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Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show
Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show episodes
- Are We Even Doing the Huddle? [13]Why doing the thing badly is better than not doing it at all
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
When Nate asked his SE Director about pre-demo huddle quality, the answer was simple: they are not happening yet. Ava tried building the perfect huddle template and nobody used it. Together they unpack why getting the behavior to exist matters more than getting it right from day one.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why the perfect template kills adoption — and what happens when you strip it down to just talk to each other
- How the habit itself teaches people what good preparation looks like, without a formal agenda
- Nate's three-question minimum for scaling huddles across 200 SEs without creating bureaucracy
If your team is not doing pre-demo huddles, do not build the perfect template. Make the conversation mandatory. Track that it is happening. After a few weeks, introduce the minimum questions that actually matter.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - Your Best SE Has Never Been Coached [12]How to introduce feedback to a veteran who has never had it
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
When a new SE leader inherits a veteran with deep product knowledge but years of unchallenged habits, the instinct is to list what needs fixing. But that approach turns a trusted expert into a reluctant trainee. Nate and Ava explore how to coach someone who has never been coached.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why experienced SEs often already know the gap between their best and their average — they just need someone to draw it out
- The difference between correcting someone and helping them do more of what already works
- When self-awareness is not there: using data to open the door while keeping coaching question-based
If you are inheriting a veteran SE who has never been coached, don't start with what's broken. Ask them what their best demo looks like. Let them find the gap between their best and their average. That is where the coaching begins.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - They Keep Bringing More People [11]How to tell if your deal is progressing or just spinning in circles
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
When an SE runs four or five demos for a single deal and new stakeholders keep appearing, it looks like the buying center is expanding. But Nate and Ava unpack a different reality: the first demo didn't land, and the prospect is quietly outsourcing comprehension to the next person in the room.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why feature-centric demos create a cycle of repeated sessions without real progress
- The one question every SE Manager should ask after a demo: What decision is the customer closer to making?
- How replacing demo number five with a fifteen-minute conversation uncovered concerns that four previous demos missed
After every demo, ask your SE: what decision is the customer closer to making? If you can't answer that clearly, the next session shouldn't be another demo — it should be a conversation.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - The Friday After [10]Why 90% of your enablement budget evaporates in a week
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
Ava ran an uncomfortable experiment: she called all twelve of her SEs eight days after a two-day offsite training and asked one question — "Name ONE thing you've done differently this week because of what we learned." Three of twelve could answer. This episode is about why the Friday after is where enablement actually happens, and what SE leaders can do about it.
What Nate and Ava discuss- The forgetting curve: 90% of unreinforced learning fades within a week
- Why we keep buying workshops — they're legible, you get a receipt, the team looks happy
- The retrieval principle: recall under real pressure is what moves a framework from short-term memory into actual skill
- Why the manager must pick the deal for the post-training review, not the SE
- How the same principle applies to negotiation, discovery, and any other training — not just deal reviews
The moveBefore your team goes to any enablement — a workshop, an offsite, a webinar, even a book club — put a mandatory retrieval event on the calendar within seven days. Specific meeting, specific real work, and YOU pick it. Not the SE.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - Your Champion Isn't Enough Anymore [9]Why the average B2B deal now has 22 stakeholders — and what to do about it
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
The average B2B buying group in 2026 is 22 people: 13 internal plus 9 external influencers (Forrester). Your champion is one voice in that room. "Find the champion, arm the champion" was built for a world that doesn't exist anymore.
What Nate and Ava discuss- The deal review question that should scare every SE leader listening
- Why the 22-stakeholder buying group changes what SEs have to do — not just what they have to know
- The "champion enablement kit" — what goes in one, and how it turns your champion into a carrier, not a salesperson
- The real signal when a champion can't tell you who's in the signoff room
The moveBefore your next stakeholder review on a real deal, ask your champion one question: "Who's going to be in that room that I've never met?" Then build targeted material for each of those people — not a generic deck. If your champion can't answer the question, you have a bigger problem than a missing deck.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
6 min - What Am I Actually For? [8]The question every SE leader is going to get asked this year
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
Ava's new hire asked the question out loud. Every SE leader is going to hear it this year. Here's the answer — and why the obvious version of it can accidentally burn out your team.
What Nate and Ava discuss- The four moments where human SEs still clearly win: career-risk decisions, messy stakeholder dynamics, regulated industries, strategic renewals
- Nate's pushback on Ava's framing — why "you're for the hard moments" is a dangerous answer to give a new hire
- The reframe: the skill isn't BEING at the hard moments, it's the judgment to find them in your deals on purpose
- How to answer this question when your own team asks it
The moveThis week, force-rank your active deals — not by size, by "which of these has a human-critical moment coming, and when?" Reallocate your team's time toward those moments on purpose. And if a new hire asks "what am I for?" — give them the answer directly. Don't wing it.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
5 min - You Were Never Actually In That Deal [7]Why 77% of B2B deals are decided before the first meeting
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
94% of buying groups rank the shortlisted vendors before the first meeting. 77% buy from whoever was ranked first. So what's an SE team actually doing on that first demo — closing, or just confirming a decision that's already been made?
What Nate and Ava discuss- The 6sense stat that's been living in Nate's head: 94% rank before contact, 77% buy the Day 1 favorite
- Why SE leaders can't dismiss this as "a marketing problem" anymore
- What content SE teams should be putting out publicly — so buyers researching with LLMs find YOU first
- The single question to ask on the first call to find out if you're already the favorite
The moveStop treating the first demo like an introduction. Treat it like a confirmation interview. Ask the buyer what specifically made them book time with you. If the answer is vague, you're number two — and you need to change the whole conversation. If it's specific, don't blow it by running a generic pitch.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
5 min - I Cancelled Every Technical Deep-Dive [6]Why the default post-demo deep-dive is broken — and what replaces it
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
Ava killed every default post-demo technical deep-dive on her team's calendar. Booking rate on her new "get unstuck" link tripled. Nate pushes back — and they land on a more nuanced move.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why buyers now show up to technical calls over-prepared — and what that says about the ritual deep-dive
- The moment Ava decided to cut the default, and what replaced it
- Nate's pushback: when the deep-dive isn't about content, it's about optics for the champion's internal audience
- How to tell the difference between a deep-dive the buyer needs and one that's just on the calendar out of habit
The moveLook at your last ten deals. Count how many standard technical deep-dives got booked by default, without anyone actually asking for one. Cut that default. Replace it with an on-demand option — and watch what happens to your win rate and your team's hours.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
5 min - One Skill Per Quarter — That's It [5]Why doing less in skill development gets you more
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
When you give feedback on four things at once, your SEs improve at none of them. Nate shares the counterintuitive approach that actually builds lasting skills: one skill per quarter, with deliberate weekly practice.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why picking three development areas leads to marginal progress on all and mastery of none
- How to choose the ONE skill that moves the needle most — observation first, not assumption
- The three weekly questions that turn vague skill development into real coaching
The movePick one person on your team. Look at their last five calls or demos. Find the ONE skill that would have the biggest impact on their win rate. In the next 1:1, propose it: "I think your biggest unlock this quarter is X. What do you think?" Align on one skill. One. And ask them to come next session with a specific example of how they practiced it.
🚀 Join the PreSales Leadership Community: serockstars.com/community
🔗 Resources & Links: paths.to/presales
7 min - The One Question That Reveals Everything [4]Why "why are they going to buy?" beats any pipeline review
🎙️ Live webinar May 21: Tim & Jan on building a PreSales team that drives revenue — not just demos. serockstars.com/webinar
When your SE can tell you everything about the demo but nothing about why the customer will actually write a check, you have a qualification gap. Ava shares the one question that changes everything.
What Nate and Ava discuss- Why deal updates tell you what happened — but not whether the deal is real
- How "why will they spend money with us?" forces SEs to think about pain, urgency, and budget
- The ripple effect: go deep on one deal, and SEs start preparing better for all of them
The moveNext 1:1, skip the pipeline tour. Pick one deal — the riskiest or most strategic. Open with: "Why is this customer going to spend money with us?" Follow the thread: pain chain, economic buyer, biggest risk. Go deep on one instead of shallow on eight.
🚀 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