The Art of Pre-Sales

The Art of Pre-Sales

On a recent customer call being led by a vendor account manager and engineer I witnessed some key mistakes by
the engineer as he presented the technology to the customer.
None of the mistakes were glaring or show stopping but they definitely kept the conversation from having the value
that was potentially there. That conversation got me thinking about the skills and principles that need to be applied to
pre-sales engineering and prompted this blog.
Pre-sales engineering in all of its many forms is truly an art.
There is definitely a science and methodology behind its success but practicing a method or studying the science
alone won’t get you far past good. To be great you need to invest effort into the technology, the business, and most
importantly your personal style. If you’re already good at pre-sales and don’t care to be great then the rest of this
blog won’t help you.
If you’re an ‘end-user’ or customer that deals with pre-sales engineers this blog may help you understand a little of
what goes through the heads of the guys on the other side of the conference table.
If your job is post-sales, implementations, managed-services, etc, this may give you an idea of what your
counterparts are doing. If you’re a pre-sales engineer who could use some new ideas or tools, this blog's for you.
Joe’s 5 rules of Pre-Sales Engineering:
 You are a member of the sales team
 You are not a salesperson
 You must be Business Relevant
 You must be Technically Knowledgeable
 Know your audience
These are simple rules of thumb that I use to get into the right mindset when engaging with customers in a pre-sales
fashion. They aren’t set in stone, all encompassing or agreed upon by teams of experts. They're just tools I use.
Let’s start with a quick look into each rule:
 You are a member of the sales team:
This one is key to remember because for a lot of very technical people that move into pre-sales roles this is tough to
grasp.
There is not always love, drum circles, group hugs and special brownies between sales and engineering and some
engineers tend to resent sales people for various reasons (and vice versa.) Whether or not there is resentment it’s
natural to be proud of your technical skill set and thinking of yourself in a sales perspective may not be something
you're comfortable with.
Get over it or get out of pre-sales.
As a pre-sales engineer it’s your job to act as a member of the sales team assisting account managers in the sale of
the products and services your company provides. You are there to drive the sales that provide the blanket of
revenue the rest of the company rises and sleeps under (if you missed that reference watch the video, it’s worth
it: http://bit.ly/dqTzU7.)
You are not a salesman:
Now that you’ve swallowed the fact that you’re a member of the sales team it’s time to enforce the fact that you are
not an account manager/sales representative etc.
This is vitally important, in fact if you can apply only the first two rules you’ll be significantly better than some of your
peers. I’m going to use the term AM (Account Manager) for sales from here on out, allow this to encompass any non
technical sales title that fits your role. An AM and a pre-sales SE are completely different roles with a common goal.
An AM is tightly tied to a target sales number and most likely spends hours on con calls talking about that number
and why they are or aren’t at that number. An AM's core job is to maintain customer relationships and sell what the
company sells.
A pre-sales engineers job on the other hand is a totally different beast. While you do need to support your AM it’s
your job to make sure that the product, service or solution you sell is relevant, effective, right-fit, and complete for
the particular customer.
In the reseller world we talk about becoming a ‘Trusted Advisor’ but that ‘Trusted Advisor’ is typically a two person
team consisting of an AM and Engineer who know the customer well, understand their environment, and maintain a
mutually beneficial relationship.
As the engineer side of that perfect team it’s your job to have the IDEA:
 Identify
 Design
 Evangelize
 Adjust
Note: Before continuing I have to apologize for the fact that I just created one of those word acronym BS objects…
So what’s the bright IDEA? A pre-sales engineer you need to identify customer requirements, design a product set
or solution to meet those requirements, evangelize the proposed solution, and adjust the solution as necessary for
the customer.
You must be business relevant
This is typically another tough thing to do from an engineering standpoint.
Understanding business requirements and applying the technology to those requirements does not come naturally for
most engineers but it is vital to success. Great technology alone has no value, the data center landscape is littered
with stories of great technology companies that failed because they couldn’t capitalize by making the technology
business relevant. The same lesson applies to pre-sales engineering.
To be a great pre-sales engineer you have to understand both business and technology enough to map the technical
