Malcolm Murphy and I were fortunate to join John Hodgson and Isabela Bianca Dumitru as they launched their Survey on Presales Hiring with results from 103 Presales leaders around the world.  Our discussion focused on the results, talking about things like Soft and Hard Skills, the role of Intuition in decision making, and what criteria Presales managers are using to hire in today's market.  Here's the full 44 minute session on youtube ..read more

 I had a great chat with up and coming Presales podcaster Tony Moze, talking about the pathway to leadership in presales ..read more

I think we can all agree that this world cup was very entertaining and delivered some amazing performances! Watching the teams play together was exciting, and I loved watching some of the collaboration and assists.  Whichever team you support, I'm sure you found more than one part of the world cup exciting and inspirational. Congratulations of course to Argentina for their success, and for making the world cup exciting in 2022 - check out the final highlights here! When it comes to comparing football and presales, I often wonder about what kind of football player a presales person is ..read more

 We had another big year of Presales Talks in 2022, with weekly calls throughout the year, getting many regular and occasional guests to the call! Before we think too much on what we're going to do next, I'd like to reflect on some of the great things we did in this year's sessions.We explored the "Dark Side of Presales" in August with a very popular show covering this topic.  Presales is a job that has stress and pressure to perform on it, like many other sales roles. In some organizations this also has related problems of harassment, bullying and lack of diversity. This discussion ..read more

Today's topic was to explore the things that get us down as presales professionals. Presales is an exciting role, but some of these things happen and we wanted to explore how you can deal with them.Problems High Stress Environment Presales is "free" The AE relationship Some customers - lack of respect Women & Diversity Harassment Lack of respect Deal strategy - who owns it? Lack of alignment to AE goals Product weaknesses Imposter syndrome Proving yourself The openness of the role Awkward Silences Solutions Often these situations represent opportunities to improve your skills, life and ..read more

A skill many Presales people have is handling a big room meeting! Often at conferences and events, but sometimes also for deals, handling a large crowd of 10 more people takes additional skills.  We discussed many of these on the latest presales talks session! How many big board/meetings do you have? • Rarer • Only a small number of team members need to do it • For virtual - chat. Listening skills • How are people reacting? Emoting • Polling tools? Menti-meter • Hands-up • Look around the room (left-right-middle) • Helps you identify people who are willing to interact Scholar's cradle ..read more

 Great affirmative session celebrating the great things that happen when you work in presales! I'm sure some of these topics will come back in future weeks!  Top reasons why Presales is AWESOME! Creative and storytelling Curious & Brave Change & Variety "You learn something every day" Challenging Artistic - Engaging. Eager to help Money Interact with customers at a technical level and autonomy in doing so. Work between the silos of your organization & customers. Your view on life is better "You learn more about life itself" Improv • Many presales do improv on the sid ..read more

Great topic this week. It seems people are always keen to share tips, and talk about how to best present themselves! We'll continue this next week on Twitter Spaces, be sure to sign up!  What happens in Presales Interviews? • Typical interview - with recruiter, internal/external, then to hiring manager, to a peer - another SC, someone in sales, technical presentation, final conversation with hiring manager "Early stage, they need to convince you to be in the process too" • In early stages, convince them you can do presales, that you are a potential fit • Some recruiters can be harder ..read more

We had a great chat with presales collective members on our Presales Talks weekly session, hosted this week on Twitter Spaces.   Topic was "resumes for applying for presales roles" and what goes into them. What do you put on your CV? How do you get to interviews?What Goes onto your CV? • Make sure you mention Presales (or sales engineering, solutions or whatever your target company calls it) • Target Position: The role you want them to give you.  Make it clear what your asking for.  Make yourself look like a good fit. • Make sure your CV is going to pass the software ..read more

 I had the opportunity recently to sit down with Paul Lanigan on his podcast series and talk about presales & sales!  Some highlight topics - startups, people who code, and working with sales people! Have a listen to this and some of his other episodes to learn more about sales ..read more