Today's presales talks went through with a big group takeaways from Demofest. Here are my basic notes, but thanks for the strong participation and comments - even if you didn't attend the conference!
Adam Freeman's talk - different playbooks depending on deal sizes.
• By segment
• Low touch & high touch.
• Be ready to do more for the bigger customers.
• Demo automation & spending the right time
Blurred lines session - Guro Mccrea
- Using the seven habits and how they apply to presales.
John Care's Trusted Advisor Sales Engineer
• Enjoyed it
• Good book to read and understand.
Final Panel - Presales/Sales relationship
• How to work well together with your sales rep?
• 2 panellists had worked closely together before
• Reporting lines
Where should presales report into
• Not local sales?
• People do what they are rewarded for (or what their boss is)
• Way you demo is different from production
• Services leaders? Use cases and stories come from a more consultative discussion.
• Need to work for a strong presales leader who cares about making sure people are rewarded for fulfilling objectives
• Protection is an important part of being a presales leader.
• Recurring revenue is very important.
Senior presales to senior customer success roles
• Promotion path for presales
Working with sales people
• Not subservient
• Product centric - raises the importance of presales in a deal
• Why do presales do "everything" in a meeting, or in a deal.
• AE shouldn't ask for something presales haven't prepared.
• Should learn how to do signaling.
Don Carmichael's talk "When did Presales suddenly Become Cool?"
• Atlassian - don't have sales reps, just presales
• So many cool resources
• Long ago there was just a couple of books
• Now there is PSC, Demofest, blogs, podcasts, clubhouse rooms
• Students now realise that it is a career option
• Business & tech world
• Implementation to presales
• Worklife balance, doing more interesting work.
Clodagh - Presales onboarding
• Very useful and usable information
• Give new hires achievable goals
• Demoing quickly
• Get input quickly
• Guardrails and support.
• Chart - show what to improve on and work on.
• Low percentage of people felt their onboarding was good.
• Depends on time & resources
• If one doesn't exist, build one.
• Amazon - does an awesome builder process.
• 3 meetings - peer reviewed, within 3 months
1. Present first deck, sales + presales work.
○ Need to be ready to present and answer questions
○ Need to learn the competition too.
2. Deep dive session
a. Q&A
b. Role play situation
c. Draw an architecture for them
3. What you built based on #2
a. Do a demo.
• Week by week, learn the platform.
• Similar to the amazon process above.
• Focus on building
• Make your own, and share with the community.
• Gamify the onboarding.
• White belt, green belt, black belt.
• Onboarding internal moves vs external? Should they do everything?
• Presales training vs Product /Solution training.
• What is the most effective pathway to demo.
James - Horizontal network
• Who can you reach out to