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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Stop Paying the Demo Tax: How AI Is Transforming Presales with Justin McDonald
In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James are joined by Justin McDonald, Co-founder and CEO of Saleo, to discuss how demo automation technology is transforming the presales landscape. They explore the evolution of presales over the past 20 years, the hidden costs of demo preparation (the "demo tax"), and how AI is revolutionizing how solutions engineers create and personalize demonstrations. Justin shares insights on building relational capital, the importance of in-person meetings, and why the future of presales lies in leveraging technology to spend more quality time with buyers.
Thank you to Saleo for sponsoring this episode! Visit Saleo.io to learn more.
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 Justin McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-mcdonald-21a3aa6/
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Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack
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Saleo: https://saleo.io/
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Mockaroo (dummy data generator): https://mockaroo.com/
00:00 Welcome
04:24 How has presales evolved over 20 years
09:20 Demo tax
13:37 The importance of in-person meetings
15:55 Breaking down the demo tax components
24:47 AI and Demo Data Agents
26:42 Trends reshaping presales in 2026
Key Topics Covered-
The Evolution of Presales Technology
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From manual data creation with tools like Mockaroo to automated demo environments
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The rise of presales as a respected profession with executive leadership
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Shift from multi-week prep and constant travel to efficient Zoom-based demos
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The Demo Prep Tax
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Multiple departments impacted: DevOps, product, engineering, and SEs
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Hard dollar costs: hosting demo tenants can cost millions at scale
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Demo data degradation: perfectly prepared demos degrade over time
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SE time is expensive, and hours spent on manual data preparation adds up
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Building Relational Capital
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Only 17% of sales time is spent with buyers (even less for presales)
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In-person interactions unlock opportunities that Zoom calls cannot
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EQ and relationship-building will separate good from great in the age of AI
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AI-Powered Demo Automation
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Demo Data Agent: generates personalized demo data with a single prompt
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Token-based customization for industry, vertical, and use case adaptation
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Data injection technology allows real-time demo personalization
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The Future of Presales
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AI will expand automation across the entire sales cycle
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Agentic and asynchronous AI tools will support SEs 24/7
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SEs won't be replaced, their time will be used differently
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The demo data is the story: great storytelling requires great demo data
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Join the #1 Community for Presales Professionals
Where Presales Professionals Connect, Grow, and Thrive
Join the Community