engineer or commercial person, roughly 27 to 35, in European industrial subcontracting: process piping, machining, E&I, mechanical fabrication, industrial equipment
  • You've had your first wins and you want bigger ones
  • Your deals are complex, with several people involved and a technical core
  • You're employed or independent, and you think like an entrepreneur either way
  • You'll bring real deals to every session

Probably not for you if:

  • You want scripts and closing tricks
  • What you sell is simple and quick to buy, nothing like a complex industrial project
  • You're looking for mindset coaching
  • You'd rather hear theory than work your own deals

I was the terrified junior who got more questions than he could answer in front of a customer. My first manager sat with me every week, went through my live projects, and took me to lunch after the failures. In a few years I went from zero to being recognized as Best Sales Engineer in Europe at Fisons.

That's the same thing I do with you now.

And I do the work. As a strategic consultant, I bring contractors and subcontractors together on €500K to €5M industrial projects, across Europe and beyond, in six languages, through my advisory practice, Ronald Goovaerts Cross-Border Industrial Partnerships. What I teach you on Tuesday is what I used on a deal last week.

I've paid for my lessons too: a €1.5 million contract lost by trusting a subcontractor I should have checked, and a €250K crisis I had to trade my way back from. Those two are the reason verification and spreading your risk sit at the centre of the method.

There's one rule I hold myself to. I never mentor anybody into a level I haven't reached myself. Everything in this program is ground I've walked.

Industrial Engineer · EMCC Foundation Mentoring Accreditation · Nova SBE Mentor, Haddad Entrepreneurship Institute · JCI Senator #66894 · JCI International Training Fellow #111

Questions juniors ask me

Bring me the deal you're stuck on.

We'll work it together, the same way I work my own. Then you decide.

Book your Get-to-Know Call

People do business with people, and that's the only reason.