First off you guys are awesome, second-BABA

[dfrecore]

My ultimate goal has slightly developed as I have been researching sales as a career and taking some classes and certifications. I am looking more heavily at "presales engineering" and its cousin "Sales Engineering"  as career focuses that can help me gain qualifications adjacent to sales to help me land higher positions.
Qualifications I am looking for and want to follow up with you guys on: Presales engineers work with programing and software implementation as part of the sales process, essentially I need to be able to know enough about programing to be dangerous in a sales conversation and effectively communicate with the companies software team on what exactly a client needs for me to make a sale.  I took a 6 hour Linked in Certificate class which basically let me know how much I don't know. If there are certifications/ quick degrees that are recommended I would greatly appreciate hearing what you guys know about.

Additionally for me to land the higher positions I would likely need to finish my MBA or potentially some equivalent. Which is much less daunting knowing my company is going to foot the bill.  Speed and credibility would be my goals with the MBA.

My husband has been a sales engineer for 20+ years, and does not have a bachelor's degree, let alone an MBA.  Way more important - he's a more "sales-y" engineer, meaning he has a personality (many sales engineers do not), is a great networker, and is great with customers.  He recently lost his job, reached out to everyone he knew, and had interviews at 15+ companies and at least 50 interviews within 3 weeks.  He took a job at week 4 1/2, and that one was from someone who reached out to him that he'd previously worked for.

So don't get ahead of yourself in terms of thinking you need an MBA.  I would say that at the start of his career, his technical knowledge was more important than anything else, and then the other stuff took over after that (probably by year 3).  A salesperson knowing that you have the technical expertise for the product they're selling, and are good with customers - they'll constantly be calling you when they leave the company to come and work with them at their new company (this happens to my husband All. The. Time.  He is constantly recruited by his former salespeople.  I'd say at least monthly someone reaches out to him to talk about moving to a new company).