PreSales Hireside Chats

Ed Baxter is a British Pre-Sales leader based in Singapore. Since the age of 10 he's been plotting his move abroad. In this podcast we learn how he made it happen and what he's learned about living, working and PreSales in Singapore and Asia more broadly.

In this episode we talk with Procurement Technology SC's Julia Henriet and Juan Pablo Ahumada about their career journeys from Big 4 Audit and Economics into PreSales. We cover:- What they love about PreSales- Their pathway into PreSales from Big audit and Economics and how PreSales compares with this.- The makings of a great SE.- Skills and abilities they have developed as SC's- Why sales is all about timing and believing in your product is non-negotiable.

From Big Four to PreSales to Market Strategy—Gabriele’s Career PathGabriele Fiata has taken an interesting route into PreSales. He started out between security consulting at KPMG and Deloitte, along with time in industry at PepsiCo before shifting into PreSales at SAP. Now, he works in market strategy, helping shape SAP’s cloud security messaging.In this episode, you will learn: • What Gabriele loves most about PreSales and why it was the best career move he made • The key differences between working in industry, consulting, and PreSales • How PreSales combines technical knowledge with getting things done quickly• How 'Salesy' Presales is • Why being able to explain things clearly is such an important skill in the role • How PreSales can open doors to jobs in marketing, strategy, and beyond

Kapali is a PreSales Business Architect at SAP, captaining PreSales teams on meaty, complex opportunities across the whole SAP range of products. She's also fantastic at explaining her role in a down-to-earth, clear way. In this conversation, we discuss:- What Kapali loves about PreSales- What PreSales is at SAP- How PreSales and work vendor side compare to advisory positions at Global SI's like Accenture.- Traits that lead to success in PreSales- Skills and abilities she's learned in the role- Why a customer will always want to turn a television on, once they've bought one!

Rudy’s story is both fascinating and unique. Beginning his career as a Creative Director, he successfully transitioned into SE roles at Esko and Smartsheet, earning a reputation as a high-performing, respected, and well-loved team member in both companies.Now, having moved from PreSales into a Product Director, he sees things from all different perspective, making for a great Hireside Chat.In this epsiode you will learn:- What Rudy loves about PreSales- What is creativity in PreSales- Helping customers 'cross the bridge'- How Salesy PreSales really is- What makes a great SE and timeless skills you take with you from PreSales

Matt Gilbey is a Solution Advisory Lead for SAP Supply Chain. In this conversation, we discuss: • What Matt loves about PreSales • The actual amount of sales involved in PreSales • Matt’s journey into PreSales • The key lessons he has learned and how they have helped him become a confident presenter and public speaker • How PreSales compares to working in industry and consulting This conversation is part of the PreSales Career Edition Series, where we speak with PreSales practitioners about their career paths, what it takes to succeed, and how they have developed and grown in the role.

Simon is the Head of Customer Advisory for SAP UKI, with a wealth of experience hiring Simon believes in a candidate-centric, keep-things-simple, approach. In this episode expect to learn: - Some of the benefits of graduate programmes and academies - How Simon ensures candidates feel special and well treated through the interview process, leading to more accepted offers - What characteristics lead to success in a PreSales candidate - Hiring at tier one vendors vs smaller vendors - Moving from first level management to second level and above, trusting your managers to hire well

Mark is the Director of Buyer Enablement at Consensus, he is also a host on the excellent Two PreSales in a Pod, podcast. Mark has never been shy to advocate for his own perspective on all things PreSales. Expect to learn: - What the CV of the future will look like - How your personal brand and building a career microsite will help your career - The dangers of not having a personal brand - Why employers should also use more video in job descriptions - Your a £100K+ product, don't rely on 2 pages of pager to show your value

We speak with Marcel Golembiewski a DACH based PreSales leader who has improved his hiring results by getting his hands dirty and doing things differently. Expect to learn: - Thoughts on the state of the job market in SaaS PreSales - Why unsung heroes should be celebrated more - How Marcel took things into his own hands, helped his recruiting partner understand the PreSales role better and saw a 100% improvement in results by getting directly involved in messaging candidates. - The main abilities Marcel looks for in a PreSales candidate. - The importance of the technical interview. Enjoy!

As well as being one of Europe's most important regions, DACH has always been a little different to recruit in and certainly a challenging market to hire in. We speak with Manuel Schulz a DACH based PreSales leader about what he thinks is needed to hire SE's successfully there. Learn about: - What makes for a great SE - How to hire effectively in DACH - The particularities of DACH SE's - Logical vs creative selling - How working culture is changing in DACH from more traditional to modern. - Should you hire just for your DACH HQ or spread across the region? - How to attract candidates

What would the ideal hiring process look like for PreSales?This is gold from Ramzi Marjaba.

