One day you are implementing an ERP, and the next day you are presenting to a big audience, wait! What??
For many years I specialized in installing and configuring PeopleSoft. In a time when client-server was a thing. And one day they asked me to join another colleague to help in presenting “The Internet and Next” during one of the first important trade shows in Buenos Aires.
Wait! What? It was kind of frightening and weird that some weeks before I was fixing a configuration issue with the wrong character set in a database, and now I have to talk about the future of the Internet (think just on the brink of everything that today we take it for granted, and social media was not part of the dictionary).
I remember that at least the audience didn’t boo us, and some were picked by the topic and followed up with questions after the talk.
After this, they asked me “Have you ever thought about being presales?” It took more time to land the actual job, but one day my title was presales.
At that time, I understood my role as the expert in our technology, and ready to answer questions like “Does your product do this?”, followed with show me.
Fast forward to the present in conversations with colleagues, or presales meet ups and workshops, someone asks the question “How did you start here?”. Most of them follow a similar path:
I was a developer, and one day they asked me to explain our product to a client
The sales person had a *technical* meeting and no one was available, so I went
No one was capable of showing the technical capabilities of our product, so I went…
Or something similar…
I have no data to back up this claim, but I think the majority of *presales* started as developers, consultants, sysops, etc; and by chance or any circumstance started to do client presentations, and a presales was born.
Everything changes and evolves and I think that the role evolved a lot from being just “the product demo guy” or “the guy that answers technical questions” or “does your product do this? How? Show me” to something with more scope, with people coming from other backgrounds, like an Industry SE who usually comes from the line and not a technical background.
It has been a good ride and still is, and the skills needed to do the soft part helped me to improve in many dimensions, like being a much better listener…
I’ve seen people from other backgrounds, like mathematicians, economists and business consultants, acting today as presales or being part of a specialized presales team.
But still, I think that most presales, 80% or closer to 90%, still have and keep a very software engineering heart at their core.
Am I wrong? Maybe! If you want to help a bit to answer these questions fill in this survey!
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