benefits to actual business requirements. So what if your widget is faster than all other widgets before it, what does
that mean to my business, and my job? A great way to begin to understand the high level business requirements and
what the executives of the companies you sell into are thinking is to incorporate business books and magazines in to
your reading. Next time you’re at the airport magazine rack looking at the latest trade rag grab a copy of ‘The
Harvard business Review’ instead.
You must be technically knowledgeable:
This part should go without saying but unfortunately is not always adhered to.
It’s way too often I see engineers reading from the slides they present because they don’t know the products
or material they are presenting.
Maintaining an appropriate level of technical knowledge becomes harder and harder as more products are thrown at
you, but you must do it anyway. If you can’t speak to the product or solutions features and benefits without slides or
data sheets you shouldn’t be speaking.
Staying up-to-date is a daunting task but there is a plethora of resources out there for it. Blogs and twitter can be
used as a constant stream of the latest and greatest technical information. Add to that formal training and vendor
documentation and the tools to be technically relevant are there. The best advice I can offer on staying technically
knowledgeable is not being afraid to ask and or say you don’t know. If you need training ask for it, if you need info
find someone who knows it and talk to them. As importantly, work to share your expertise with others as it creates a
collaborative environment that benefits everyone.
Know your audience:
This may be the most important of the five rules and boils down to doing your homework and being applicable.
Ensure you’ve researched your customer, their requirements, and their environment as much as possible.
Know what their interests and pain points are before walking into a meeting whenever possible.
Knowing your audience also applies during customer meetings. As the customer provides more information it’s
important to tailor the information you provide to that customer's interest on the fly. Any technical conversation
should be a fluid entity ebbing and flowing with the customer's feedback.
Practicing the art:
Like any other art pre-sales must be practiced. You must study the products and services your company sells,
develop your presentation skills, and constantly work on your communication. From my perspective the best way to
build all of these skills at once is white boarding. White boards are the greatest tool in a pre-sales engineer's
arsenal. They provide a clean canvas on which you can paint the picture of a solution and remain fluid in any given
conversation. Unlike slides white board sessions are flexible and can easily stay focused on what the customer
wants to hear. I firmly believe that a pre-sales engineer should not discuss any technology they cannot confidently
articulate via the whiteboard. You cannot take this concept far enough, I’ve instructed 5 day data center classes
100% on the white board covering LAN, SAN, storage, servers and networking because it was the right fit for the
audience. The white board is your friend.
If you don’t have a white board in your home get one. Use it to hone your skills, help visualize architecture, and
practice before meetings. Look through the slides you typically present and practice conveying the same messaging
via the white board without cues. As you become comfortable having technical discussions via the white board you’ll
find you can convey a greater level of technical information tailored to the customers needs in a much faster fashion.
White boards also don’t require slides, projectors, or power, they don’t suffer from technical difficulties.
As you white board in front of customers think of painting a picture for them, start with broad strokes outlining the
technology and add detail to areas that the customer shows interest in. Drill down into only the specifics that are
relevant to that customer, this is where knowing your audience is key.

In the diagram, you can see the way the conversation should go with a customer. You begin at the top level big
picture and drill down into only the points that the customer shows an interest in or are applicable to their data center
and job role. Don’t ever feel the need to discuss every feature of a product or solution because they are not all
relevant to every customer. For instance a server admin probably doesn’t care how fast switching occurs but network
and application teams probably do. Maybe your product can help save a ton of cost, great but that’s probably not
very relevant to the administrators who aren’t responsible for budget. Always ensure you’re maintaining relevance to
the audience and the business.
Summary:
Pre-Sales like any other skill set must be honed and practiced. It doesn’t come overnight and as with anything else,
you’re never as good as you can be. Build a style and methodology that work for you and don’t be afraid to change
or modify them as you find areas for improvement. The better you get at the more value your giving your customer,
team, and company.