In August, PreSales Collective is launching something new and exciting - our PreSales Foundations program. As part of our commitment to provide resources and knowledge for PreSales professionals throughout their careers, our new Foundations program is a natural next step for the PSC. 

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What is PreSales Foundations? 

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It’s a four-week intensive program that walks small groups of participants (8-12 people) through the fundamentals of PreSales. There are two live sessions every week where you practice roleplays and develop the competencies you’ll need to succeed in PreSales, plus some offline asynchronous learning and prep as well. 

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What makes Foundations unique is it’s not just a two-day workshop where you’re fed information through a firehose and have to simply hope you can remember and apply the information afterwards. The four-week format of Foundations means you can deeply absorb what you learn and apply it immediately in your role in between sessions. 

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Why we created PreSales Foundations

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PreSales Managers have always struggled with hiring because the candidate profile for a PreSales professional is very unique. The field requires a blend of technical skills, sales skills, and business acumen/domain knowledge. 

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It’s nearly impossible to find someone that fits all of the criteria and also has previous PreSales experience - that’s the mythical unicorn, and they’re getting even more rare in the ongoing war for PreSales talent. 

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This means managers and leaders need to get creative in their hunt to fill open spots. They need to find candidates who have one or two of those competencies and teach them the rest. Our Foundations program does that work for you, helping round out the skillsets and fill in the gaps of those new hires. They get up to speed quickly and you get the perfect fit for your team. 

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Who is PreSales Foundations right for?

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Foundations might sound similar to our PreSales Academy, but we’ve designed them for different groups of people. Academy is for people who are looking to begin their career in PreSales, while Foundations is for people who are already employed but are looking for foundational training on becoming a PreSales engineer. 

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PreSales Foundations is designed to solve common problems for two sets of PreSales professionals. The first is an employee in a company in a different role - like tech support or customer service - who wants to transition to PreSales within their current company. We’ll teach you exactly what you need to know to be successful in PreSales. 

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The second is a PreSales leader who is having trouble finding candidates with all of the qualifications for success. Maybe you have a very technical product and need SEs who can code. With Foundations, you can get those talented coders the sales skills they need to succeed as a well-rounded PreSales engineer instead of spending months looking for a unicorn with both sets of skills. You can hire for domain experience or background, and we’ll fill in all the PreSales-specific gaps. 

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What is PreSales Foundations about? 

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Foundations covers the following topics: 

These topics aren’t delivered in a lecture format where information is tossed around and you have to hope you’ll catch a few nuggets; It’s about developing each of those competencies with coaching and feedback from instructors with decades of experience in PreSales. Our curriculum was designed with the help of dozens of experienced PreSales professionals as well, so you get a fundamental overview of everything you’ll need to know to get started in PreSales. 

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It’s also not just about demoing or discovery - that’s a big part of it - but it also covers all of the  topics that an SE should be well versed in. We don’t just want to give people a way into the PreSales field - we also want to set them up for long-lasting, fulfilling PreSales careers. Foundations is designed to do just that. 

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How does Foundations help individuals?

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Foundations will help you get up to speed to contribute more, faster, to your organization. You’ll gain outside perspective from seasoned PreSales professionals who have decades of combined experience coaching and developing SEs. You’ll also develop the skills and competency to deliver engaging demos, present using stories, and handle objections effectively - allowing you to accelerate your career. 

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How does Foundations help employers and hiring managers? 

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Employers and managers also benefit from Foundations because you won’t have to chase the unicorn in the hiring process. It will also help your organization increase revenue contribution, and accelerate your own career through your team’s improved competency.

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And each candidate who graduates from Foundations will bring best practices, frameworks, playbooks, guides, into your team for everyone to leverage, broadening your team’s impact on the entire organization. 

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Learn more or sign up!

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Our first cohort launches in August, and we’ll run monthly programs after that. Want to learn more about Foundations or sign up? Visit the Foundations site for everything you need to know! 

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