Resources For PreSales
Being in PreSales / Sales Consulting / Sales Engineering means you're going to spend the rest of your career as a 'learning machine'; not just learning the latest technology or product updates but also mastering the vast set of soft, professional and business skills you need to excel. We're constantly learning ourselves, so here's our current recommendations of video courses, books, podcasts, tools and content we'd recommend.
We'd love to know what you would add.
We'd love to know what you would add.
PreSales Books
What should be on the bookshelf of the aspiring (or experienced) Sales Engineer, Solution or PreSales Consultant?
Well here's what we think the basics should be. Click each book to open a sales page (we don't earn any commission). All the books are available from Amazon apart from my two favourite visual communications / sketching books, Neuland's 'Bikablo 2.0' and 'Uzmo: Thinking with your Pen', which are only available direct from Neuland. If you end up at Neuland, make sure you buy a selection of their chisel tip marker pens, you won't regret it.
Well here's what we think the basics should be. Click each book to open a sales page (we don't earn any commission). All the books are available from Amazon apart from my two favourite visual communications / sketching books, Neuland's 'Bikablo 2.0' and 'Uzmo: Thinking with your Pen', which are only available direct from Neuland. If you end up at Neuland, make sure you buy a selection of their chisel tip marker pens, you won't regret it.
Get Started in PreSales (1 hour video course)
If you want to dive into the basics of the PreSales / SE role then I'd totally recommend this one hour beginners LinkedIn Learning course 'Technical Sales: The Role of the Sales Engineer' by the brilliant John Care. You may need to have a LinkedIn Premium account (or find someone who has one) to access this course.
PreSales Podcasts
The 'Two PreSales in a Pod' Podcast series hosted by Adam Freeman (of The Access Group) and our own Don Carmichael gets amazing reviews and recommendations.
In Autumn/Fall 2020, the Podcast produced a Discovery skills 'mini-series' of five 30-minute episodes and in the Spring of 2021 produced a mini-series on 'The Future of PreSales'.
Listen here https://anchor.fm/presalesinapod
In Autumn/Fall 2020, the Podcast produced a Discovery skills 'mini-series' of five 30-minute episodes and in the Spring of 2021 produced a mini-series on 'The Future of PreSales'.
Listen here https://anchor.fm/presalesinapod
Here's a great series of PreSales related podcasts from Ramzi Marjaba at wethesalesengineers.com
In June 2019 I was privileged to be invited by Ramzi onto one of his Podcasts. I had a brilliant time and used the opportunity to talk about the three core skills all PreSales / SEs need, how our role will develop in the future and, the theme of the podcast, how PreSales and Sales view different customer roles and how to handle them in a demonstration or presentation.
In June 2019 I was privileged to be invited by Ramzi onto one of his Podcasts. I had a brilliant time and used the opportunity to talk about the three core skills all PreSales / SEs need, how our role will develop in the future and, the theme of the podcast, how PreSales and Sales view different customer roles and how to handle them in a demonstration or presentation.
PreSales Resources
Here's a series of websites with brilliant resources for PreSales content creation:
- PresentationGO - free PowerPoint template library (Thanks to Rob Brough for the recommendation)
- Unsplash - free high-resolution photographs for use in your presentations (Thanks to Luke Donnelly for the recommendation)
- Flaticon - huge database of free icons (Thanks to Bassem Ktita for the recommendation)
- The Noun Project - over 1 million curated icons: subscription needed (Thanks to Luke Donnelly)
- Showeet - creative and free PowerPoint templates (Thanks to Bassem Ktita)
- Lucidchart - online diagramming tool (like a cloud version of Visio); I use this for mind-mapping, process flows, sales methodology and consulting diagrams.
- FakeNameGenerator - ever struggled to fill out a demo database with realistic names; struggle no longer. Don't get caught with a demo environment full of obviously fake movie star names it damages your credibility.
The Sales Engineering Kingdom Map
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Check out the The Sales Engineering Map by Patrick Pissang at Sales Hero GmbH. This 'Lord of The Rings' style map gets updated every month with the latest PreSales tools.
