Presales Best Practices: Collaborate with your Product Managers
The best presales teams UN-LOSE deals by working with their product team. How? Read on… (Hint: You’re sitting on the presales data they need… time to share it!)
First off, UN-LOSE?
Yep, UN-LOSE.
It means you are going to lose a deal, but you do something to not lose it.
Picture it…
You’re a sales engineer giving demo. 🖥
Your prospect asks if you support feature X.
Your product does not support feature X.
You tell them that, and your prospect starts to cry a little 😢 because they were loving everything until that very moment.
Wiping away a sad little tear, they sigh “That’s unfortunate. Feature X is a must-have for us...”
As a great SE, you immediately tag feature X against this deal in your presales workspace.
You set the severity to Blocker.
Blockers are features without which your prospect cannot or will not buy.
You finish up the demo, hoping they’ll decide they don’t need feature X after all. 🙏
Your prospect ends the call saying, “We’re sorry this won’t work out because of feature X… we really loved everything else!” 😭
But wait a minute...
Your manager sees a Presales Warning Sign light up on her Presales Pipeline dashboard 🚨 because you just logged feature X as a Blocker for this deal.
She wants to learn more and clicks into this deal's presales workspace to see what you know and what’s been done so far. It's all in one place, so she scrolls through and is up to speed in minutes. 👍
She clicks over to her Feature Request summary report, and she sees that feature X is now a Blocker on over $1 million of ARR across 6 different deals! 😱
She pings the head of product and schedules a quick meeting.
She shows him the Feature Request report.
“See here… we have 6 deals worth $1 million in ARR that we are going to lose. That’s the difference between hitting target and blowing it! These are the 6 deals and their deal sizes.”
The product manager leans forward to get a closer look. 🤔
“Feature X is a Future need on 2 other deals worth $300K. We can close them today, but if we do… they’re expecting you to deliver feature X at some point.”
The product manager starts to smirk. 🙂
“And finally, feature X is a Nice-To-Have for 1 deal worth $250K. While we don’t need it to close them, it would really boost our chances of winning them.”
The product manager smiles big, ear to ear. 😄
He says, “Between you and me… I’m usually GUESSING at the market potential when I’m prioritizing features in the roadmap.”
“You’re giving me Deals and Dollars… the real data that I need to justify squeezing feature X into our next release, which is coming out in 4 weeks.”
They exclaim in unison, “Let’s go UN-LOSE those deals!” 🙌
Do you want to UN-LOSE more deals? Talk to one of our presales experts about about how Homerun can help. Click here to get started!
