Presales Best Practices: Digging Holes with Spoons when Shovels Exist
Presales Leader: “We don’t need 'presales tools'.”
Me: “You like digging holes with spoons?”
Presales Leader: “Huh?”
Me: “Let me explain.”
Every presales team is using ‘tools’ to do presales.
By definition that makes whatever ‘tools’ you are using… ‘presales tools’.
Most likely, you have cobbled together a few different ‘side tools’:
You use your CRM to get basic info about new sales opportunities.
You use spreadsheets to track which deals have been assigned to your presales team along with their statuses.
You use more spreadsheets to track technical details about each deal.
You use even more spreadsheets to track test cases for each of your POCs and POVs.
You take notes in Word docs, Google docs, OneNote, or other notes tools
You manage tasks using Outlook or some other task management tool.
If that describes your presales tooling today, my question is... do you like digging holes with spoons?
Suppose you need dig big holes to plants trees (aka, you need to get technical wins and close deals).
Someone offers you a shovel to dig those holes (aka, a purpose-built presales tool).
You say “No thanks, we don’t need special hole-digging tools. We already can dig holes. We use these five different spoons that we had lying around.”
Umm… ok. Technically spoons can scoop dirt and can help you dig holes.
But why would you use spoons when shovels exist?
Sadly, this is where the majority of presales teams are today: Using spoons to dig holes when shovels were just invented.
The reality is that purpose-built presales tools like Homerun have only existed for the last few years, and so there is a natural ‘awareness problem’.
Fortunately that is changing rapidly, and more and more presales leaders are starting to explore these new ‘shovels’.
There also is a natural ‘hesitancy problem’, because presales teams have been using spoons for years to dig their holes. Spoons are familiar, even though you know they suck at digging holes.
As a presales leader, you wouldn’t dare trying to justify to your CEO why you have your team digging holes with spoons now that shovels exist. You would be laughed out of his/her/their office (or worse!).
And as a presales engineer, you definitely do not want to be using a spoon to dig holes when you now know shovels exist. You would be hating life and probably looking for a job at a competitor who uses shovels!
Presales has entered the age of the shovel.
Shovels exist and are superior at digging holes than spoons.
Purpose-built presales tools exist and are superior at enabling presales than generic side-tools.
Need help transitioning from spoons to a shovel? Talk to one of our presales experts about about how Homerun can help. Click here to get started!
