Sales and presales act a lot like siblings. One minute they’re playing nicely together and the next they are putting each other in a headlock, leaving you, the sales leader, playing referee.
Sales reps think presales take too long to prepare demos or don’t make time on the calendar for them. Presales reps think sales reps are too demanding and don’t give them enough credit for the impact they make or the influence they have on deals.
Obviously, there are some misconceptions and misalignment here. And while hiring can treat the symptoms of dysfunction, it does not treat the causes of the problem – efficiency, scale, and collaboration.
Make these three changes to unlock the peak performance of your presales and sales teams.
1. Work With Presales, Not Against Them
How often does this happen to you? You’ve got a customer who wants a demo, but your sales engineer doesn’t have an opening for two weeks. It’s a common problem.
It’s not that solution consultants don’t want to help – actually, they really love helping customers – it’s that deeply technical demos take time to prepare.
The first step to fixing this problem is to understand the gaps between the tasks that take the most presales time versus those that provide the most value.
In our latest Sales Engineer Compensation and Workload Report, we found that repetitive intro demos were the worst offender for wasting time.
Having a method to qualify leads before they receive a live demo results in fewer wasted demos and more time on solution consultant’s calendar.
2. Enable Presales with Automation
Are you considering automating part of your sales cycle? Your competition is.
56% of sales engineer individual contributors and 52% of leaders reported they automate some portion of the demo process.
When you look at all the benefits of automated SaaS demos, it’s easy to see why more sales organizations are using demo creation software as part of their approach.
Automation enables Presales to:
- Reduce the number of repetitive demos
- Shorten sales cycle
- Discover additional stakeholders
- Decrease the number of demos required to close
- Maintain deal momentum
- Support higher AE:SE ratios
- Evaluate leads as “Demo Qualified”
- Prevent or lower burnout rates
- Allow Sales Engineers to focus more on customized, in-depth demos
3. Do Discovery the Presales Way
Discovery is always a hot topic for both sales and presales. And it’s another topic that gets them fighting like cats and dogs.
It’s a crucial stage of the sales process but also a massive area of misalignment.
While Sales does discovery, it’s their own kind of discovery. It doesn’t always uncover the details Sales Engineers need to deliver an effective demo. If you don’t discover certain things for your SEs, they’re essentially forced to provide the demo blind.
Presales discovery often includes:
- Buyer pain points
- Existing solutions used
- Current customers in similar fields
- Topics the customer doesn’t want to talk about
Sending an interactive product demo or software demo video gives you a sneak peek into the topics your customer is interested in and will help you direct your live discovery.
Once you have a good foundation for presales discovery, your SE counterparts can produce more thorough and customized presentations for your potential buyers.
Get More Wins with Collaboration
To truly unlock the potential of Presales, you need to support and enable them. Most techniques are simple.
Qualifying leads before they receive a demo, automating part of the demo process, and doing discovery the presales way will help presale reach peak performance.
For more ways to build effect AE:SE teams, learn how to cure their disjointed relationship or see how the key activity and demand gap affects your presales.
