Inside the Mind of a Pre-Sales Engineer
MarketingMoves interviews Richard Stokes
BIG NEWS, MarketingMoves are now also recruiting Pre-Sales Engineers. We’ve been listening to feedback from clients on how difficult it can be to find and hire the top 10% of Pre-Sales professionals. We’ve also heard all about the important role Pre-Sales plays in informing marketing strategy and product messaging. Our Pre-Sales recruitment expert, Melvin Day, will be your go-to for Pre-Sales hires, reachable at mday@marketingmoves.com
To give you a little more insight on Pre-Sales, MarketingMoves spoke to Richard Stokes, a senior Pre-Sales professional, with over 10 years of Pre-Sales leadership experience in Technology. We’ll be releasing a blog post a week for the next 4 weeks covering the following topics:
- What is Pre-Sales and how does it differ to Sales?
- What makes a great Pre-Sales professional?
- How does Pre-Sales support Product and Marketing teams?
- How hard is it to find strong pre-sales talent?
Or if you can’t wait, you can download the full pdf version below.
To kick off, we asked Richard the fundamental question –
What is Pre-Sales and how does it differ to Sales?
Pre-Sales as a profession has developed in technology sales environments where the product or service offering and the customer buying processes are complex. We can compare it to selling a car, you only need one person – the product is easy to understand, there’s only one decision maker and the purchase is straightforward and short. Whereas when selling a complex IT solution, you are often selling to multiple parts of the business and multiple types of stakeholders are involved in the decision. There is often a complex selection process that the customer runs to select the right vendor and solution.
In a sales opportunity, the Sales Rep’s primary responsible is managing the sales process end to end and the relationship with the customer. The Pre-Sales Engineer’s primary responsibility is to be the solution or technology expert. He or she is the trusted advisor to the customer. He/she understands the problem the customer is trying to solve and explains how to solve it with his/her company’s technology.
Of course, it’s not that black and white. This is team selling. Both Sales and Pre-Sales need to build relationships with the customer, understand the sales process and where they are in it. Both need to understand how the current activity is focused on moving them to the next stage. Both need to know the solution, and how to differentiate from the competition. Sales and Pre-Sales should have an appreciation for the business case for the customer buying the technology.
There’s a fundamental difference in motivational drivers between Sales and Pre-Sales. The Sales Rep has an individual target and 50% of his/her salary is directly linked to achieving it. There are usually significant additional rewards and recognition for over achieving. Sales Reps live and die by their number. Pre-Sales are typically on a team target, with around 30% bonus linked to it. Sales is a higher risk, higher reward profession.
There is also a fundamental difference in headspace. A Sales person will know their solution and key differentiators from the competition, but will lack the depth of knowledge of Pre-Sales. Sales cannot afford to be bogged down in the deeper technical aspects of the solution, and take their eyes of the commercial process and stakeholders they are managing, working out who supports them, who doesn’t and what the key block moving to the next stage. Pre-sales must operate on a higher level of detail.
Can you give me an idea of the level of detail Richard?
To give you an idea, if you are selling an ERP solution there will be a part of the sales cycle where a group from the Finance department will want to have a deep dive session on how they will handle various (often complex) scenarios in the system. There might be a room full people firing questions. What if X? How do I handle Y? What options are there to deal with Z? We don’t want to do it that way. Can you change it to work in the way I want? If the presales engineer doesn’t his/her stuff the wheels will quickly come off. The same will be the case if he/she can’t explain it simply.
If you’re a talented pre-sales professional or looking to hire one, contact our Managing Director Melvin Day on mday@marketingmoves.com or visit our Pre-Sales page.
If you have any issues receiving your pdf download, please contact Managing Director Melvin Day at mday@marketingmoves.com, who will send it through to you.
