Five Tips to Improve Pre-Sales Success in 2024

Recently, we’ve seen an emerging trend in our research – feedback about the unsung hero in the sales engagement, the Pre-Sales Engineer. Also commonly known as the Sales Engineer or Solutions Consultant, this person plays a crucial role in winning deals. Here are five insights that can help improve your pre-sales in 2024.

Address the customer’s specific need. Product capabilities are important in demos, but so is the overall story. Customers want to know how your solution addresses their business problem – that’s what resonates.

Help prospects see the future. Share what onboarding looks like – who will support them, and what should they expect in the coming weeks and months? What are their resource expectations, and how are you going to set them up for success? Some vendors are introducing a CSM to the prospect during the sales cycle to help close the deal.

Show them you know them. Customer stories and use cases are very powerful. Prospects like to know that you’ve helped others that are similar to them, who might not be in the same industry but have similar use cases or business problems.

Be confident. If the technical person does not confidently respond to questions, this can cause the prospect to feel some uncertainty. Provide coaching to help the solutions engineer answer with confidence (while not overselling). During the call, it can be useful to leverage messaging tools in the background to ask an expert for help. Or, simply say, “Let me get back to you.”

Match your prospects culturally. For international customers, make it easy to book meetings in their own time zone. In general, be attuned to the prospect’s style, whether it’s laid-back or quick-paced, and align your own approach. Help them feel like they are entering a genuine partnership. 

To your best succcess in 2024!