The 'Chief Solutions Officer': How PreSales influence is shaping business from the inside out
Are you thinking of ways to elevate yourself beyond just demo machines? Are you too focused on new logo sales and ignoring any downstream issues from your customers?
Join peers from a myriad of roles and responsibilities as we explore new ideas and trends in the world of PreSales, Delivery/Professional Services, and Customer Success.
Recently, we released a co-created piece that suggests the Sales Engineer title, and even PreSales as a team name, may not be the right labels for our profession moving forward.
Instead, we suggest renaming around the concept of Solutions. Sales Engineers become Solutions Consultants or Solutions Architects to better communicate their role in helping customers find solutions, not just selling products. The Solutions team would report to a VP of Solutions or Chief Solutions Officer, depending on the size of the company instead of through the CRO hierarchy. The goal is to put Solutions on an even footing with all of the other groups who interact with customers throughout all engagements.
Many organizations are already combining responsibilities from traditional PreSales and adjacent functions, even if they aren’t always adopting new nomenclature.
Join our panelists, Tim Ebbers, Head of Customer Engineering at Era Software, Elena Huchinson, EVP Strategy and Product Marketing at Medallia, and Dierdre Somerkamp, VP, Solutions Consulting, Operations & Enablement at Upland. Our panelists will discuss the idea of consolidating traditional PreSales roles into more holistic roles to better serve customers.
In this one hour session, we'll cover:
- What is the value of consolidating PreSales and other roles into a singular Solutions organization?
- How have others adopted a Solutions organization and what have they found to be its value?
- Moving from a purely new sales-centric or marketing-centric organization to one that delivers true value for customers
- How to align your team and company around long-term success for customers?
- How efficiently do you make decisions that are customer-centric?
Thank you to our sponsors, Avnio and Reprise for supporting this discussion.