How to Sell Engineering Services

Opinions from an engineer

Yeah, that’s right, I’m an engineer… at least I used to be. Though I’ve been told many times: “once an engineer, always an engineer”. I suppose at some level that’s true. I certainly mostly still think like an engineer, for better AND for worse 😊.

David LaVine, Engineering Marketing Consultant & Founder, RocLogic Marketing (BSEE, MSECE)

Last updated: August 31st, 2026

Here are 8 of the most important things you need to do to sell engineering services:

  1. Keep the fluff away
  2. Start from where they are
  3. Build trust
  4. Find people with a current need
  5. Focus on LCV
  6. Be selective about your sales channels
  7. Be realistic about whether or not you’re a good fit
  8. Be narrower than you want to be

This will be harder than you want

You’re probably an engineer by trade, experience, and mentality. And if you’re running an engineering services organization, you’re probably a pretty solid engineer at that. You should know right up front that this will be harder than you think it should be. Why? Three main reasons:

  1. Unlike engineering, which is super deterministic and causal, sales and marketing deals with correlation and partially-observable variables in the form of human behavior that provides supporting evidence.
  2. Unlike the world of product sales, you’re selling things that don’t exist yet (i.e. your services). With a tangible product, there’s automatic trust transferred. Not so with a service.
  3. Just because you know you can help solve certain problems, doesn’t mean strangers will believe you can solve their problems. You can’t just say “trust us”. You have to show them they can trust you.

The best thing you can do for your sanity and well-being is accept that reality, and then do your best to gather feedback and fail fast (reach out for details on that).

Keep the fluff away

There are certain things you should say, and certain things you shouldn’t, when trying to sell engineering services. Essentially anything that’s either: (1) primarily self-promotional or (2) claims without evidence.

Examples of what you generally shouldn’t say:

  1. Say anything that amounts to “trust me, …”. They won’t believe you.
  2. Blab on social media about being at booth 123 at trade show xyz. Most people won’t care.
  3. Use language that’s overused or has no backing in the engineering services world, like “robust” or “best-in-class” or “superior quality”.

Start from where your customer is

Most people trying to sell something move as quickly as possible to where they want the customer to be: using their services.

Don’t do that.

Instead, follow along your potential customer’s journey starting from where their head’s at. You do this in three main steps:

  1. Learn as much as you can about them before you ever even talk to them.
  2. Create as many questions as you can think of to learn more.
  3. Stop thinking about what you want. Instead, listen to their answers and focus on what they care about.

Build trust

Since you’re selling things that don’t exist, you need to build trust. Products have a more inherent trust built into them. There’s a tangible item. Whether it’s a piece of hardware or a SaaS platform, trust is more inherent than with custom services that you provide. There are 3 main ways to build trust:

  1. Be authentic – if you’re naturally funny, be funny. If you’re methodical and analytical, be methodical and analytical.
  2. Show expertise – provide insights into topics your customers want answers to
  3. Provide proof points – case studies, thought leadership, partnerships, improvement metrics can all act as proof points. Get them published!

Find people with a current need

Some business leaders think you can just find people within your target market and convince them to buy your stuff (this is often termed “deman gen” in the marketing world). I’m not one of those people. If you were selling lipstick or popsicles, I’d say okay, but you’re selling services that require a need as a pre-requisite. You’re not going to convince someone to buy a new $200k piece of custom equipment that doesn’t need it. You’re not going to convince someone to invest $150k in a new piece of software for a product that they’re not developing.

So, if there’s no need, don’t try to sell.

It’s not that you can’t and shouldn’t engage good fit people that don’t have an immediate need, it’s just that you shouldn’t try to actively sell to those people.

Instead, focus on finding and engaging those that do have a need (i.e. sales-ready leads).

Focus on LCV

LCV (Lifetime Customer Value) is so important for the sustainability of your company and your happiness.

You’re not selling to millions of people. You’re selling to relatively small numbers of companies, and if you look deeper into those that have accounted for the majority of your revenue over the years, that number is likely pretty small.

So, when you’re thinking about who to actively sell to in the future, you want LCV to be a significant part of the equation. You also want to include other factors like:

  • fit,
  • strategic value,
  • and happiness quotient,

but LCV will probably be the most heavily-weighted single factor in the equation.

Be selective about which sales channels you actively pursue

Too many options. As a small engineering company, you can’t afford to do all of these well. You’ve got:

It can be tempting to go after lots of channels at once, especially when you don’t have significant traction in any one channel.

But you should resist that temptation. Why? Because you need to get good enough in a couple/few different channels in order to rise above the noise.

If you’re below the noise floor in 9 channels, that will do you no good.

Be brutally honest with yourself about whether or not you’re a good fit

This applies both to potential customers and niches that you focus on. This is a tough one because it requires you to let go of ego and be confident and realistic about who you are (and aren’t), as a company. Just because someone shows up at your door, interested in considering you, doesn’t mean you should let them in. Even if the opportunity is super attractive on first blush.

Consider capturing your main criteria for fit, and rate each opportunity. Try to make the criteria as objective as possible, recognizing that it’s okay to allow for some amount of human judgment.

Be narrower than you want to be.

Just because you can solve a lot of problems, doesn’t mean you should try to actively sell services (at least not initially) for all of those problems.

Selecting niches to focus on is one of the harder aspects of running an engineering services company. Chances are you started off taking on anything and everything that came your way, and as you took on more and more, your capabilities broadened. That may seem like a good thing, but from a marketing standpoint it’s generally the opposite.

As your organization matures, you need to specialize more. You need to decide on the ~2-3 niches (depending on your size) that are super important to you as a company and give anything else significantly lower priority. The trick is to select something narrow enough where you can be truly competitive yet broad enough so that you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. See Why you need a niche for more on this topic.

Next Steps

RocLogic does marketing for engineering companies. Reach out for a chat if you’d like to dig in deeper.

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Case studies

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