Future of PreSales Podcast with Don Carmichael

For episode 6, I'm joined by my good friend Rob Dean, Head of PreSales at The Access Group, to talk about how PreSales is now a 'Profession'. We talk about how expansive the PreSales role now is, and what our future job titles might be and Rob talks about our role in the 'Technical Purchase Journey'. Rob has some really important things to say about the consumerisation of B2B Buying behaviours and has an amazing definition of what 'Demo' should actually mean. We finish off with a discussion about Rob's passion for Lego, what sits on top of his WebCam and whether he'll get around to completing his Lego Titanic. Rob also thinks Lego has something important to tell us about demo architectures and 'the build journey'. Rob can be found on LinkedIn here. He's definitely worth a 'Follow'. Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

Storytelling is fundamental to the future of the PreSales role. In this podcast series, we always planned to revisit the topic to get new perspectives from as many PreSales experts as possible.  Host of the 'Future of PreSales' podcast, Don Carmichael, chats with Varik Torsteinsen, PreSales Strategy Leader and a living legend within both SAP and Oracle for being 'Mr. Design Thinking', building SAP's first Experience Centre and all his work at Oracle on value selling, enablement and PreSales strategy. Varik Torsteinsen can be found on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/varikt/ You can also Email Varik at varik.torsteinsen@gmail.com Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

Being able to communicate effectively is a core skill for anyone in PreSales. One of the evolving roles in PreSales is the 'Field CTO' or 'Chief Evangelist'. These people are at the top of our profession and craft and are exceptional communicators and influencers but communication skills need constant development. For much of the globe, the language of business is 'Business English'. That can be a challenge if English is your second language but even native speakers can need help communicating ideas effectively or even just initiating 'small talk' and building rapport. Different cultures and geographies can even have very different ideas about something as simple as how long to pause after asking a question. Host of the 'Future of PreSales' podcast, Don Carmichael, chats with Dan Caffarey, CEO of Learn London. Dan is an expert in Business English and Communication. Dan Caffarey can be found on LinkedIn here and his company, Learn London is at www.learn-london.co.uk/ Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

Storytelling is 60% more memorable than just facts and statistics. Human brains seem to have evolved to favour stories, especially those connected to visuals. Storytelling is also a fundamental skill in PreSales communication and we'll probably visit storytelling multiple times in this podcast series. Host of the 'Future of PreSales' podcast, Don Carmichael, chats with Ben Pearce, Founder, Coach, Speaker and Creator at Elevated You. Ben introduces us to his technical storytelling framework, AOREN... Audience Objective Remembered Energy/Emotion Next Steps Ben can be found on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts and Elevated You is at www.elevatedyou.live/ Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

One of the most time-consuming and critical parts of the PreSales role is the Proof of Concept (PoC), Proof of Value (PoV) or Evaluation stage of the Technology Buying journey. PoCs tend to be needed where the Buyer has a heightened sense of risk in deploying the technology and needs to be convinced that it can truly deliver the value or outcome. The PreSales measure called the 'Technical Win' is a KPI that many Tech companies use to measure the success of PoCs. Host of the 'Future of PreSales' podcast, Don Carmichael, chats with Dave McCulley, Co-Founder and EVP of PreSales at Provarity; to dig into why PoCs happen, why they're so challenging and why a PreSales Tech stack platform is needed to manage them. Dave McCulley can be found on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/david-mcculley and by Email at dmcculley@provarity.com Provarity is at www.provarity.com Make sure you follow and subscribe and watch out for the next episode in the 'Future of PreSales' podcast series.

Hi there, my name is Don Carmichael and I want to welcome you to this new podcast series, the Future of PreSales. If you're in any kind of Technical Sales role I totally recommend you follow and subscribe to the whole podcast series. We're going to be exploring where the PreSales role is going, how its evolving, and what new skills you'll need to build, we'll look at the new PreSales Tech stack and focus on how to make sure you can build a thriving career in a profession that's about to go through incredible change. Interestingly most of this change will not be driven by Sales Leaders, new sales processes, methodologies or even new sales technology; it'll be driven by Buyers, their surprising, or not, behaviours and the complete focus on their needs. For most Technology companies, this is a radical new way of thinking. Most of the new thinking about this is labelled Buyer Enablement and you're going to hear a lot about this in this podcast series. We should just stop and define what we mean by PreSales; I've used the term a lot already. Would you be surprised, for instance, to know that there are over 1 million PreSales professionals just in North America and Europe? Some of you might think that PreSales is a pretty old-fashioned job title and maybe even misleading or inappropriate in a modern Technology sales organisation; and I'd agree with you. PreSales is really now just an umbrella term for a vast number of job titles that are effectively Technical Selling roles and specifically the technical, domain and value expert role. Historically we would be the ones who would be expected to demonstrate how our technology worked and answer functionality questions. These days we're called many things like Sales Engineers, Solution Consultants, Advisors, Architects the list goes on and on. The best way I've found to define the role is as a skill set that's 1 part technical expert, 1 part domain, industry and value expert, 1 part people and communications specialist and, right now, 1 part Buyer enabler. That is a huge range of skills to ask anyone to master and that's going to be another theme of this podcast series. PreSales, as a craft and profession, is one of the most demanding and yet fulfilling roles in Technology Sales. I've been in PreSales for over 35 years and pretty much spanned every single role from Individual Contributor, plying my demonstration trade, to PreSales Manager, PreSales Trainer and then onto regional leadership positions eventually becoming Head of PreSales Development in EMEA for both SAP and Oracle. In 2015, I made the leap to starting my own PreSales training and coaching company called Winning Skills Ltd which we rebranded as Don Carmichael dot com last year. I've been really lucky to have had the opportunity to work with lots of Tech companies like Adobe, Deloitte, Freshworks, SurveyMonkey, SAP, Concur, Sage and many, many more and in this podcast series, I'd like to give you an idea of how all these Tech companies are approaching the evolution of the PreSales role. Along the way, we're going to meet lots of guests who've something really important to say about the future of PreSales and the new skills that will be needed. So come and join me; click follow or subscribe and let's find out together where the most fulfilling job in Tech is going.