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.

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.

Organized competitions remain a great way to inspire the fledgling engineer. When they take place at the scholastic level, these competitions are able to show students that STEM education can be fun, and that a career in engineering is a goal worth striving for by both boys and girls.

The Mindstorms Challenge, a Lego Robotics Competition

Recently the 13th annual Mindstorms Challenge, a robotics competition featuring Lego toys, took place at Wichita State University. In addition to encouraging students to study their STEM subjects, the competition is also charged with promoting the principles of collaboration and teamwork. Those latter skills become highly important when engaged in an engineering career.

The students taking place in Mindstorms found that while building the Lego robots didn’t take too much time, programming the plastic devices involved a significant amount of effort. This year’s competition featured 31 different teams.

Wichita State’s School of Engineering sponsored the competition in collaboration with Spirit AeroSystems. “Kids come here [and] learn about some math principles that actually has application,” said WSU Professor Larry Whitman. Hopefully, today’s Lego robotic engineers will become tomorrow’s mechanical engineers.

Imagination Station Competition part of National Engineers Week

Another competition for students took place as part of National Engineers Week. This event, held at Toledo’s Imagination Station, involved the children designing and building towers made up of only old newspapers and masking tape. These structures needed to be able to hold the weight of a baseball while “towering” to the height of at least 18 inches.

Anna Kolin, Imagination Station spokesman, said the competition intended to teach children the principles of iterative design, construction, and testing. Each tower had to be able to stand while holding the baseball and standing up to the stress caused by a high-powered fan.

If you can remember fondly on the days when you first decided to be an engineer, these stories of youngsters dipping their toes into the engineering science water must inspire.

If you’d like to further your own engineering career, be sure to talk to the people at The Talley Group, one of the leading staffing companies in the industry. Their helpful recruiters can make sure your career stands up to the stresses of today’s market.

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.