Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show

Nate tells the story of a value-selling programme that permanently changed how he thought about price -- and why, three years later, it was the reason he left the company. He and Ava dig into how to design enablement around a real business model shift, and what has to change around it afterwards.

Nate rebuilt his interview loop so candidates present a case study twice — once as a coached dry run, once for the panel — and the score is the difference between the two. Ava pushes back on the risk of rewarding mimicry, and they land on a two-question scorecard.

Ava noticed her team throwing a party at the technical win and going quiet for the six weeks that actually decide the deal. She and Nate argue about whether the metric should stay, and land on what presales owes the deal after the POC is signed off.

Ava noticed her SEs improvising under closing pressure — over-explaining, over-promising, or freezing. She and Nate work out the norm that fixes it: never lie, but never answer an unqualified question reflexively either.

Ava asked her CRO for three more SEs and got one question back: prove the twelve you have are on the right deals. She rebuilt the ask as a capacity model — and found one AE eating 38% of her team's hours.

A one-line strategy slide can redirect an entire go-to-market motion, but the retraining, domain language and demo assets all land on the SE leader. Nate argues for naming a second ICP as insurance long before anyone asks for it, and Ava pressure-tests whether a twelve-person team can afford that hedge.

Nate's CRO used the word "PreSales" once in a forty-minute quarterly review — to ask why the team is still called that. He and Ava dig into why the pre/post split is an artefact of an older business model, and what to propose before someone proposes it for you.

Nate gets handed a fifteen percent AI efficiency target with no definition attached, and watches his regions buy eleven tools instead of creating capacity. He and Ava work out how to name the output of reclaimed hours before a single licence gets signed.

Ava comes back from a GTM leadership dinner where almost nobody knew the new AI labeling rules — and where one leader used AI as a sparring partner while another had ten agents calling prospects. She and Nate argue about blanket transcription bans, who should own AI for the revenue org, and where corporate brakes actually earn their keep.

Ava ran an AI session with her twelve SEs and discovered they'd built plenty — but nobody could say what they did with the time they saved. She and Nate dig into why usage metrics feel like progress, and how to make outcomes the thing you actually measure.

Ava counted nine different AI tools across her twelve SEs — because she never actually decided anything. She and Nate work through the four decisions a PreSales leader can make in the first thirty days: one environment, three data sources, one bootcamp, one recurring forum.

First-line PreSales and first-line Sales sit on the same org level but got there for opposite reasons, so the friction is structural, not personal. Nate shares the tandem model and qualification vote that cooled things down across his regions, and Ava stress-tests both until they hold up.

Nate shares the behavioural signals that expose a first-line SE manager who's really just a super-IC with a title — visible in how they design their forecast call and how they write email under pressure. Ava pushes on whether that's coachable or structural.

Nate has paid for enough conferences that were four sponsor pitches and a sad sandwich. Ava walks him through the community's on-site evenings, the 49-euro commitment fee, the new member portal, and the European roadshow that starts in London on 13 October.

Ava had a comp question and nobody in her company to ask. She took it to a community of 250 SE leaders and had twenty answers by lunch. Nate has watched a dozen of these groups die and wants to know what's different.

Nate breaks down why promoting your strongest SE into a first-line seat with no readiness path is an unbudgeted risk, not a reward. Ava pushes back from a 12-person scale-up where a title is the only retention lever she's got.

Ava's SE told a customer the product "just scales" - and missed a ten-x volume question. She and Nate split pricing knowledge into two very different skills and show which one every SE has to own.

Ava's SE quoted an eight-month-old price with no AE on the call, and the walk-back cost more than the number ever could. She and Nate work out the one sentence every SE should say — and the directory that keeps it from sounding like a dodge.

Ava asked one of her SEs how big his upcoming deal was and got "400 licenses" back — a unit count, not a number. She and Nate unpack why deal-value visibility is the precondition for both your incentive plan and your team's week planning.

Nate brings a coaching note that told a whole region to show nothing the customer didn't ask for, and argues that imposed focus isn't focus at all. He and Ava rebuild it as a scope decision made in discovery, out loud, with the customer in the room.

Nate saw a one-line prompt produce textbook-generic demo advice, and a comment section full of people saying "it needs more context" without ever building any. He and Ava work out how SE leaders turn that context into a shared enablement asset — and what it does for coaching between 1:1s.

Nate's managers spent forty minutes arguing focused entry deals versus full bundles — and nobody could say what one won deal costs in SE effort. He and Ava build the cost model live, then Ava pokes the hole in it: land-and-expand only pays if the first module actually gets used.

Ava argues that value isn't a separate framework: it hides inside Identify Pain and Metrics. She and Nate break down the exact escalation from customer symptom to a euro figure — and why that number decides whether you should even stay in the deal.

Ava keeps meeting PreSales leaders whose sales org rolled out MEDDICC and never invited them. She and Nate work out which letters SEs actually own — and how to claim a seat at that table without turning it into a turf war.

Ava read the Metrics field on two live deals side by side and couldn't tell which customer was which. She and Nate dig into why qualification frameworks collapse without a published quality standard — and where the reinforcement actually has to live.