If your engineering career involves sales, with you spending time out in the field, meeting clients and trying to score that next contract, sometimes life can be a case of feast or famine. Either there is too much work for your team to accomplish in a timely manner or not enough to keep everyone in the office busy.

Here are some techniques you can apply to your sales efforts to help you earn more engineering contracts. Following this advice is a good way to ensure any downtime stays to a minimum.

Take an Active Role in the Client’s Decision Making

If you are faced with a client who has a difficult time deciding on what they want, find a way to inject your opinion into their decision making process. This involves walking a fine line without coming on too strong. See if the client has come up with their decision criteria, and share similar information from previous clients if you feel there are similarities to the current bid, as this helps to build trust between you and your client.

A Previous Success Story Always Helps

Clients need to know that going with your company is the right decision. Sharing a success story from a previous client also helps foster a trusting relationship between both parties. Use a story that relates to an issue at hand — for example, if the client is balking at the price, relay a similar concern from a previous client that ended up going well.

Provide Supporting Information

If there is a technical question related to the bid, share any relevant engineering information that answers the client’s query. Go the extra mile in providing any research and impact studies that support your conclusions on the bid statement. Once again, growing a level of trust plays a large role in earning your company that lucrative contract.

If you are looking to further your career in engineering, either in sales or not, be sure to talk to The Talley Group. As one of the leading engineering staffing companies in the Seattle area, they can help take your career to its highest level yet. If you are looking for engineering recruiters in Seattle, contact us today.

Just going to work everyday and sticking to the basic job description of your current position isn’t the best way to advance. In today’s competitive engineering marketplace, it is important to stand out from the pack. The best opportunities remain available to those who put in little extra effort and take a creative approach towards their career.

Ultimately, it is vital to focus on your career as well as your day-to-day job. Here are some easy ways you can create opportunities in your engineering career.

Look Outside for New Business for your Company

One key way to put your career on the fast track is to look outside for new business opportunities for your company. Increase the size of your business network by engaging in local user groups or professional associations. Keep your ear to the ground for any potential leads that could mean new business at your firm.

This activity lets the executive team at your company know that you are adept at business development, in addition to having solid engineering skills. Combining business and technical skills is a key aspect of any successful engineering career.

Display Managerial Skills on the Job

If you are interested in becoming an engineering manager, display those skills in your current position. These include delegating tasks when necessary, mentoring junior engineers, and the previously mentioned business development. Leading a team at work is another excellent way to show your bosses you are ready for an official managerial position.

Create an Action Plan for Broadening your Skill Set

Maybe you aren’t interested in being a manager or a business development executive? If you simply want to broaden your engineering skill set, mention this to your superiors. But be sure to create a detailed action plan that covers any training or project work. Don’t just present a problem — present a solution as well.

If you want some good advice on engineering career development, talk to the experts at The Talley Group. As one of the top engineering staffing companies in the Northwest, they can help take your career to the next level.

While Thomas Edison gets most of the attention as the “inventor of electricity,” George Westinghouse — someone with a famous name in the world of home appliances — contributed at least as much as Edison when it comes to the importance electricity plays in our lives today. Competing electrical distribution systems from Westinghouse and Edison fought it out for domination in 19th Century America, with Westinghouse’s AC system winning out.

Let’s take a closer look at this giant among inventors.

Westinghouse’s Early Life and Schooling

Westinghouse entered this life in 1846, in Central Bridge, NY. Being too young didn’t stop him from serving in both the Army and the Navy during the Civil War. He enrolled at UnionCollege after the war, but dropped out within the first year, finding that school didn’t inspire him as much as the process of invention.

George’s first invention was the rotary steam engine, earning him a patent at the age of 19. While not something he commercialized, it inspired a career interest in rotary power generation. Over his life, Westinghouse earned on average almost a patent and a half each month, with his railway patents seeing wide use, especially the air brake.

AC vs. DC

Thomas Edison’s plans for electricity distribution relied on a DC model which would require power stations every mile. Westinghouse developed a transformer that would allow AC power to be efficiently distributed, leveraging the help of Nikolai Tesla on the project in 1884. Westinghouse and Edison’s different approaches battled it out over the rest of the century, with the former’s solution still the basis of power transmission today.

Even though he lost most of fortune during the 1907 Depression, Westinghouse continued to invent until his death in 1914, serving as the President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as well.

If the constant invention of George Westinghouse’s life inspires you to take your engineering career to its ultimate level, talk to the recruiting experts at The Talley Group. Since they are one of the top engineering staffing companies in the Seattle area, they can help you and your career.

TechCrunch reported that the mobile application market could be worth an estimated $25 billion dollars by 2015. With the introduction of tablets and smartphones into mainstream communication, having mobile tools for every industry is important. The engineering industry is no different. Mobile applications can be used to increase efficiency and productivity in the workplace.