The focus on our PreSales role has sky-rocketed in the last couple of years. It's really hard to keep up to date with all the new tools and platforms coming onto the market place. Luckily my friend Patrick is pulling everything together and keeping it updated on a single map. What demo building tools are out there? What Tech focussed RFP tools should I shortlist? Look no further, click on the map. |
PreSales Tools
Logitech Spotlight - Presentation Remote (clicker)
This is totally my favourite presentation gadget of all time. Check out the Logitech Spotlight remote (images below). It acts like a normal presentation clicker (next slide, back one slide) but then it's like a Harry Potter wand; you can be standing and moving and then wave it at the screen to highlight part of your User Interface (UI) and then zoom in to highlight specific fields and icons.
SO WHAT: These days most enterprise focused user interfaces are very busy. UI designers try very hard to create the illusion of space on the screen but they can't help adding as many widgets, icons, dashboards and fields as will fit into the HD screen 'real estate'. For us in PreSales, this is a huge problem. The first time prospects see our UI there's an initial period of UI 'shock'; they stop listening to you and their eyes rapidly scan the screen trying to understand the visuals. We need to anticipate this reaction, to stop, slow down and very carefully guide the prospect around how the screen is constructed and where they should be looking. Finding a way to spotlight certain parts of the UI and 'dim' others is the only way of managing this hence the value in having a 'highlighting' tool.
The third dynamite feature of the Spotlight (as well as being able to highlight and zoom) is the ability to hold down the next slide button and blank the whole screen. You might say 'so what' (again); in PowerPoint you just need to press the 'B' key for a blank black slide or the 'W' key for a blank white slide. Well the difference here is that there is a tiny piece of Logitech software running on your laptop (Windows or Mac) and it means you can 'black slide' absolutely anywhere, even in your software or App (even in Salesforce). No need to navigate back to PowerPoint or Keynote.
'Black sliding' is absolutely best practice for handling questions and objections in a demonstration or presentation; it shows respect and focus. If you try handling an objection while you still have your UI or a busy slide on screen, everyone in the room (live or virtual) who isn't interested in the question will just keep scanning the screen and probably thinking 'I wonder what that button does', 'how big is that field' etc.
As an aside, because it doesn't have a laser pointer to highlight parts of the screen (which doesn't work on large format monitors anyway) you're legal to travel to countries where laser pointers are banned like the UAE.
If you've got a favourite tool you'd recommend, get in touch. We always give credit for recommendations.
This is totally my favourite presentation gadget of all time. Check out the Logitech Spotlight remote (images below). It acts like a normal presentation clicker (next slide, back one slide) but then it's like a Harry Potter wand; you can be standing and moving and then wave it at the screen to highlight part of your User Interface (UI) and then zoom in to highlight specific fields and icons.
SO WHAT: These days most enterprise focused user interfaces are very busy. UI designers try very hard to create the illusion of space on the screen but they can't help adding as many widgets, icons, dashboards and fields as will fit into the HD screen 'real estate'. For us in PreSales, this is a huge problem. The first time prospects see our UI there's an initial period of UI 'shock'; they stop listening to you and their eyes rapidly scan the screen trying to understand the visuals. We need to anticipate this reaction, to stop, slow down and very carefully guide the prospect around how the screen is constructed and where they should be looking. Finding a way to spotlight certain parts of the UI and 'dim' others is the only way of managing this hence the value in having a 'highlighting' tool.
The third dynamite feature of the Spotlight (as well as being able to highlight and zoom) is the ability to hold down the next slide button and blank the whole screen. You might say 'so what' (again); in PowerPoint you just need to press the 'B' key for a blank black slide or the 'W' key for a blank white slide. Well the difference here is that there is a tiny piece of Logitech software running on your laptop (Windows or Mac) and it means you can 'black slide' absolutely anywhere, even in your software or App (even in Salesforce). No need to navigate back to PowerPoint or Keynote.
'Black sliding' is absolutely best practice for handling questions and objections in a demonstration or presentation; it shows respect and focus. If you try handling an objection while you still have your UI or a busy slide on screen, everyone in the room (live or virtual) who isn't interested in the question will just keep scanning the screen and probably thinking 'I wonder what that button does', 'how big is that field' etc.
As an aside, because it doesn't have a laser pointer to highlight parts of the screen (which doesn't work on large format monitors anyway) you're legal to travel to countries where laser pointers are banned like the UAE.
If you've got a favourite tool you'd recommend, get in touch. We always give credit for recommendations.
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