Presales Podcast by Presales Collective

Maria Lat, an experienced Solutions Consultant, shares insights on gaining visibility and broadening impact in the pre-sales role. She discusses the importance of continuous learning, the value of transitioning from customer success to pre-sales, staying curious, building cross-functional relationships, and living a fulfilling life outside of work.

This six-part series is designed to help Solutions Consultants of all experience levels perfect their craft and be the best in their field. Through interviews and case studies with experienced professionals, we’ll unpack real-life stories and get actionable insights into what you can do right now to become a world-class SC. Tune in and discover strategies for: Continuous learning and improvement Taking ownership of the customer experience Developing and maintaining relationships with stakeholders And much more! This ‘Becoming a World Class Solutions Professional’ framework was developed by Yuji Higashi as part of the PreSales Foundations program.   Episode 138: Building Meaningful Relationships (Part 2 of 6) w/ Brandi Anderson.   Host: Mattie Stremic, Head of Academy, PreSales Academy

This six-part series is designed to help Solutions Consultants of all experience levels perfect their craft and be the best in their field. Through interviews and case studies with experienced professionals, we’ll unpack real-life stories and get actionable insights into what you can do right now to become a world-class SC. Tune in and discover strategies for: Continuous learning and improvement Taking ownership of the customer experience Developing and maintaining relationships with stakeholders And much more! This ‘Becoming a World Class Solutions Professional’ framework was developed by Yuji Higashi as part of the PreSales Foundations program.   Episode 137: Becoming a World-Class SC: Pursuing Excellence (Part 1 of 6) w/ Munir Hussein.   Host: Mattie Stremic, Head of Academy, PreSales Academy

This week on the PreSales Podcast, James spends a few minutes recapping 2022 and discussing PreSales Collective's strategy for 2023! Don't worry, the PSC Podcast isn't going anywhere, but it is changing to bi-weekly and has some exciting format changes! The data tells us that people listen to every single episode every week so please use this chance to catch up on the episodes you've missed.

On the PreSales Podcast, James Kaikis and Dini Mehta connect on "CROs Perspective: Unlocking the Solutions Consultant." Dini, Former Chief Revenue Officer at Lattice and Part Time Operator at Operator Collective, discusses how and why she believes Solutions Consulting is a strategic component of the Go-To-Market organization. Dini shares her strategy to scale Solutions and use the role as a conduit to other parts of the organization.

In 2021, the PreSales Collective released a State of Diversity report for the entire PreSales community. This report, with research supported by the Sales Talent Agency, benchmarked diversity metrics in our industry so that we could more fully understand the gender and ethnic makeup of the profession. We committed to putting out a report every year so that we could use the data over time to track trends and most importantly, focus on engagement with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts field-wide. So, where is this year’s report? Join Cindy Goodwin-Sak, VP of Global Sales Engineering at Anomoli and Shawna James, Sr. Manager of Community at PreSales Collective, to discuss their plans to work on a much larger, more comprehensive survey with PhD researchers and PreSales executives who are focused on the qualified advancement of DE&I programs and initiatives across our industry. Want to be a part of a history making report? Fill out the State of Diversity survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/G6WTZ65 All answers are completely anonymous and data is held privately. This report will help us play our part and we are grateful for your participation.

On the PreSales Podcast, Mattie and Emmanuel Fadajutimi connect on "Lessons From My First Year in PreSales" Emmanuel, Solutions Engineer at Hubspot, talks about the realities of what’s like to be an early-career SC, lessons he’s learned over the past year, and what it means to have a learner mindset regardless of where you are in your career.

On the PreSales Podcast, Mattie Stremic connects with Allison Macalik and Gizelle Panton to discuss why “Mentorship Matters." Allison Macalik, Lead Solutions Engineer and Team Lead at Salesforce, and Gizelle Panton, Solutions Engineer at LinkedIn, share about their mentorship relationship, how to successfully mentor, and the importance of mentorship in career development. Gizelle and Allison were paired when Gizelle enrolled in the PreSales Foundations enablement course and have stayed connected ever since.  Learn more about how to approach mentorship and why it makes all the difference in your personal and professional growth. 

Jeff Stewart, Field CTO at SolarWinds, discusses PreSales Metrics that highlight team and individual performance, sales, productivity, and business impact. They delve into the future of measuring solutions data, emphasizing the importance of accurate data in assessing performance. The conversation explores security incident responses, optimizing pre-sales activities for success, and evaluating team performance metrics beyond simple ratios.

Meghan Noel, Global Vice President of PreSales at Amplitude, discusses running PreSales like a business. Topics include elevating Solutions teams, viewing pre-sales as revenue drivers, creating a detailed capacity model, and balancing hidden activities in pre-sales roles for operational improvements and impact recognition.