Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show

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.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

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.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

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.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

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.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

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.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

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.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

Nate noticed one of his managers had cancelled her team's weekly learning slot nine times out of eleven, always for a good reason. He and Ava dig into why a fixed thirty minutes only survives if the leader is willing to have the awkward conversation with sales.

Put a fixed thirty-minute team learning slot on the calendar this week, name the two gaps it's for, and say out loud that it's not optional. Then defend it the first time sales pushes -- and ask your AE counterpart to help you protect it.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

Nate argues that corporate strategy is written so abstractly that most SEs never connect it to their week — and the first-line SE leader is the only person who can translate it. Ava pushes on whether a three-hour kickoff discussion survives when the strategy itself is mush.

Before the fiscal year starts, write down in two sentences what the company wants and what it means for your team — then spend three hours testing that with them and asking what they want to be measured on.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

The highest-leverage thing one team built all year, for almost nothing: thirty-second customer stories, AI-distilled and memorized. Craft and machine in one move.

Distill your existing case studies into 30-second stories — who, what hurt, what you did, the number. Have every SE memorize five or six, and open with the one that mirrors the customer in the room.

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🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales

A lovely discovery call that produced zero numbers. Customers scatter breadcrumbs — 'slow', 'error-prone' — and the whole skill is following them to a figure.

Teach your team to hear a qualitative word and follow it to a number: how often, how much, what it costs. Keep the customer talking 60–70% of the time so the breadcrumbs keep falling.

🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community

🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales