Alex Margolis joins the show with cohosts Jack Cochran and Mathew James to share his experience as a founding sales engineer, pulling back the curtain on what it's really like to be the first SE at a startup. Alex discusses his deliberate decision to target founding SE roles as a way to fast-forward his career after six years at a company with limited growth opportunities, expecting to build processes and lead strategically from day one. Instead, he found himself supporting eight AEs and an equal number of BDRs, running five demos a day in a high-velocity sales environment that left little time for the strategic work he'd been promised.

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• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/

• Connect with Alex Margolis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexnmargolis/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Presales Collective Podcast: https://www.presalescollective.com/podcast

1. Motivations for seeking founding SE roles and fast-forwarding your career

2. The sales assistant trap: expectations vs. reality of strategic involvement

3. Supporting eight AEs plus BDRs as the only SE in a high-velocity environment

4. Setting boundaries and tracking workload to prioritize effectively

5. Cross-functional relationship building as the company "facsimile"

6. Interview questions to ask when evaluating founding SE opportunities

7. Who the right fit is for high-volume founding SE roles

8. Finding company culture fit and working with good people

In this episode, Jack Cochran sits down with Paul Vogt, VP of Pre-Sales and Professional Services at GPG, to explore how building repeatable methodologies can transform solutions organizations at scale. The conversation dives deep into two powerful frameworks: the Technical Win Definition (5 binary yes/no questions that eliminate ambiguity and improve forecast accuracy) and the PGA Framework (Purpose, Goal, Agenda for planning every customer meeting).

Thank you to Saleo for sponsoring this episode: https://saleo.io

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Paul Vogt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulvogt00/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

• Presales Collective Podcast: https://presalescollective.com/podcast

• Paul's Blog: https://www.art-of-sales-engineering.com/

1. Paul's Career Journey: From Defense Contractor to Scaling Pre-Sales Teams at Twilio

2. The Alaska Cellular Network Project: Building the First Network in Remote Communities

3. Customer Lifecycle Gaps: Why 70% of Churn Happens During Onboarding

4. Technical Win Definition: Creating 5 Binary Questions to Eliminate Ambiguity

5. How Technical Win Criteria Improve Forecast Accuracy Better Than Sales Tracking

6. The PGA Framework: Purpose, Goal, Agenda for Every Customer Meeting

7. Warning Signs Your Organization Needs Repeatable Methodologies

8. Using Metrics to Identify Where Deals Slow Down (POC-to-Win Rates as Diagnostic)

9. The Lost Art of Prep Calls and Meeting Alignment

10. Practice and Preparation: Why Pre-Sales Professionals Should Train Like Athletes

11. Small Impactful Changes: The Ted Lasso Approach to Leadership

In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James are joined by Steve Bullington, Global Public Sector Sales Onboarding and Strategic Programs Lead at Salesforce, to explore the seismic shifts reshaping presales. Steve draws powerful parallels between today's transformation and the move from perpetual licenses to SaaS, arguing that we're experiencing an equally fundamental change as the industry shifts to consumption-based pricing models.

Follow Us

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/

• Connect with Steve Bullington: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevebullington/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

1. The Evolution of Presales: From Technical Expert to Business Value Architect

2. Consumption-Based Pricing Models and the Death of Shelfware

3. The Critical Importance of Accurate Consumption Forecasting

4. Forward-Deployed Engineers: The 10x Growth of a New Role

5. AI's Impact on Demo Capabilities and Presales Productivity

6. The Current Maturity Level of AI (Comparable to SaaS in 2000)

7. Which Sales Roles Face AI Replacement and Future Career Pathways

8. The Need to Accelerate Professional Development Beyond 1% Daily

In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James sit down with Adam Bauman, Staff Solutions Engineer at Kong, to challenge the myth of the "traditional" path into presales. Adam shares his journey from nearly 20 years in software engineering and management into solutions engineering, exploring why technical backgrounds can be powerful entry points into presales.

The conversation also tackles practical advice for both sides of the hiring equation: how candidates without presales experience can demonstrate their value in interviews, and how hiring managers can look beyond traditional backgrounds to find great talent.

Follow Us

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/

• Connect with Adam Bauman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjbauman/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

• Presales Collective Unscripted: https://luma.com/pscunscripted

1. What Defines a "Traditional" Path to Presales and Why Most Paths Are Non-Traditional

2. Adam's 20-Year Engineering Career and What Drew Him to Presales

3. The Learning Curve: Demos, Confidence, and Learning Not to Know Everything

4. Scoping Engagements and Understanding Buying Journeys Beyond Technical Validation

5. Staying Involved Through Security, Procurement, and Legal Reviews

6. Understanding Business Value and ROI from an Engineering Mindset

7. Using AI Tools Like Claude for Personal and Professional Efficiency

8. How to Interview for Presales Without Traditional Experience

9. Changes Needed in Recruiting: Using Rubrics and Formalized Evaluation

00:00 Start

03:36 Welcome Adam Bauman

06:58 Building confidence without all the answers

10:25 Drawing from an engineering background

13:55 Timeline for feeling confident in the role

22:07 Communicating value without presales experience

24:34 Changes needed in recruiting and hiring

27:23 Final Thoughts

In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James sit down with Lisa Jameson, a seasoned solutions professional, to explore how she built strategic influence and became a trusted advisor to sales leadership without moving into management.

Lisa provides a practical framework for assessing your current level of trust with sales leadership, finding creative solutions beyond product limitations, and ultimately structuring a custom role that maximizes your impact while staying on the individual contributor track.

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Mathew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/

• Connect with Lisa Jameson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisajamesondb/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

1. Building Initial Trust Through Proactive Learning and Debrief Calls

2. The Deal Review as Critical Trust Builder for Won and Lost Deals

3. Strategic Use of Closed Lost Deals to Increase Credibility

4. The "If We're Working It, We're Working It" Philosophy

5. Recognizing When Sales Teams Trust Your Strategic Input

6. Developing Deep Expertise in a Niche Area

7. Creating Custom IC Roles Through Proven Value

8. Moving Beyond Product Limitations with Partners and Creative Solutions

9. The Long Game of Career Development and Building Credibility

10. Structuring Compensation and Proving ROI for Strategic Roles

Rob Fallon, Director, Americas SE Strategy & Associate Program at Nutanix, has built presales academy programs at both Dell EMC and Nutanix, joins the show to discuss the strategic importance of creating structured training programs for presales professionals. Rob shares his experience transforming Dell's 12-week boot camp into a comprehensive academy and building Nutanix's current 18-month-old program from the ground up. The conversation tackles the "inverted pyramid" problem that plagues many SE organizations—being too heavy with expensive senior talent and lacking junior pipeline—and why most companies struggle to fix it.

The discussion covers the business case for academies, how to secure executive sponsorship and funding, the structure of successful two-year programs, and why hiring for technical curiosity and grit matters more than existing technical knowledge.

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Rob Fallon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robfallon/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

• Contact Rob: [email protected]

1. The Inverted Pyramid Problem: Why SE Organizations Over-Hire Senior Talent

2. Executive Sponsorship and Funding: Getting Buy-In for Long-Term Investment

3. The Two-Year Academy Program Structure at Nutanix

4. Hiring for Technical Curiosity, Communication, and Grit Over Knowledge

5. Why Field Integration and Manager Engagement Are Critical to Success

6. How Academy Associates Become Productive Within 12 Months

7. Academy Programs as Diversity and Fresh Thinking Enablers

8. Success Metrics: When Field Leaders Want Academy Grads on Their Teams

In this episode, Jack Cochran sits down with Yasmeen Hyder, an enterprise solutions consulting leader from Atlanta, to explore a game-changing approach to working with AI: speaking to it instead of typing. Yasmeen shares how she uses voice-based AI interactions as a thought companion and coaching tool to enhance decision-making, reduce mental load, and work more efficiently in her presales leadership role.

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Yasmeen Hyder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasmeenhyder/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

• Presales Collective Podcast: https://www.presalescollective.com/podcast

1. Voice AI vs. Typing: Why Speaking Creates Higher Bandwidth Communication

2. AI as Thought Companion Rather Than Answer Engine

3. Yasmeen's Career Journey: Healthcare to Pharma to Tech Presales

4. Overcoming the Behavioral Change of Talking to Your Computer

5. Stress Testing Leadership Decisions with Voice AI

6. Using AI as a Coach: Asking for Questions Instead of Answers

7. Time Compression Benefits: 60-90 Minutes Down to 15-20 Minutes

8. Addressing Zoom Fatigue: Voice AI as Reset and Grounding Tool

9. Negative Prompting Technique for Better Outputs

10. Personal and Professional Applications Beyond Work

00:00 Introduction

02:45 Welcome Yas

05:45 Why talking to AI

08:02 Setup and behavioral change

10:57 Writing vs. speaking

15:27 Rubber ducky but better

16:28 Stress testing leadership decisions

20:46 Using AI as a coach

22:36 Addressing Zoom fatigue

26:00 Personal life applications

30:19 Closing and contact information

Jack Cochran and Matthew James welcome Kintan Brahmbhatt, CEO and co-founder of Olto, to discuss how AI agents are fundamentally reshaping the presales workflow and buyer experience. Drawing from over 12 years at Amazon building personalized experiences for Alexa, Amazon Music, and Prime Video, Kintan explores why B2B buyers receive generic "Acme Corp" demos while B2C consumers get highly personalized recommendations, and how product-trained agents can finally close this gap economically. The conversation goes beyond productivity gains to examine how buyers, products, and SE roles have evolved rapidly while metrics, compensation plans, and tooling have remained static.

