Two PreSales in a Pod

The podcast discusses the importance of setting clear goals, aligning objectives with company strategy, and measuring progress. It highlights the challenge of communication and the significance of aligning personal goals with work goals. The hosts encourage seeking advice, breaking down objectives, and express gratitude to the listeners.

Peter Cohan, an expert in discovery, joins the hosts to discuss the importance of effective discovery in the vendor-prospect relationship. They explore different opinions on disco demos and the role of trust in determining when enough discovery has been done. They also talk about the purposeful use of disco demos in highly transactional sales projects and highlight the significance of knowing and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) in pre-sales.

Today we tackle an important and difficult conversation. We were excited to welcome Lidia Vasileva on the show who if you don't know yet where HAVE you been! Lidia shares her journey of growth into Presales from a more technical role, and how having a particularly creative mindset can be a boost to presales in the way problems are approached and solutions are presented. She's a champion of clarity and now even helps others tune their messaging to be more clear in business. Both her roles have been in industries which are traditionally very male-dominated. The industry needs to be better at having the conversation about women in presales and not be scared of saying the wrong thing when trying to get it right. So Adam and Mark get a dive into the conversation supported by Lidia - it's uncomfortable but it has to be, and there's no excuse for not trying to create a better world for everyone, whomever you are in our presales industry. Continue the conversation on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/69409342 and connect with Lidia too! https://www.linkedin.com/in/lidia-vasileva/

Ian Merry, Global Head of Presales for Ideagen, shares his journey and insights on leadership, talent mobility, and readiness. They discuss elevating the role of pre-sales, succession planning, and the importance of growth and scalability in a leadership role.

Bo Borland joins us to discuss presales playbooks, and given his experience orchestrating so many vibrant and effective parts of our world, Mark and Adam are keen to explore just how much the game has changed when it comes to organising strategic plays for your teams. As a long-time leader now turned co-founder (Playbuilt), Bo's coined the phrase 'Teaming is the new selling' and how it adds to already strong selling motions to help all the players deploy different 'plays' for different situations. Plus, listen in to find out about a series of webinars focusing on how to team, how to play and of course, how to win. Taking the initiative to try and make a difference to the world in which we live, and presales people are served better because people like Bo have a spark of passion and follow it to support us all. Come find us on LinkedIn, Bo's page is right here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boborland

This episode Adam Freeman and Don Carmichael welcomes a very special guest, Peter Cohan. We talk about how to identify a Champion within a Buyer, what might be motivating them, and how their previous experience of buying Tech changes their approach. We look at whether it's even a Sales Engineer/PreSales Consultants job to enable a Buyer champion or whether that's just some Sales Execs do. We talk about how the definition of a Champion and where you find them in an organisation has changed in recent years. Focusing on the Enablement topic, we also discuss what a Champion might want from us, what we would want from them and how much we should be anticipating their needs. Join us on LinkedIn to chat more!

There's lots of doom and gloom in tech, but we're feeling completely the opposite as there's so much to look forward to in our profession right now. Don, Adam and Mark chat about why we're so excited to be in Presales, some of the key moments we can see happening across the industry and how to grab these great opportunities with both hands! As presales / sales engineering leaders we're incredibly excited to be in a position to be able to affect such hugely beneficial change for our customers, and for the great people in our world. So dive in and hear one of the most fun episodes we've recorded in a while! Plus - Connect with us on LinkedIn! #presales #salesengineering #excited

In this episode of 2PIAP Adam is joined by Pavey Purewal. Pavey is an experienced executive coach with 20+ years tech B2B marketing experience for both large enterprise companies and high growth startups. Former VP and CMO roles at startups and VMware. Now, Pavey is helping senior marketing and sales leaders succeed. Providing Executive coaching for leaders for sustained personal and professional growth. In this episode we cover; What is coaching? What makes you coachable? Dealing with ego What does it really mean to be a better leader? Where do you "feel" decisions and how to harness this as a superpower. Upgrade your OS! Huge thank you to Pavey for sharing her knowledge with us, an if you'd like to connect, her LinkedIn profile is https://www.linkedin.com/in/paveypurewal/

In a world where more of our buyer's spending is scrutinised more closely than ever, qualification matters. Don, Adam and Mark go back to basics about qualification and discuss why BANT, MEDDIC and others are crucial to today's presales teams but also why pushing back on sales, and constantly questioning the buyer motivation matters more these days than ever before. Find out what it means for us in presales, and out top tips for applying these techniques at your company. We love giving back to the community, so don't forget to come join us on LinkedIn, ask anything you wish, discuss, agree or disagree!

There are millions of books on sales, but very few on what happens when deals go wrong. Daryn's spent years seeing the need rise, so here's written a book to help presales and sales do a systematic analysis on what goes wrong, and how to learn from those rich lessons. Deal Crash Investigation is a fascinating topic that Tom Edwards, Adam Freeman and Mark Green join Daryn Mason to dive into a task that very few actually do, and if they ever want to improve or switch to 'loving every lead' they're gonna have to! Don't forget to come join us on LinkedIn, ask anything you wish, discuss, agree or disagree!