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Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show
Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show episodes
- Your First 30 Days of AI: The Activation Playbook [63]The four decisions that beat waiting for a corporate AI strategy to arrive
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why standardizing on one enterprise-capable environment beats letting nine shadow tools grow
- Which data access to unlock first — email, calendar, CRM — and what to do when your CRM data is a swamp
- How a bi-weekly hot seat plus a tool-agnostic repository turns one person's build into a team asset
The moveBlock two hours this week and write down four things: one environment, three data sources in priority order, one bootcamp date, one recurring call with a named owner. Then add a protected learning hour with the sources already listed.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - Clash of Titans: Getting Your SE and Sales First-Liners on the Same Side [62]Why first-line SE and Sales managers collide -- and the rituals that fix it
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- The motivational asymmetry: SE managers step up to fix broken process, Sales managers got there by pushing and closing
- The tandem operating model -- pre-deal alignment, a standing cadence, and one shared CRM record instead of two versions of the truth
- Giving PreSales a real qualification veto at eye level with Sales -- and stopping it from becoming a hiding place
The movePut both first-liners in a room and name the motivational asymmetry out loud, then install the rituals: align before the deal opens, keep one shared record, and write the qualification decision down with both names on it. And the first time you hear "with that SE I'll never win" -- go straight at it.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
6 min - Spot the Super-IC Before the Numbers Do [61]Two cheap diagnostics that reveal a first-line manager who isn't developing anyone
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why a 1:1-only forecast call is the loudest red flag you'll ever get for free
- The CC-the-whole-company escalation pattern, and what it tells you from two levels away
- Manage versus lead: inspect-and-control against agreed outcomes and accountability left with the person
The moveSit in one of your first-line manager's forecast calls this month and note two things: who was invited, and who got asked to solve what. Then ask what happens to the team when that manager takes four weeks off.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
6 min - Fifty Leaders, One Borrowed Office [60]On-site evenings, a member portal with a map, and the London kick-off that wins Nate over.
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- An evening in a borrowed office: member keynotes, voted breakouts, food until ten
- Why a 49-euro commitment fee beats a free ticket
- The member portal, the opt-in directory, and the cities coming next
The moveRegister at serockstars.com/community, put 13 October (London) or 22 October (Munich) in your calendar, and send the link to one SE leader outside the German-speaking world.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
6 min - The Loneliest Job in the Building [59]Ava found the one room where SE leaders talk to each other. Nate isn't buying it yet.
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why SE leaders have two peers in the building while engineers have four hundred
- Member-led sessions: a ten-minute impulse, one pointed question, breakouts with four other leaders
- The catch Nate keeps looking for, and why there isn't one
The moveIf you lead SEs anywhere in Europe, register at serockstars.com/community and bring the half-finished problem you're stuck on right now. Someone in there has already solved it.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
6 min - The Seven-Figure Promotion [58]What an untrained first-line SE manager really costs -- and who ends up paying the bill
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why the untrained first-liner reverts to IC tools -- and turns a 200% performer into 50% output
- How to actually price a failed promotion: blind capacity, lost quota contribution, attrition
- Staged progression with measures before the title, and how to compress it when you can't wait a year
The moveAttach a training budget to every first-line promotion, and don't sign the promotion until the money and the readiness measures sit in the same document. Show the candidate those measures before they say yes.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - Your SEs Don't Need the Price List. They Need the Metric. [57]Seats, credits, transactions - why pricing metric literacy decides your value story
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why knowing current prices isn't the SE's job - but knowing the metric behind them absolutely is
- A 40-minute, per-business-model session: what we sell, which line item, what moves the number
- Teaching the volume muscle for consumption models - and why signature is the kick-off, not the finish
The movePick 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.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - One Sentence: The Pricing Guardrail Every SE Team Needs [56]Stop banning price talk. Define the exact words your SEs say when the customer asks.
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why the walk-back damages credibility more than the wrong number ever does
- The default sentence, and how to make it a trade instead of a deflection
- Nate's addition: a directory of what your team IS allowed to say out loud
The moveWrite 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.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - 400 Licenses Is Not a Number [55]Why your variable comp plan does nothing if your SEs can't name what a deal is worth
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why unit counts are a management problem, not an SE problem
- Making ARR and total contract value a visible, mandatory field in the SE view — not a favor the AE does
- The prioritization math, and where pure value-weighting breaks (strategic beachhead deals)
The moveAsk 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.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - When 'Show Nothing Extra' Becomes Handcuffs [54]Why blanket demo focus rules kill SE judgement, and what to hand out instead
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.
What Nate and Ava discuss- The two anti-patterns: the harbour cruise demo that sprays every module, and the mandated minimal demo that forbids any forward view
- Moving the scope decision upstream: what the customer thinks they need versus what your team actually heard
- Auditing incentives before demo technique, and why 'the decision maker isn't in the room' is often just wrong
The moveDelete 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.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min
About Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show
From the publisher's feed
Two voices. Two perspectives. One goal: making you a better PreSales leader.
Leading PreSales is a weekly podcast where Nate Hargrove and Ava Vasquez break down the real challenges of solution engineering leadership — in five minutes or less.
Nate brings 12 years of SE leadership experience from enterprise SaaS. He's the pragmatist who's seen it all, led through reorgs and acquisitions, and knows what actually works at scale.
Ava brings the builder's perspective — five years of leadership in high-growth Scale-Ups, where she built an SE team from zero to twelve and went from Series B to IPO. She challenges conventional thinking with modern frameworks and a coaching-first mindset.
Each episode: one topic, one honest conversation, one practical move you can use the same week.
Topics include 1:1 coaching, discovery skills, demo strategy, pipeline management, hiring, retention, and everything else that keeps SE leaders up at night.
⚠️ Full transparency: The voices and characters in this podcast are fictional. The content, frameworks, and experiences are based on real-life SE leadership — informed by years of working with 350+ Solution Engineers across companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zscaler, and more. The conversations are scripted by humans, performed by AI.
Produced by SE Rockstars (PreSales Unleashed GmbH) — the team behind the Trusted Advisor Academy, founded by Tim Brömme & Jan-Erik Jank. More at https://serockstars.com