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/

• Connect with Kintan Brahmbhatt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kintan/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

• Olto: https://olto.com/psc (3 months free promotional offer mentioned)

1. Why AI Timing Is Better Now: Moving Beyond Productivity to Workflow Transformation

2. The Personalization Gap Between B2C and B2B Buyer Experiences

3. What Olto Is: Product-Trained AI Agents Across the Revenue Journey

4. Kintan's Amazon Background: Building Personalized Experiences at Scale

5. SE Capacity Economics and the Unspoken Rule About Qualified Deals

6. How Product-Trained Agents Differ from Generic AI

7. The New SE Workflow: Agents Handle Discovery, SEs Focus on Sense-Making

8. Evolution of SE Metrics, Compensation, and Tooling for the AI Era

9. Implementation Challenges and Change Management

10. The Future of the Presales Profession

00:00 Welcome

04:04 Now vs a year ago

05:40 What is Olto

07:52 B2C vs B2B personalization disconnect

11:15 Agent capabilities and limitations

21:35 Future of the solutions roles

28:26 Key takeaways from solutions leaders

Presales teams are being asked more and more to do post-sales work. This isn't a fad or something we're doing in the short term. This is a significant change for the broader profession of presales and solutions consulting. What was once occasional support for implementations or customer renewals is now becoming formal job responsibilities for solutions consultants across the industry.

In this episode, Jack Cochran sits down with Shamil Turner, Global Technical Solutions Leader at Figma and Presales Collective advisory board member, to explore why this shift is happening and what it means for the future of presales.

Shamil brings a unique perspective to this conversation: he was the first SE hired at Figma, built their entire solutions engineering organization from the ground up, and has now transitioned into a post-sales technical leadership role. Together they discuss the strengths that SEs bring to the table that has a profound impact on a company-customer relationships AFTER the sale has happened, and how this plays out in a new role that has been emerging over the past year, the Forward Deployed Engineer.

Whether you're a leader making organizational decisions or an IC just getting started, this conversation will help you understand how the world of solutions is evolving.

Thank you to Saleo for sponsoring this episode!

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Shamil Turner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamil-turner/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

• Presales Collective Podcast: https://www.presalescollective.com/podcast

• Saleo: https://saleo.io

1. The Growing Trend of Presales Teams Doing Post-Sales Work

2. Historical Context: How SEs Have Always Supported Post-Sales

3. Forward Deployed Engineer Roles in Consumption-Based Models

4. Why Presales Skills Are Valuable for Customer Onboarding

5. Shamil's Journey from First SE at Figma to Global Technical Solutions Leader

6. The Convergence of Pre and Post-Sales Functions

7. Career Implications for Presales Professionals at All Levels

8. What This Means for the Future of Solutions Organizations

In this episode, Jack Cochran sits down with Darlene Volas, a senior solutions engineering executive, to explore what it truly means to be an AI-enabled SE in 2025 and beyond. The conversation moves well past basic ChatGPT usage to examine sophisticated operational workflows, custom automation tools, and practical implementation strategies that enhance both efficiency and quality of work.

This episode was recorded during Presales Collective's 2026 AI-Powered Presales Summit on March 19th, 2026. Pro and Pro+ members can view all of the recorded sessions on-demand in the PSC Knowledge Hub: https://www.presalescollective.com/knowledgehub

• Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/

• Connect with Matthe James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/

• Connect with Darlene Volas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darlenevolas/

• Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack

• Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026

• Presales Collective Podcast: https://www.presalescollective.com/podcast

• Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/

• Claude by Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/claude

• Cursor AI coding tool: https://cursor.sh/

• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot

• Gong conversation intelligence: https://www.gong.io/

• ChatGPT Enterprise: https://openai.com/enterprise

• Obsidian note-taking: https://obsidian.md/

• Firebolt database: https://www.firebolt.io/

1. Personal AI Usage Evolution: Moving Beyond Google Replacement to Creative Applications

2. Three Buckets of AI for SE Leaders: Operations, Team Workflows, and Technical Implementation

3. Daily Meeting Preparation Automation and Custom-Built AI Applications

4. Operationalizing SE Teams with Repeatable AI Workflows

5. Quality vs. Efficiency Trade-off: Better Preparation Rather Than Less Time

6. Building Technical Credibility Through Hands-On AI Coding

7. The "One More Thing" Problem and Where Human Expertise Remains Essential

8. Data Security, Governance, and Vendor Considerations for AI Tools

9. Why AI Won't Replace SEs: The Irreplaceable Human Element

10. Hiring AI-Native SEs: What to Look For Beyond Basic Tool Awareness

00:00 Welcome

02:41 How AI conversations have evolved

06:30 Three buckets of AI usage

12:40 Efficiency versus quality improvements

18:40 Building credibility through AI coding

21:07 The one more thing problem

30:59 Why AI won't replace SEs

36:45 Q&A session

39:20 Closing remarks