“I can’t stand it when people try to sell me a product, I don't like being manipulated.”“It’s sales without being annoying”Such a nice take here from Rew Dickinson on his vision of what PreSales and leadership should be.

There’s a lot of talk currently about SE/SC skills and competencies matrixes, another example of PreSales professionalising further.Transforming the idea of a skills matrix into an adopted reality is the true challenge, Sandra Palm led an internal team that did this and took the time to talk us through the experience step by step.

For most people, it’s a pleasure to work in an industry as international as software.Evaluating a candidate’s soft skills is hard enough as it is, more so when as a hiring manager you need to allow for subtle cultural differences, some of which you may not even be aware of. Gigi Carlino runs an international team, so it was great to have his take on how he goes about allowing for language and cultural differences when interviewing.

I’m surprised agility is not talked about more as a core capability in PreSales.I think Chris Taplin is spot-on here, agility matters and is applicable to everybody in PreSales.This highlight was taken from a wide-ranging conversation with Chris, amongst other things he walked us through the PreSales competency model he has developed over his impressive career.

Intuition.. does it help or hinder when hiring?The benefits and pitfalls of using intuition for hiring decisions, as well as thoughts around how to mitigate some of the risks of ‘going with your gut’ has been a reoccurring theme in the conversations we’ve been having with PreSales hiring managers. Here the brilliant Sveta Kostinsky provides her view.

Treat the recruitment process as a sales cycle and make a lasting impression through storytelling.Rock solid advice from Kerry Sokalsky for anyone interviewing for a PreSales role.During the full conversation, Kerry shared his view on the essential qualities for successful demos, different compensation models for PreSales jobs, and the most and least trainable PreSales skills. Big thanks for the time Kerry!

We enjoyed an enlightening conversation with Simon Gillis, discussing a range of topics around hiring, including the importance of diversity and proactively looking to bring in individuals who bring new perspectives to a team, as a cultural add.Thanks so much for the time Simon!

What abilities make up a top-performing PreSales professional and how can you assess these in the hiring process? We asked Chris Jones and this is what he had to say.

Matthieu Rider is a seasoned PreSales leader with a lot of hiring experience.Matt took the time to discuss in depth his beliefs around hiring. Some highlights for us were:- Have an 'always hiring' approach, identifying future hires and nurturing these relationships for the right time.- Look beyond the obvious, there are excellent potential hires outside of traditional SE candidate pools. Take time to build a diverse candidate pool.- Culture fit is really important to interview for- Trust your gut, but listen to others to validate- Have a structured consistent hiring processThanks for the time Matt!

Is personality diversity on a PreSales team important?If it is important, how do we go about ensuring it is factored into the hiring process?We enjoyed a very insightful conversation with Adolfo Lozano Torralvo, discussing this and other topics related to his PreSales hiring philosophy. Thanks Adolfo!

Hiring from industry can lead to a PreSales team's best hires. They understand an industry’s drivers intimately and can operate at a peer level with customers, leading to more trust, customer centricity and better solutioning. They also bring any PreSales team a new perspective, having been in the customers' shoes.That said, it’s hard to identify those who can successfully make the shift into a PreSales role and for them to 'see it'; after all, it requires an open mind and a big leap of faith for any individual - successful and well-considered where they are - to make what feels like a significant and unplanned career shift.David Schultz runs a global PreSales team and has been able to hire a whopping 50% of SC’s from industry. How have they done it?! During a fantastic conversation, we asked him about this, as well as discussing hiring through fast growth, whilst building a culture to be proud of. Big thanks Dave!

What do accountants, recruiters, country singers, painters, proposal writers, psychology professors and TV news anchors (!) have in common?Amin Ibrahim and his team have hired them all as Solution Consultants!We’ve now surveyed 65 PreSales hiring managers and the data is clear, the following is a breakdown of factors considered when hiring and the % of hiring managers that rate these at 8/10 important or more:Drive and motivation: 97%Soft skills: 88%Cultural fit: 86%Hard skills….. a meager 17% (even less if you strip away highly technical PreSales roles)Demand for PreSales professionals has always (considerably) outstripped supply of ready-made professionals. If underlying soft skills, motivation and cultural fit are what make the difference when hiring, it would follow that designing a hiring process capable of reliably and accurately assessing the softer side of a candidate’s profile can be a real unlock in getting roles filled faster with ‘made-for-PreSales-gems’ from outside the industry included in the interview pool.In our conversations we’ve heard many references to recent graduates of the PreSales Academy coming from teaching, A-player hires from customers / industry, musicians, actors and other performers.. very encouraging to see. The trick is to take the time to think through what underlying attributes make for a high-performing, intrinsically motivated presales professional and how to confidently assess them.

