Future of PreSales Podcast with Don Carmichael

In this episode, my very good friend, Mark Green, Director of Presales and Buyer Enablement at Consensus, joins us to discuss how exactly PreSales fits into the world of Buyer Enablement. We discuss: 1. In the world of Buyer Enablement, the Future of PreSales is much broader than just working on mid-funnel sales deals. 2. How PreSales Leaders need to rethink how they're measured and avoid just focussing on AE:SE ratio discussions 3. How creating content, especially video content, to support the sales cycle also creates content to support Marketing, Business Development and Customer Success. 4. How PreSales teams can measure themselves in the future: maybe reduction in cost per Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and contribution to Net Recurring Revenue (NRR) Mark is on LinkedIn at... https://www.linkedin.com/in/marktechnology/ In the podcast, Mark mentions the PreSales glossary he's written. You can find it here... https://goconsensus.com/presales-glossary/ Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

Art Fromm, President and Founder of Team Sales Development Inc, discusses the trust between Sales and PreSales, the problem with the classic sales process, and the importance of customer success.

Andy Ryan, Director of Solutions at CalypsoAI, discusses the challenges of supporting both new business sales and renewals/expansion. He explores the shift from customer success to customer experience and the role of pre-sales engineers in the SaaS industry. The podcast also covers the importance of renaming and rebranding for a mindset shift and structuring and managing a solutions team.

In this episode, we're joined by Greg Posner, Director of Solution Engineering at Helpshift, part of Keywords Studios. Greg has been in Sales Engineering for about 12 years in different verticals but now specialises in gaming. You might find it surprising, but video gaming is way bigger than the combined global movie and music business. It's estimated that gaming will be worth £242 billion by the end of 2023. It's projected to grow at least 13% until 2030, with 3.22 Billion gamers globally. To pick a specific example, Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time, made $2.8 Billion, but Grand Theft Auto 5 made $6 Billion. In this episode, we cover:  How big the gaming industry is Where we are with gaming and virtual universes Should Tech companies try to meet Buyers inside games How gaming is embracing AI and why you should too Here's Greg's LinkedIn profile, where you can also get in contact with Greg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregposner/ Greg's podcast is 'Player: Engage' at https://playerengage.com/ and wherever you usually get your podcasts. Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

Laura Pick, EMEA Solutions Consulting Manager at Siteimprove, discusses the PreSales move to Value Realisation, Doing Customer Playbacks, how smaller Tech Vendors are more aligned to revenue, and the importance of knowing your Superpower relates to Diversity.

What's the relationship between PreSales and Customer Success? Is Customer Success a good career destination for PreSales and vice-versa? Let's chat with someone who definitely knows. Our guest for this episode is Aoife O'Brien, previously Head of Customer Success, EMEA at Delphix and now Strategic Account Director at Sama. I first met Aoife at SAP where she was a PreSales Manager. It's really worth listening to Aoife's views, advice and hard-won experiences on where Customer Success is, where it's going, how it's measured, how to create success and where it can all go badly wrong. Here's Aoife's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifeobrien/ I promised Aoife I'd also include a link to Nick Mehta (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmehta/). Aoife recommends that you follow Nick if you're even just slightly interested in Customer Success. Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

Lights, Camera, ACTION: Like it or not, everyone in PreSales is going to have to get comfortable creating videos. B2B Buyers are bringing consumer behaviours into the business world and are starting to expect video over live demos and presentations; they want the flexibility of watching when they want and sharing internally. As PreSales, we need to take our practised communication and presentation skills and scale them through video. Some of us have already mastered this new skill but some of us are reluctant at best or even in denial. Our guest for this episode is Aaron J Jacobs, CEO of OMH Creative and Storied Coaching. Aaron comes from the Movie business and took his skills into the world of Enterprise Tech. I've known and admired Aaron's work for quite a few years. We discuss getting started with video, cameras, microphones, lighting, backdrops, video editing tools and video platforms and realised we'd hardly got started.  Check out https://storiedcoaching.com/free/ where Aaron is offering for free: an 8-minute Camera Engagement Video, a PDF guide with recommended camera, lighting and microphone choices and a free 1:1 coaching session Aaron can also be found and messaged on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronjj/ Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

AI and specifically ChatGPT are super hot topics at the moment. It feels like all the Tech giants including Meta, Google, and Microsoft are in an arms race to incorporate Large Language Model (LLM) AI into everything. ChatGPT now looks like it's going to have a major impact on the PreSales role so it's time we chatted with an expert. Host of the 'Future of PreSales' podcast, Don Carmichael, chats with Patrick Pissang, CEO, Founder and Lead SE Trainer at Sales Hero GmbH. Patrick is a Sales Engineering Coach and the author of many books including, famously, 'The Social Sales Engineer'. Patrick has been investigating how ChatGPT can transform Qualification, Discovery and Objection Handling and even whether it can improve our Demos. Patrick also believes we'll see the rise of a new PreSales role, the 'Prompt Engineer'. Patrick's article on how AI can train you to be better at Questioning and Discovery is here Patrick's PreSales ChatGPT guide, discussed in the podcast, 'The Sales Engineer's ChatGPT Companion' is here. Patrick can be found and messaged on LinkedIn at... https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickpissang/ Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

On the Future of PreSales podcast series, we love talking about and exploring Competency models so it was brilliant to chat with Doug Baxter, the Founder of Consultant.Academy who's an expert in this field. The first thing we had to talk about is what exactly is a 'Consultant'. In the PreSales world, we liberally add 'Consultant' to many of the collections of job titles that sit under the PreSales umbrella (such as Solution Consultant), sometimes without thinking too much about what it means. In this episode, Doug covers a lot of ground, it's really worth a listen; I loved that he's convinced that we need to redefine Technical Consultant roles as 'Agents of Change'. Doug mentions his 'IT Consultant Competency Model', broken down into technical and practical, behavioural and interpersonal, and business and commercial skills. You can find the model here and the assessment that Doug is working on here. Doug can be found on LinkedIn here and his company, Consultant.Academy, is here. Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

My guest on this episode, Chris Taplin, is a legend in the PreSales world; here's had PreSales leadership roles at SAP, Oracle, Adobe and Snow Software and in between helped build a Tech Unicorn. I've known Chris for at least 20 years; we first met at SAP and have been friends ever since. Chris is now using his vast experience to offer PreSales Leadership Consulting through his company Taplin Consulting.  In this episode, we're talking about PreSales Competency. 'Competency' can be a challenging word but as a PreSales Leader, it's something you'll need to face to build a common language to define skill maturity and seniority in growing organisations. Chris has huge experience building competency models and knows all about using them to define Junior to Senior roles, Specialist and Generalist roles and how they can be used to define the differences between 'Digital' PreSales roles (in PLG/PLS business models, say,) and Enterprise facing roles, In one sense, PreSales is quite an immature profession. Many other professions, like accountancy, have standardised and nationally recognised qualifications, seniority and competency models. Join us to listen in on Chris's hard-won advice and experience.  Chris can be found on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciataplin/ And his company, Taplin Consulting is here https://www.linkedin.com/company/taplin-consulting-ltd/ Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.