Notes:
PreSales is usually seen as a function, not an organization. We need someone to do demos, just hire someone. Who will they report to? Of just the salesperson who’s been here the longest. It’s never thought off as its own department until a few years down the road, and in many cases, when it’s too late.
Steffen Müller from Pathfinder Consulting understands that and has seen many companies go down a route and it’s very hard to come back from. That’s why we talk about what presales leaders should do before they start hiring people altogether. If I were to summarize that in one word, it would be vision!
Key Takeaways:
- What Steffen prioritizes accomplishing first thing in the morning
- Why he started working with companies to enable them to be better at presales
- What he means by viewing presales as an enterprise
- The downsides or consequence of not treating presales as an enterprise
- How processes for better presales enablement differs from organization to organization and how that relates to their hiring process
- Ramzi cites an example of a shortcoming of a company not treating presales as an enterprise
- What most companies lack in enabling their SEs to become better in their roles
- One thing that could change the culture of the company to get their SEs performing better
- Steffen suggests companies offer a curriculum for newly hired sales engineers
- Can mentors help enable presales? w do you think mentors can do better?
- Traits Ramzi is looking for when he decides to mentor a junior SE
- What Steffen means by “presales going to market”
- How too operationalize your value proposition
- How can companies bring the value proposition to everything they do?
Quotes:
3:54 “I love consulting because consulting to me is really bringing an outside perspective to problems where people might just want to see a solution even though it’s right there.” – Steffen Müller
5:48 “Presales is an enterprise in that it’s not just efficient to focus on, like getting tools and processes and enablement to your presales people. But really, build a precise organization around the foundation, you will also build around an enterprise like starting with a vision with your mission statement, and then all the way down how you operationalize it to executable elements.” – Steffen Müller
6:59 “You need to have robust processes, you need to have a robust process to go to market, you need to have a community between your global presales build up so they can support one another.” – Steffen Müller
8:47 “And that is, what good companies do, there are different elements that need to be kept in balance, in order to become more mature in order to have a solid foundation to scale.” – Steffen Müller
10:24 “That’s why I would say it always has to be a profit that is derived from the pretty much from the purpose from the vision of the company you’re in, because it always has to pay into like this as a great as a great quote that says, success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, right?” – Steffen Müller
10:43 “Building your vision as adversity, ideally, what we establish with your presales organization, as we start from there, you go backwards, and what kind of skills do I need to get there, to build this and what kind of people I need.” – Steffen Müller
16:54 “So that’s what I meant when I said the kind of presales company that presales enterprise that you build always has to correspond well with, of course, a greater with your greater company, will evolve over time, no doubt about it.” – Steffen Müller
18:10 “But yeah, I also definitely agree with the whole idea that success leaves clues, because there are definitely things and aspects of experiences that you want to take from the past that may drive you to maybe do things a certain way in the future.” – Steffen Müller
22:53 “Processes are more like guides; you can go off book every once in a while if you feel like it would help.” – Steffen Müller
23:53 “So this is this is how, how and why you build processes, because you want others to profit from knowledge of the people that came before you. processes like one thing.” – Steffen Müller
27:42 “If you’re in the business for a while, you shouldn’t be assigned mentors, like by force. Keep your eyes open for people that can actually help you on your way, for a couple of reasons. It could be different how they do things, or it could be there are where you want to be. Or it could be the person they are, they just aren’t treating to you and collect these contacts and can collect the relationships and cultivate relationships.” – Steffen Müller
34:28 “It’s commitment, it’s respect, it’s openness, it’s truthfulness. And that’s what you what you need to bring to the table because otherwise, you could of course reach out to someone and ask him for like a conversation or mentorship or whatever. But if you’re not putting these values onto the table and bring these in, it won’t last for a long.” – Steffen Müller
39:26 “Beyond just like the external reaching out and how we reach out but how do we set ourselves up internally to make sure that when we go out there, we’re as effective as we can be?” – Steffen Müller
