Can a sales executive compete in the market with a sales engineer when the product to be sold requires an extensive technical knowledge?

85% of your financial success is due to your personality & ability to communicate, negotiate and lead. Shockingly only15% is due to technical knowledge.

                                                                                                               - Carnegie Institute of Technology.  

Usually no, clients feel so comfortable with knowledgeable and confident salesperson from a technical background being able to answer all their questions and concerns.

Technically depends on person to person and its level of experiance. Even a laymen can convince his customer if he is having experiance. It depends of personal capabilities. how he understand the product and homework done by him.

I completely agree with Mr Yazouri.