#181 The Role of PreSales in a Startup Scale

Notes:

Being a founder-based seller can be tough. For one, you’ve got to wear multiple hats, and two, it becomes harder to take track of all the things you’re running. What we see most founders struggle in is handing that baton to sales roles, especially presales. In today’s episode, we talk to Joseph Fung on why that is so, what founders can do to get out of that sales role fast, and how sales engineers can make many founders and company owners’ lives so much easier and better.

Joseph Fung is the co-founder and CEO at Uvaro, a career success platform that offers training to help folks transition into the tech industry through sales roles. He teaches individuals how to sell technology, figure out where they fit best in the tech ecosystem and introduce them to amazing tech companies. Their graduates have gone on to everything from Adobe and Oracle at the large enterprise side to smaller startups and everything in between.

Key Takeaway:

How he started Uvaro and why he came up with the idea for this startup
How important is the role of presales in startup organizations and when should founders hire their first sales role?
Two reasons why founders have trouble hiring for presales roles: the company’s maturity, and that CEOs are often confused about who to hire first
How do we take the CEO out of that sales or sales engineering role?
The idea of pre-coaching the CEO before getting into the call with customers and how that can be helpful
Who do you hire first in the presales roles as a solopreneur – an SE, AE, or SDR?
The differences between hiring an employee in the early, mid, or mature stage of the startup
When is the best time to hire a sales engineer as opposed to a sales rep or an SDR?
Why more and more AEs and SDRs are moving into the sales engineering role
Qualities that make AEs and SDRs successful when they shift into a sales engineering role
If an SE wants to shift into a different sales role or any other role in the company, how can they prepare for that role?
What’s really important for you to know as a sales engineer during discovery

Quotes:

“What they don’t realize is that the way they’re [founders] selling no one else can. It’s just impossible.” – Joseph Fung

“It’s very often CEOs, founders, they don’t realize that they’ve kind of got this reality distortion field around them, not the way they see reality, but the way people see them. – Joseph Fung

“If you can get them [founders] comfortable with the idea that you have to hire people who can sell successfully and it won’t be the way you sell. Once that cognitive switch flicks, it’s a lot easier to say hey, now let’s actually bring in a professional sales engineer.” – Joseph Fung

“If you can help your CEO recognize that their impact is huge. And we can use it strategically, you can actually get them involved in more deals for this thinner slice.” – Joseph Fung

“If you can coach them really well, and be really specific about where they get involved, then they can keep their fingers involved and you’ll feel like they’re influencing but also make a bigger impact, because they’re being leveraged more strategically.” – Joseph Fung

“As a sales engineer, you want to have the lay of the land before you come in for a demo, right? Same kind of thing if you’re gonna bring an executive in, it’s like, Hey, here’s the points, here’s the people, here’s what we need from you.” – Joseph Fung

“As a CEO, you got to start hiring for roles where you’ve got the biggest weakness.” – Joseph Fung

“Holding a really good mirror to yourself as a founder, it’s hard. And it’s really tough, but that’s the best way to prioritize what to hire first.” – Joseph Fung

“Multiple hats is what leads to burnout so fast.” – Joseph Fung

“When your product gets to a point of maturity, where there’s some type of configuration and when you have an implementation process, chances are you need sales engineering. And so, using that kind of rough heuristic is a good way to think about when you’re going to need it.” – Joseph Fung

“When you’ve got an implementation, you probably need SEs.” – Joseph Fung

“Having a sales engineering role, where you can actually help them maybe realize that success a little bit more handed off to the implementation team and be more involved there. I think that desire to see solutions to completeness is what’s driving it.” – Joseph Fung

“Sales has become much more about running the process.” – Joseph Fung

If” you’re not successful at running the process, managing expectations, keeping your systems clean, it’s a lot harder to be successful as an SE.” – Joseph Fung

“When I think about the engineers I know who have moved into sales engineering, versus the account executives who have moved into sales engineering, one of the things I do see is a much better alignment to the revenue numbers.” – Joseph Fung

“It’s the exact same problem that the founders have that same thing. It’s like, we care so much about the product because we built it, and we know it, and we’ve got to get outside of our heads and get inside of the customer’s heads, what do they care about.” – Joseph Fung

“When you know the problem of the customers, and you know the way this product solves it, those are the killer combination. And that doesn’t always mean you know, being an expert in every single nook and cranny of the product.” – Joseph Fung

“No, you got to not show the product and instead ask more and more questions. And the more you can discover, then the more specific and targeted you can be.” – Joseph Fung