.webp)
The latest episode of Presales Podcast featured an enlightening conversation with Art Fromm, author of "Making Seamless Sales" and a sales enablement expert with over 25 years of experience. Hosted by Jack Cochran and Matthew James, the episode explored one of the most persistent challenges in B2B sales: getting presales and sales teams to work together effectively.
Art is a dynamic speaker and workshop facilitator who equips sales teams to boost revenue, win rates, margins, and client satisfaction. Art delivered a highly impactful session at PSC’s Sol/Con East 2025 event in NYC, and has facilitated many workshops for the Presales Academy.
Listen to the full episode now!
The 37% Opportunity Sitting on the Table
Art opened the conversation with a striking statistic: recent studies by Presales Collective, Salesforce, and others show that when teams work together properly versus teams that don't, there's a 37% difference in sales outcomes. "It's substantial and it's just sitting on the table ready to be done," Art explained, "but nobody can really figure it out."
This gap exists despite the obvious truth that better collaboration should lead to better results. The challenge is systematically implementing good team collaboration rather than leaving it to chance.
The SEAM Framework: More Than Just an Acronym
Art's book, "Making Seamless Sales," uses the acronym SEAM to represent Solutions Engineers (SE) and Account Managers (AM) working together. But as he explained, it's about much more than clever wordplay. "I curated the best of the best and stitched together one full story, one full track of how SEs, presales, and what I call AMs... can work together better."
The framework addresses a common problem: sales training companies typically focus on either presales or sales, but rarely both. This creates separate organizational structures and knowledge silos that work against seamless collaboration.
Moving Beyond the "Demo Rush"
One of the most relatable topics covered was the tendency to rush into demos. As Jack noted from his experience, "I feel like it's so much easier to just spend time focusing on yourself, to blame the others." The classic scenario plays out like this: an AE says "I need you to do a demo. We only have one shot at this. This is going to be huge."
Art shared a story from 27 years ago that illustrates the problem: "If we just do a demo, that's not going to really work. Here's what will work better for you." The issue isn't that SEs can't deliver great demos. Without proper discovery, even the right solution shown at the wrong time can fail.
"Our solutions have no inherent value," Art emphasized, quoting John Kerr. "Nobody cares about what we have. They didn't wake up this morning saying, 'I got to buy some of your stuff.'"
The Trust Dynamic: A Two-Way Street
Art offered a powerful insight about the trust dynamics between presales and sales: "Presales comes with trust that could be lost. Sales does not have trust that needs to be gained."
This creates an opportunity for partnership. When salespeople do proper qualification and discovery, they can begin building trust while SEs maintain their inherent credibility. The result is a team approach where both parties add value and build credibility together.
The Venn Diagram of Value Creation
Perhaps the most practical concept from the conversation was Art's Venn diagram approach to value creation. On one side, you have customer needs. On the other, your solutions. "Where they overlap is value," Art explained. "The parts where we don't have a solution for things that they have problems, well, that doesn't make any sense. The places where we have a solution that they don't have a need, that doesn't make any sense."
Value exists only in the overlap where your solutions address their specific needs. This is why discovery is so critical, and why showing features without understanding needs often fails, even when you're showing exactly what they need.
The Pyramid Model of Customer Engagement
Art introduced a pyramid model for thinking about customer engagement. At the top are CEOs and CXOs focused on business outcomes. In the middle are directors, VPs, and managers trying to execute. At the bottom are the implementers and technical users.
"Generally speaking, the higher up you go, the more business focused it's going to be. The lower levels, it's going to be more technical and execution focused," Art explained. This suggests natural alignment opportunities: sales owning the top and middle with awareness of the bottom, while presales owns the bottom up to the middle with understanding of the top.
The key is creating healthy overlap so gaps don't emerge in the customer experience.
Training for Client Success, Not Just Product Knowledge
When discussing how to train these concepts, Art advocated for a fundamental shift in approach. Instead of starting with features and functions, training should begin with client success as the ultimate goal.
"What amazes me is it's a lot of feature function, here's all about our company... What I feel like needs to happen very early on is... what is our ultimate goal here?" Art explained. "If we always think about client success as the ultimate goal, then what are the things, even in understanding a product, that matters when it comes to client success?"
This meta-level thinking helps new hires understand not just what they're selling, but why it matters and how their role fits into the larger customer journey.
From Closing Deals to Enabling Consumption
Art shared an important perspective shift for modern SaaS sales: "I even like to not call it close. I don't say we're closing the deal. It's a commitment to consume."
This reflects the reality that success is about ensuring the customer actually uses and derives value from the solution. This mindset naturally leads to better collaboration between presales, sales, and customer success teams.
Practical Steps Forward
Art's final advice was actionable: "Look at opportunities for having empathy for the other person's role... sell the other person on why it's a good idea to do this because they need to perceive value in this relationship."
For sales professionals, this means understanding how presales contributes to quota achievement. For presales professionals, it means recognizing sales drivers and finding ways to help AEs succeed.
The Path to Seamless Sales
The conversation reinforced that better presales-sales collaboration is a competitive advantage that many organizations are leaving on the table. With systematic approaches like those outlined in Art's framework, teams can move beyond hoping for good chemistry to building reliable processes that consistently deliver better outcomes.
As Art concluded, "Hit me up for sales kickoffs, seminars, workshops, and certainly check the book out... it'll help you sell better, make more money and have happier clients, which is what we're all trying to do."
Join the Presales Collective Slack community at presalescollective.com/slack to stay updated on future episodes, and listen to past podcast episodes at presalescollective.com/podcast