Engineering Pro, developed by Multieducator Inc., is a lifeline for engineering students and professionals. The Apple iOS application costs $11.99 on iTunes, but is well worth the cost. Engineering Pro provides up-to-date formulas for engineers when they are out in the field. Sometimes engineers will be looking for formulas outside of their branch of engineering. Engineering Pro gives you formulas for all types of engineering including civil, mechanical, electrical, and environmental.

Currently, Engineering Pro provides engineers with 650 built-in formulas. The formulas are updated regularly in an every changing engineering environment. There are also 100 conversion formulas. These allow engineers to easily convert units when in the field.

The application is very user friendly, offering saved formulas as well as access to favorite formulas. To increase the usability of the application, you are able to email your formula results to anyone directly within the app. Therefore, if you are on site and reporting to your team, you are able to stay in constant communication.

The application offers the following formulas:

Chemical Engineering: Cogeneration, Crushers, Energy Loss, Vaporization, Steam, and Vapor Separators

Civil Engineering: Beams, Bridges, Columns, Concrete, Elevators, Piles, Piping, Plates, Roads, and Shear

Electrical Engineering: ACDA, Batteries, BTU Conversion, Cost, Kilowatt and Lumens, Generators, Impedance, Lighting, Motors, Ohms Law, and more

Environmental Engineering: Air Quality, CFC, Lake Pollution, River Pollution, Soil Pollution, Hydrology, Infiltration and Recharge, and more

Mechanical Engineering: Bearing, Belt, Boiler, Brake, Clutch, gears, Heat Transfer, Kinetic Energy, Metalworking, and more

Engineering Pro currently runs on version 3.2.1. It can be downloaded in iTunes for your Apple mobile device. Engineers must always be prepared on site. Having a simple formula application with you at all times will improve your efficiency as an engineer.

If you are looking for innovative and emerging engineering projects, contact the engineer staffing experts at The Talley Group today. The Talley Group specializes in recruiting engineers and professional staff for contract and direct hire positions across the country. With over 30 years of experience serving Fortune 100 companies to small privately owned engineering firms, the Talley Group is here to help you land your ideal engineering job.

Andy Bechtolsheim is one of the greatest engineering alumni to ever attend Stanford University. The school recently inducted him into its second class of “Engineering Heroes,” a distinct group of 16 of Stanford’s School of Engineering’s finest.

Bechtolsheim created the SUN workstation and co-founded SUN Microsystems. He is also one of the original investors in Google. To say he has strong beliefs in the power of engineering innovation would be an understatement. He truly believes in the power of technology to enhance lives and create greater engineering marvels.

“What one can learn from the Apples of the world, the Googles of the world, the Amazons and the Facebooks, is that innovation is the essence of high technology and business,” Bechtolsheim said. “Over the years, the content changes but the underlying processes of how to focus on innovation, how to do the right things, don’t really change.”

In the early 1980s Bechtolsheim studied and created as an engineering graduate student at Stanford. He invented the workstation, a more affordable computer for engineers that mirrored the PC for an average American. It allowed engineers and companies to expand and innovate as they never had before, bypassing the hundreds of thousands of dollars they were spending on expensive IBM, DEC, and Wang mini-computers and mainframes that were the only option at that time.

The SUN (Stanford University Network) workstation was a 32-bit machine that allowed companies to run the same kind of programs they would on a gigantic computer on a smaller machine. It cost around $10,000 compared to hundreds of thousands. Because of this invention, Bechtolsheim was able to split his time between Stanford and XEROX PARC. Bechtolsheim and Stanford built and sold 15 of the workstations together before stepping aside. This was when Sun (a nod to Stanford) Microsystems was born.

Bechtolsheim maintained a strong connection with Stanford, the place that allowed him to birth his ideas and teach him the fundamentals he needed to succeed.

“I wouldn’t have done what I’ve done in my life, if I hadn’t been here,” he said. “Little did I know that I would come exactly to the right place where you couldn’t just learn about how to do this but you could actually then go off and start a company. I was very fortunate.”

Because of his connection to Stanford, Bechtolsheim was one of the first to see, experience and invest in what would be known as Google today. In 1998 professor David Cheriton invited Bechtolsheim over to see what his two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had created. Bechtolsheim was immediately won over by the inner workings of Google search, remembering his experience in scientific research and publishing.

Page and Brin shared their revenue model of sponsored links and pay per click advertisements and Bechtolsheim was sold. He went out to his car and returned with a check for $100,000, made out to Google, Inc.

Bechtolsheim is a true engineering hero because not only did he create successful inventions, he recognized great innovations.

Contact The Talley Group finds the best positions for every engineering superhero out there. Call us today.

If you know someone that is looking to be an engineering hero, please refer an engineer today!