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“Our job is to make you fabulously successful…!” proclaims a senior presales leader to her sales counterparts. But how do we make this a win-win-win scenario for sales, presales, and customers? We’ll explore sales/presales partnering models and (best and worst) practices for discovery, Vision Generation, Demos, POCs – and the uncomfortable realities that we face when working as teams.
Peter Cohan is the founder and principal of The Second Derivative and the author of the Great Demo! methodology, focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results – primarily through improving organizations’ demonstrations. The bulk of his experience is with complex, enterprise software and strategic systems sold to varied audiences in a range of vertical markets. He has enjoyed roles in technical and product marketing, marketing management, presales and presales management, sales and sales management, senior management and the C-Suite – as well as serving on Boards of Directors. He has delivered thousands of demos – and has been on the receiving end of thousands of demos from a broad variety of vendors around the world, from start-ups to the world’s biggest software vendors, and verticals from accounting to zymology. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations, which was subsequently transitioned to the Great Demo! LinkedIn Group in 2010-2011. Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million per year operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc., is an advisor to IN2SV, Inc. and a mentor to StartX, the Stanford University start-up accelerator. He holds a degree in chemistry. Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manager and senior management in marketing, sales, business development, and as a member of the C-suite. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer. GreatDemo.com
