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
.webp)
Scaling Presales Teams without Burning Out Your Best People with Ben Hills
In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James are joined by Ben Hills, Founder and CEO of Iris, to discuss how to scale presales teams effectively while avoiding burnout. They explore the difference between healthy high performance and unsustainable overwork, the role of AI in streamlining repetitive tasks like RFPs, and practical strategies for building scalable processes that enhance rather than replace human expertise.
To join the show live, follow the Presales Collective's LinkedIn page or join the PSC Slack community for updates. The show is bi-weekly on Tuesdays, 8AM PT/11AM ET/4PM GMT.
Follow the Hosts
- Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/
- Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/
- Connect with Ben Hills: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminhills/
Links and Resources Mentioned
- Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack
- Iris: https://heyiris.ai/
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome
04:04 Iris
05:14 Ben's background
14:29 Healthy high performance vs burnout
21:55 Common scaling mistakes and the headcount trap
29:14 Effective AI tools for presales teams
35:04 The future of AI-to-AI RFP processes
37:46 Final advice on embracing AI
Key Topics Covered
- Understanding Burnout vs. High Performance
- Why burnout isn't just about hours worked
- The importance of connecting work to larger purpose and outcomes
- Creating time-bound periods of intense work with clear endpoints
- Scaling Without Adding Headcount
- The "mythical man month" problem in presales
- Building playbooks and processes before hiring
- Separating "in the business" vs "on the business" work
- The Rocks, Pebbles, Sand Framework
- Planning for big quarterly tasks (rocks)
- Managing predictable weekly activities (pebbles)
- Handling unexpected fire drills (sand)
- AI Tools That Actually Work
- RFP automation and response generation
- Call transcript analysis for product feedback
- Demo automation with synthetic data
- Why AI SDRs haven't lived up to the hype
- The Future of RFPs and AI
- Model Control Protocol (MCP) for AI-to-AI communication
- Maintaining personalization in automated processes
- The buyer's perspective on RFP proliferation
Join the #1 Community for Presales Professionals
Where Presales Professionals Connect, Grow, and Thrive
Join the Community