@Kelley Pidhirsky @Kate McArdle

Thank you, @JamesKaikis and the PSC team for having us! It was truly an honor! @Hannah Bloking - you are incredible!

I'd love to keep the discussion going here, please bring us more questions/topics to all weigh in on together. 😀

Thank you to all of those who submitted questions.. our panel responded to a few of them!

Further, we now have a #WISE channel in our PreSales Collective Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/presalescollective/shared_invite/zt-956coa1w-_IrInTtZUWWgz~YlbZMU1Q

Question 1: Tips on how to create our own WISE program at our organization:

• KP: I’ve had quite a few people reach out to ask how we built this program. I have to admit, it seems a lot more complicated than it really is. As both Leah and Kate mentioned on the webinar, it started with a simple idea, a very small group of people and it grew organically over time. I think that folks look at the scale of the program today and what we’ve accomplished and think that there is a lot more magic to it – but it’s taken time to get where it is today. The beauty of pre-sales professionals is that we are all naturally driven and determined, and if there is a cause that we all feel good about, it doesn’t take much to keep us moving forward. For the DocuSign WISE team, as an example, there were really just a small handful of us that were trying to pull off these events for quite a while until we realized that other members really and truly wanted to help. Since then, as we’ve grown, we’ve formed a steering committee, and those members and come in and taken the program to an entirely new level. The beauty of this is that while this is strictly a volunteer role/program, if each member can choose a role that matches their natural strengths or even a strength that they want to work on and practice, it’s worked out incredibly well. We have talked about the concept of trying to help other organizations build their own WISE programs – please reach out to us and we would love to chat more!

• KM: The only thing I’d add is to put all of your pre-sales skills to use and think: Problem statement (what are you trying to solve with your group?) Discovery (what’s already out there, what do others in your organization want from a group like this) Presentation (what do you need, what are the benefits, expected outcomes?) Approach it the way you would solving a problem for a customer, it becomes a natural motion as Kelley mentions. [And if people are interested, we’d happily do a webinar on just a deep dive on what we did!]

Question 2: I’m a BDR looking to make the jump to a PreSales/SE role and I’ve been practicing front end demos, working on my demo flow, and watching how the SEs at my company run their demos. Any advice on more things I could be doing to learn the role?

• KP Response – I love this question! I would bet that if you asked any SE, how did you get into the SE role, there is likely a funny story behind it. At least for some of us old school SE’s, it’s a role that we kind of “fell in to.” I don’t know of anyone that when someone asked what they wanted to do when they grew up who said “I want to be an SE someday!” With that being said, we all started somewhere and transitioned into this role – the fact that you are even thinking about it is a huge step in the right direction! I know at DocuSign, one of our leaders has developed a mentoring program for those who are interested in the SE role and we encourage folks to consider it as a career and provide enablement over time to start to position yourself to be able to move into that role. While we are very lucky that we have that initiative, I know many other organizations do not have something that formal in place. I would highly recommend reaching out to your own internal SE network at your organization, such as an SE leader or a well respected SE on the team and let them know that you are very interested in the role – and ask them if you can start to listen in on demos, calls, etc and ask how you can help their team so that they can begin to benefit from a relationship with you and in return you are learning more about the program. I can also share that just about every SE that I know is always willing to help – so please reach out to myself and other folks that are here in the PSC program to connect and chat more.

• VC: Great! Keep shadowing SEs, and also ask them questions about the role. What do they like? What are some of the challenges? I would also shadow them during discovery, demo build, RFP response, and other aspects of their role. Many times, pre-sales involves a lot of travel - is that of interest?

Question 3: Does WISE provide opportunities for women in college or university interested in pursuing solution engineering?

• VC: Many companies, like Salesforce, have college recruiting programs. Ours is called "FutureForce", and you can learn more about it here: https://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/university-recruiting/ If someday you join us as an SE, we'd love to have you as a member of WISE!