The interview process is akin to a sales campaign, including a discovery component.For candidates: Using your discovery skills, to accurately understand the position you’re interviewing for will showcase these PreSales skills, help you at the demo stage and allow you to qualify and understand better the role you are looking for.For hiring managers: Use this as an evaluation point, how well do candidates’ questions uncover the heart of the position? How well do their questions allow them to excel at the demo stage? A really insightful and entertaining conversation we had with Malcolm Murphy , thanks so much for your time Malcolm!

In the midst of layoffs and a tighter hiring market there is currently a unique opportunity for PreSales leaders to develop their network of potential future hires. Especially with individuals who may previously not have been open to a conversation.Matt Walker has extensive experience hiring for fast growth, from our conversation with him it’s clear he has thought deeply about team building, including this take on how to continually build a network for future hiring.

When it comes to hiring, what do four-year-olds constantly remind us?Anyone who has spent time with a 4-year-old will know how good kids are at asking ‘why?’… and for each answer… ‘and why?’! again and again and again, it’s beautiful how hardwired they are to learn. What’s more, each why is asked without preconceived ideas or judgments (AKA biases!)We spoke with Adam Cook, PreSales leader at Tableau, Adam offered sound advice for hiring managers: keep drilling down into a new level of detail. With interviewing depth trumps breadth (and you can always divide question areas between interviewers for more breadth, this happens less than you’d expect).

We’ve now surveyed almost 50 PreSales leaders on hiring, one preliminary result is that 89% of hiring managers rate cultural fit as 8/10 important or above when hiring, that's a high percentage! – It’s rated even more essential than soft skills and a lot more than hard skills where only 21% of managers give an 8/10 importance or above.We’ve also noticed – anecdotally,  from the conversations we’ve had - that managers who talk a lot about cultural fit also seem to have enjoyed strong team retention over the recent years of peak ‘war for talent’. Cultural fit for these managers seems to mean commonality in core values (rather than personality type or background) and also combines with a conscious desire from the manager for harmony and good vibes on the team.Max Borgmann has a high-performing SC team which has seen very little turnover in recent years, in our conversation he said 75% of what he looks for is cultural fit.

Adaptability is the characteristic Bruce Walcroft values most when interviewing for his PreSales team. Here he expands on why adaptability is so important to him and what else he rates.

67% of the 50+ PreSales managers we’ve surveyed report their reliance on intuition at 8/10 or above.. with the 1-to-1 interview with the hiring manager the highest-rated component of the process. At the same time, 47% believe that unconscious bias exists across the interviewing team at a 4/5 rating or above.. So, how can we balance harnessing intuition from all interviewers in a hiring team and reduce the impact of bias? Should a hiring manager give more weight to differing members of the hiring panel? We asked Woodrow Evans, after 100+ SE hires he provided some fantastic nuggets of wisdom around this and other aspects of hiring.

We asked Rebecca Applewhite, Solutions Consulting Director at Remote, what she has seen lead to high performance in PreSales. We also discussed how she evaluates these characteristics in the interview process. Below is a snippet from the conversation.Rebecca is a joy to speak with and incredibly sharp, if you’re an SC in the Global Mobility or broader HR space I’d highly recommend having Remote on your radar, I’m sure her team would be a very rewarding and fun place to work.

How does the movement to a Buyer Enablement approach change how you hire in PreSales? We asked the ever-insightful, PreSales Guru Don Carmichael.. and this is what he said!

As a PreSales leader, would you like to know how 103 of your peers go about the critical task of hiring?As an individual contributor, are you curious to learn what PreSales managers are really looking for when you interview? We asked 103 PreSales leaders from across the globe 54 questions about their hiring strategies, with some surprising results to questions like:- Which abilities are most sought after in PreSales candidates?- Have hiring managers even been trained to interview?- How important is intuition when hiring?- Which wins, skills or potential? And the results are in! Read the full report here: https://bit.ly/3pnCJ0p To launch the report, we spoke with seasoned PreSales hiring managers, Greg Holmes and Malcolm Murphy, the conversation was full of practical advice and pearls of wisdom for anybody who wants to interview and hire better.