I joined Matt Madden for this 1-hour exploration of your first few steps into presales and opportunities to accelerate your journey. We discussed:
- The origins story – and what presales can lead to
- Presales as a cultural ecotone
- Presales beginnings
- “Presales” as a term – what’s in a name?
- Situational fluency
- Doing Discovery and Great Demo! books – when to read
- Enabling an unfair advantage for yourself
- Qualification vs discovery
- Company culture and discovery
- Great Demo! origins – the horror of traditional demos
- Do the Last Thing First!
- An advanced methodology
- Great Demo! third edition organization – two books in one!
- Do the exercises – why?
- Core methodology vs advanced topics
- Storytelling in demos
- Partnering with sales – three scenarios
- A surprising interaction with a seasoned salesperson
- Pre-meetings with seasoned salespeople
- The “Harbor Tours” origins story
- Establishing roles in accord with strengths and weaknesses
- Sales is not easy – no pressure!
- Partition discovery
- Working with new salespeople – “get over it!”
- Mapping roles and laying your cards on the table, mutually
- Structured approaches and processes
- What are hiring managers looking for?
- Three pillars: Situational fluency, product knowledge and use cases, technical acumen
- What else can help you differentiate?
- Passion… aligned with pragmatism
- Dealing with Imposter Syndrome – embrace it (in a way)!
- Dunning Kruger – and Mt. Stupid
- Be conscious of what you may not know…
- “We can’t know all of the answers to all of the questions in the universe…”
- “I don’t know, but I’ll find out…”
- Strong desire to learn and awareness of current knowledge
- Problem-solving skills
- A desire to see customers succeed
- Time-management skills
- Strong documentation and observation skills
- Strong communication skills
- Understand the differences between the “what” and the “how”
- End-results vs how it works
- Some comments about note taking
- Some guidance for presales managers regarding interviewing processes
- “Never Stop Learning” and resources available to you
- The Lunar Module and ongoing learning
You can find this podcast here. Enjoy!