Question 4: What is a behavior or coping tactic you’ve adopted in quarantine that you plan to continue post-crisis?

• KP response – my drinking tolerance – I KID! (kinda sorta not really) This is a tough one to answer. Like we spoke about in the webinar, we all have better days and harder days – on my better days, I try really hard to cut myself off from work at some point “after the working hours” to switch back into mom mode, but am also faced with a house that is a mess from the kids being around all day, dinner needing to be made, etc – I am hoping that by trying to fine tune this skill now, that whenever things return back to some semblance of normal (i.e. kids back to school during the day, my partner back to the office) that I will be even better at being able to have a “cut off” time from work and turn back fully to my family. I work from home full time and have always struggled with never really ending my work day and this quarantine has shown me that my kids wait for my work day to end so that they can spend time with me without having to compete against work meetings, zooms, etc – and I need to recognize their patience (I use that term loosely!) and appreciate that when work should be done, that it really should be done so that I can give them the full attention that I try to give to work during the day.

• VC: Accepting I can't get everything done that I want/need to. (I type this as I stare at a sink full of dirty dishes...!)

• KM: One thing that this time has done well is have us all get to know each other on a deeper level - fast. I think everyone has a slightly more relaxed approach to online interactions, etc (we’re all BUSY, but most of us are in yoga pants and have pets, spouses, kids creating chaos). I’m not as worried these days about sharing my video when my hair is crazy, or my office isn’t picked up. I’ll want to continue the focus on taking a personal approach each day - everyone has a different situation - that’s important to remember even in more “normal” times.

Question 5: Hello all - What are the qualities/skills that can help offset not having Pre-sales experience for someone who is looking to transition in the SE role fairly early in the career?

• KP response – I mentioned this in an earlier response – but there’s a very good chance that any pre-sales professional that you meet did not start their career off as an SE – they stumbled into this role from some other profession. With that being said, when I ended up in my first SE role (of which I had never heard of such a thing!) during my interview, the woman who eventually became my boss asked me two questions: 1) How do you feel about getting up and speaking in front of people? 2) Tell me what you know about a database. I immediately froze – I love love love getting up and speaking in front of people, but admittedly at the time knew nothing about a database – the best I could do was a few addition/subtraction formulas in an excel spreadsheet, haha! I was very honest with my answer and I figured I’d pack up my bag and say thanks for the interview and walk out, never to hear from them again – what she said next shocked me. She said – absolutely no worries about the lack of database experience. I can teach you all about databases/software, etc – what I CAN’T teach you is how to be able to speak in front of others – that is a trait that you just really have to have naturally. It can be worked on and refined, but you can’t teach someone to get up and speak in front of people if it is something that they never want to do. So working on your speaking skills and your ability to be flexible in any conversation is a skill that will take you far in your goal of transitioning into an SE role, as well as in life in general. I am sure that the PSC has some fantastic resources that they can provide. There are usually some great local programs such as Toastmasters, etc that are also wonderful at helping folks to develop these programs.

• VC: Curiosity, empathy, active listening, adaptability, ability to think on your feet, the ability to translate a business problem into a solution in a way that makes sense to your customers. Of course, public speaking is a big one!

• KM: Think about (or ask an SE about) the types of skills they feel are important - I agree with Vicki & Kelley’s assessment and I’d add “passion”. If you’re passionate about something, you’ll be great at it. Once you get to those behaviors / skills, you’ll likely start to see commonalities with things you do in your job. There’s a reason you’re drawn to the SE role - and I’d bet it’s because you do some version of that. Maybe you spend time breaking problems into a clear problem statement, thinking in terms of requirements, etc. Maybe you spend a lot of time selling execs, peers, others on ideas you have, projects you’re running, etc --- how do those skills translate

Question 6: Is WISE open to SEs/aspiring SEs out of org at Salesforce and DocuSign?

• All: Salesforce & DocuSign WISE is only open to those employed at the respective companies, but based upon how this event went, we are all exploring ways to make something more meaningful for the community.