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.

Pick one business model this week and run 40 minutes with your team: what we sell, which line item it lands on, what moves the number. Then have every SE estimate the volume math on one live deal out loud - in ranges, never precise figures.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Write the one sentence your SEs use when asked about price, in writing, this week. Pair it with a short directory of numbers they may say out loud, and have them rehearse it in the next team meeting.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Ask every SE this week to write down the dollar value of their top five open opportunities from memory. If you get unit counts back, fix CRM visibility before you touch a single line of the comp plan.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Delete the blanket rule and add one line to your demo prep template: what we heard they need beyond today's scope, and what we're consciously leaving out. The SE writes it, the manager only reviews it — and it gets said to the customer in the first three minutes.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Write one page this week — who you sell to, the personas, what a good demo looks like at your company, and three things you never do. Load it into a shared assistant, have every SE upload their last demo transcript, then read the first ten reports yourself.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Take your two most common deal shapes, reconstruct five closed deals of each with the SEs who ran them, and divide net-new ARR by SE days. Bring that one number to your next pipeline review — with an adoption factor sitting next to it.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Coach one chain per deal review: symptom, negative consequence today, which of cost/revenue/risk it hits, then a number. If the number isn't a multiple of your price, that's a qualification decision, not a value story.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Next time a qualification framework lands in your sales org, ask to co-own two letters — Metrics and Decision Criteria — and get your SEs into the same room as the AEs, not a hallway summary afterwards.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

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.

Open two live opportunities in the same segment and read the Metrics fields back to back. If you can't tell which customer is which, write one page for that segment — one great example, one walk-away example — with your sales counterpart in the room.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call

Nate noticed that new SE managers introduce themselves to sales by explaining the presales process, and it builds resistance before anything else happens. He and Ava work out what to open with instead, and how to map the counterparts you actually need.

List your counterparts, pick the two who most shape your team's week, and book thirty minutes each with one question: what do you need, and how can I make your life easier? Save your process talk for the second conversation.

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

📅 Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/serockstars-tim/discovery-call