Solutions Engineered for ICs, Leaders, and Organizations to Thrive
Break into presales with a 10-week online, cohort-based course. Students receive:
- Interactive online curriculum with hands-on projects
- Unmatched support with personal mentors, coaches and advisors
- Ongoing career services to secure a presales job
- Access to the largest presales professional network
Increase your impact, connect with leading practitioners, and accelerate your career. Membership is free and includes:
- 50+ online and in-person events
- The largest presales knowledge base on the internet
- Slack community with 15,000+ presales pros
- 1:1 Member Connections
- And so much more!
Hone your customer-facing skills in a 4-week online, cohort-based course covering:
- Master presales discovery, demoing, and objection handling
- Uncover nuances like storytelling, rapport building, and identifying core needs
- Create a complete toolkit to excel in presales customer engagements
- And more!
Increase your impact, connect with leading practitioners, and accelerate your career. Membership is free and includes:
- 50+ online and in-person events
- Slack community with 15,000+ presales pros
- The largest presales knowledge base on the internet
- 1:1 Member connections
- And so much more!
PSLC is the preeminent community for presales leaders (managers, directors, VPs). Membership includes everything in free membership, plus:
- Exclusive in-person events and dinners
- Private Slack channel with 350+ presales leaders
- Priority selection for speaking and writing opportunities
- Monthly leadership roundtables
Enable presales excellence at scale with best-in-class onboarding and leader training programs:
- For ICs, our programs help them hone skills in discovery, demoing, and objection handling within the unique context of presales
- For Leaders, our programs coach how to bring process to performance, maximize resources, and scale and sustain a team
Build an exceptional presales organization. Here's how we help:
- Advertise open roles on our job board
- Browse candidates in our talent network
- Join our Presales Academy career fair
Enable presales excellence at scale with PSC's best-in-class training programs for:
- For ICs, our programs help them hone skills in discovery, demoing, and objection handling within the unique context of presales
- For Leaders, our programs coach how to bring process to performance, maximize resources, and scale and sustain a team
Showcase your solutions to the largest community of presales professionals. Here's how we engage with sponsors:
- Speak at PSC events
- Sponsor dinners with presales executive leaders
- Co-write thought leadership pieces with us.
- Guest star on the PSC podcast
PSC members
PSC helps members increase their impact, connect with leading practitioners and accelerate their careers through professional development, tactical resources, and countless opportunities to engage with other members.
- Slack community of 15,000+ presales pros
- Live events & industry summits with visionary leaders
- Best-in-class articles, reports, and templates
- Job board with the best jobs in presales
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In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James sit down with Micah Joel, GTM leader and demo engineering pioneer, to explore what it means to build a dedicated demo engineering function from scratch. Micah shares his journey from theater kid to SE to leading Salesforce's legendary Q Branch, and unpacks why demo engineering might be the most underutilized lever in presales today. They cover the difference between deal-focused and infrastructure-focused demo engineers, how to structure the team, why blended teams fail, and how a mature demo engineering org can swim upstream into product strategy to reduce time-to-revenue. This is part one of two. Part two will focus on measuring and proving the value of a demo engineering team.
Follow Us-
Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/
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Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/
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Connect with Micah Joel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micahjoel/
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Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack
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SoulCon 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026
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Presales Collective Podcast: https://www.presalescollective.com/podcast
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Micah's Background: From Theater to SE to Demo Engineering
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What Is Demo Engineering and How Is It Different from Being an SE?
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When Does an Organization Need a Demo Engineering Team?
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The Two Sides of Demo Engineering: Deal Support vs. Infrastructure/Scale
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How to Hire and Structure the Team
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Demo Engineering as a Talent Pipeline and Retention Strategy
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Swimming Upstream: Demo Engineering's Role in Go-to-Market Strategy
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Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
00:00 Welcome
02:48 Intro Micah Joel
05:42 Demo engineering definition
08:33 When do you need a DE team?
11:13 Deal side vs. infrastructure/scale side
15:48 Demo engineering as SE retention
23:55 Swimming upstream
27:11 Final advice
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