PreSales Takeover Podcast Audrey Jaspart, Luke Donnelly, Lorna Dowd and Sarah Finlay

In this episode, the team examines some of the challenges, considerations and approaches to working across different cultures in the EMEA region as a pre-sales. The team is joined by a special guest, Sebastian Moeferdt, who as a pre-sales, speaks fluent English, German and Spanish and works across multiple markets and cultures. The discussion covers topics like how easy it is to keep to a planned meeting agenda with different types of audience, per country or region, local languages in demos, languages of product interfaces, different ways to greet people across cultures, , US English versus UK English, personality types versus cultural generalisations, expectations of discounting and more. 

It's debate time. In this episode, the team splits in a debate over whether Pre-Sales Consultants should be involved in commercial discussions, or should that be left solely to salespeople? Listen now, to hear the arguments for and against, and see if your mind can be changed! 

Cameras on or cameras off? Who is "Vacationing Vicky"? How is Rainman relevant? How to avoid distracting --or very embarrassing-- notifications when sharing your desktop? The era of remote demo's presents a host of new considerations for pre-sales and sales people alike. In this, our 4th episode, the team takes a look at what to do and what not to do when demonstrating software to customers. How can we leverage the best practices of Hollywood movie trailers?  Listen now to find out!

In this episode, the team discusses pre-sales collaborating with sales people - what are the best ways of working together? When does a sales rep typically bring a pre-sales consultant into a deal? What's the right balance, and who should be doing what? How have SaaS and cloud changed the profile of a typical account executive, and how has this influenced the working relationship between sales and pre-sales?  Is it true that the more experienced a sales rep is, the more they rely on pre-sales to be a trusted advisor? Does the sales exec's age or business background influence the way they work with pre-sales? We pre-sales live in admiration of the resilience of our sales colleagues. Is all we want a 'thank you' and a pat on the back? Tune in to find out more!

In this episode , the team considers the mix of attributes that distinguish a great pre-sales consultant, including curiosity, openness to learning, sales skills, tech skills, empathy (that word again!) and tenaciousness. We play with a few more analogies, including that of skin care. 

In our first episode, we take a look at what is a Sales Engineer, or a Solution Consultant (SC).  The four of us, Audrey, Luke, Sarah and Lorna are SCs working in various companies in the tech industry. We discuss what is an SC, and how do we explain what we do to friends and family. Are we a master of all trades? Are we all technical? Or storytellers? Or both?  How important is empathy and how does it make the role more labour-intensive? Listen now to find out how being a PreSales is like being one part real-estate agent, one part teacher...