#182 The Value of PreSales in the Eyes of a COO

Notes:

In today’s episode, we investigate the point of view of a C-suite-level executive. How important is the role of presales within an organization, what it’s like overseeing operations, how he handles conflict between different teams across the board, and how often does he get tempted to get his hands dirty and dive into doing presales and sales again? If you’re a COO or a C-suite executive and you’re looking to learn how to lead your teams, this is the episode for you.

Anthony Bettanin is the Chief Operations Officer of Loop1, joining through the acquisition of Xlate Group, where he was CEO and Chairman.

He began his entrepreneurship and enterprise software career with SoftLaw (later renamed RuleBurst and Haley), an entrepreneurial Australian IT startup that developed an AI product which is now called Oracle Intelligent Advisor. Having worked across Australia and the UK for a decade in various leadership roles, including consulting, architecture, product strategy, presales, and sales, Anthony became Chief Legal Officer and managed the due diligence process for Haley’s acquisition of Oracle.

Key Takeaways:

The role of a COO and how is it different from the CEO
Making sure that all the structures and processes are in place in the business
Anthony walks us through his career path from graduating with a double degree in computer science and law to eventually becoming the COO of Loop1
How it’s like working with specialized partners in a very niche technology
His observations on cultural differences across various partners in different countries
The key reason Loop1 developed the partner network
How interacting with local teams really helped with cultural familiarization
How Anthony dabbled in presales activities despite being a consultant for development work
The changes he went through in his role when he was acquired by Oracle
How his background in presales helped him do enablement for their partners as well as moving into sales
What is Anthony’s view of sales engineering?
How to handle friction from people who don’t understand what your technology can do and how it can help them
Dealing with tension friction between salespeople, engineering, and presales especially in smaller companies
When SEs or other employees take on more responsibility than what may be best for the business
How do you enable your sales engineering team to get better?
The importance of looking at the opportunity cost
Being vigilant about the hero model
Anthony’s advice for the C suite about how they can use their SES to better their company
Instances when he had to deal with conflict himself between the presales and delivery teams
How to mitigate the risk of losing deals or business when trying a new process

Quotes:

“The role of the COO is to turn the big ideas into reality.” – Anthony Bettanin

“Often, doing business in those countries, unless you have a deep, trusted relationship that’s been built over many years. It doesn’t matter how good the technology is, nobody’s going to buy it, because it doesn’t have that, that very human endorsement and a recommendation.” – Anthony Bettanin

“It’s one thing to be able to do a demonstration and to show the product but for somebody to have confidence that they’re actually going to integrate it into what they’re doing. They need to have an Oracle partner that speaks their own language and is familiar with the way that they do development and all of their practices.” – Anthony Bettanin

“6% of the company, that’s actually a really large proportion of presales. And for us, that’s crucial, because we need to be telling the story to the customers because what we’re selling now is a better IT operations management experience for those customers, it’s the ability for them to move with us on a maturity journey through it operations management so that they are getting better at what they’re doing… Without the presales folks within the company, we wouldn’t be able to do that.” – Anthony Bettanin

“In my role as COO, that’s one of the crucial things that I do to ensure that the way that our presales team works, is aligned with the way that our delivery people are then going to deliver the outcome. – Anthony Bettanin

“Having that cycling between the teams and that close collaboration between the teams to ensure that, you know, one, the pre-sales knowledge is current, and two, that it’s realistic in terms of the way that the delivery is done, is crucial to the success of Loop1.” – Anthony Bettanin

“It’s being able to connect in with a customer connecting with their business outcomes and their priorities. That is both the most crucial and the rarest skill for SEs.” – Anthony Bettanin

“If I can’t get the organization to scale, and to deliver things in a repeatable way, then I’ve failed in my job.” – Anthony Bettanin

“If this person is having to step in and be the hero so frequently, what are we doing wrong systematically? Can we get that person to spend more time coaching and less time helping? Can we get that person to, you know, to run training programs? Can we get them to record videos? Can we get them to do something else? That’s going to spread their knowledge and have a multiplier effect? Rather than just yeah, staying up late and being there?” – Anthony Bettanin

“It’s important that the presales team has a manager. And that manager is at the same level as the sales manager.” – Anthony Bettanin

“Where sales engineering reports into sales, then the prioritization is typically wrong because they will just get pushed into very short-term activities that are related to deal closure. And there’s very little ability for that presales team to do things more strategically, or to improve processes and approaches.” – Anthony Bettanin

“I’m always looking for how can things be improved? Whether that’s a process or a product, or an approach or a pitch or an explanation, or whatever it is, I’m always looking to go, okay. We’ve got it to here. How do we make it better? How do we improve it again, improve it again? How do we keep lifting this out? Because if we say still, everybody else is going to rush past.” – Anthony Bettanin