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Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show

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Categories
This podcast has
72 episodes
Language
English
Explicit
No
Date created
2026/04/06
Latest episode
2026/10/05
Average duration
7 min.
Release period
3 days

Description

Two voices. Two perspectives. One goal: making you a better PreSales leader. Leading PreSales is a weekly podcast where Nate Hargrove and Ava Vasquez break down the real challenges of solution engineering leadership — in five minutes or less. Nate brings 12 years of SE leadership experience from enterprise SaaS. He's the pragmatist who's seen it all, led through reorgs and acquisitions, and knows what actually works at scale. Ava brings the builder's perspective — five years of leadership in high-growth Scale-Ups, where she built an SE team from zero to twelve and went from Series B to IPO. She challenges conventional thinking with modern frameworks and a coaching-first mindset. Each episode: one topic, one honest conversation, one practical move you can use the same week. Topics include 1:1 coaching, discovery skills, demo strategy, pipeline management, hiring, retention, and everything else that keeps SE leaders up at night. ⚠️ Full transparency: The voices and characters in this podcast are fictional. The content, frameworks, and experiences are based on real-life SE leadership — informed by years of working with 350+ Solution Engineers across companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zscaler, and more. The conversations are scripted by humans, performed by AI. Produced by SE Rockstars (PreSales Unleashed GmbH) — the team behind the Trusted Advisor Academy, founded by Tim Brömme & Jan-Erik Jank. More at https://serockstars.com

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Check latest episodes from Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show podcast

Hire the Second Version, Not the First [72]
2026/10/05
Nate rebuilt his interview loop so candidates present a case study twice — once as a coached dry run, once for the panel — and the score is the difference between the two. Ava pushes back on the risk of rewarding mimicry, and they land on a two-question scorecard.
Retire The Technical Win Trophy [71]
2026/10/02
Ava noticed her team throwing a party at the technical win and going quiet for the six weeks that actually decide the deal. She and Nate argue about whether the metric should stay, and land on what presales owes the deal after the POC is signed off.
Never Lie, Never Answer Reflexively [70]
2026/09/30
Ava noticed her SEs improvising under closing pressure — over-explaining, over-promising, or freezing. She and Nate work out the norm that fixes it: never lie, but never answer an unqualified question reflexively either.
Stop Begging For Headcount [69]
2026/09/28
Ava asked her CRO for three more SEs and got one question back: prove the twelve you have are on the right deals. She rebuilt the ask as a capacity model — and found one AE eating 38% of her team's hours.
When the ICP Moves, PreSales Pays the Bill [68]
2026/09/25
A one-line strategy slide can redirect an entire go-to-market motion, but the retraining, domain language and demo assets all land on the SE leader. Nate argues for naming a second ICP as insurance long before anyone asks for it, and Ava pressure-tests whether a twelve-person team can afford that hedge.
Your CRO No Longer Wants a PreSales Department [67]
2026/09/23
Nate's CRO used the word "PreSales" once in a forty-minute quarterly review — to ask why the team is still called that. He and Ava dig into why the pre/post split is an artefact of an older business model, and what to propose before someone proposes it for you.
Return on Token: Who Owns the Hours AI Gives Back [66]
2026/09/21
Nate gets handed a fifteen percent AI efficiency target with no definition attached, and watches his regions buy eleven tools instead of creating capacity. He and Ava work out how to name the output of reclaimed hours before a single licence gets signed.
Your AI Policy Is a Competitive Disadvantage [65]
2026/09/18
Ava comes back from a GTM leadership dinner where almost nobody knew the new AI labeling rules — and where one leader used AI as a sparring partner while another had ten agents calling prospects. She and Nate argue about blanket transcription bans, who should own AI for the revenue org, and where corporate brakes actually earn their keep.
ROI on Token: Stop Rewarding AI Usage [64]
2026/09/16
Ava ran an AI session with her twelve SEs and discovered they'd built plenty — but nobody could say what they did with the time they saved. She and Nate dig into why usage metrics feel like progress, and how to make outcomes the thing you actually measure.
Your First 30 Days of AI: The Activation Playbook [63]
2026/09/14
Ava counted nine different AI tools across her twelve SEs — because she never actually decided anything. She and Nate work through the four decisions a PreSales leader can make in the first thirty days: one environment, three data sources, one bootcamp, one recurring forum.
Clash of Titans: Getting Your SE and Sales First-Liners on the Same Side [62]
2026/09/11
First-line PreSales and first-line Sales sit on the same org level but got there for opposite reasons, so the friction is structural, not personal. Nate shares the tandem model and qualification vote that cooled things down across his regions, and Ava stress-tests both until they hold up.
Spot the Super-IC Before the Numbers Do [61]
2026/09/09
Nate shares the behavioural signals that expose a first-line SE manager who's really just a super-IC with a title — visible in how they design their forecast call and how they write email under pressure. Ava pushes on whether that's coachable or structural.
Fifty Leaders, One Borrowed Office [60]
2026/09/07
Nate has paid for enough conferences that were four sponsor pitches and a sad sandwich. Ava walks him through the community's on-site evenings, the 49-euro commitment fee, the new member portal, and the European roadshow that starts in London on 13 October.
The Loneliest Job in the Building [59]
2026/09/04
Ava had a comp question and nobody in her company to ask. She took it to a community of 250 SE leaders and had twenty answers by lunch. Nate has watched a dozen of these groups die and wants to know what's different.
The Seven-Figure Promotion [58]
2026/09/02
Nate breaks down why promoting your strongest SE into a first-line seat with no readiness path is an unbudgeted risk, not a reward. Ava pushes back from a 12-person scale-up where a title is the only retention lever she's got.

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