About

This half day conference, an exclusive benefit of your PSLC membership, will offer a diverse array of topics and sessions, engaging conversation around cutting edge thought leadership and technology in the PreSales space. In order to give you the best experience possible, we have increased the number of sessions taking place throughout the day so that you can personalize your experience to the subjects that best align with your needs.

Schedule

8:15 AM

Opening Keynote - Developing a Personal Brand for PreSales Professionals

Moderated by: James Kaikis - Co-founder at PreSales Collective
Featuring: Devin Reed - Head of Content Strategy at Gong

We will be running two different sessions per half-hour block.
Attendees are welcome to join whichever session best fits their interest

9:00 - 9:30 AM

Disrupting the Pipeline: How to source and retain amazing candidates - Hiring 101/102

The hiring environment has changed. You can't afford to wait for your next open position to start recruiting. As a manager, it is essential that you actively build your own pipeline of candidates, and it's becoming more important than ever to look beyond traditional profiles.

In our panel session, we'll discuss ways to source potential candidates as part of your day-to-day work as well as things to consider to boost employee retention. Our panelists will offer tips about the high-level characteristics to look for in a new hire and what to take into account as you build a strong, diverse, and successful team.

Moderated by: Tom Banton - GVP Solutions Engineering at Eightfold
Featuring:
Andy Trevino
- VP Solutions Consulting at Braze
Naz Irani - Head of Enterprise Solutions Architecture at Stripe
Stephanie Day - Sr. Director of Solution Consulting, Americas at Snow Software 

9:30 - 10:00 AM

How to Scale PreSales when more People isn't the Answer

Is your enterprise software company running into a sales engineering resource crunch? With the average AE:SE ratio at 4:1, SEs are taking on more and more responsibilities: from an increased number of meetings and demos to supporting product marketing and feature requests.

In this session, we’ll cover four proven strategies for meeting the increased demand placed on sales engineers:
     • Gap analysis        
    • Better demo qualification      
     • Categorizing demos for better resource allocation
    • Demo automation

Moderated by: Garin Hess - Founder and CEO of Consensus

10:00 - 10:30 AM

The Demo Environment Conundrum: Simplified

Presales headaches often have a common denominator. Whether its lack of storytelling, complexities requiring SEs on every call, admin overload, or an unreliable demo - all roads lead to the demo environment. Learn how cyber defense platform BlueVoyant is solving this conundrum - and building a presales org for scale in the process.

Moderated by: Jonathan Friedman - CEO and Co-founder of Demostack
Featuring: Bryan Rowland - Director, Solutions Architecture at BlueVoyant

10:30 - 11:00 AM

Stop Solving and Start Empowering Your Employees

Often, employees who are successful in their roles are promoted into management positions. But managing a team requires a different mindset than working as an individual contributor. Beyond doing the job well, managers must solve problems large and small, support their teams with proper tools and resources, and ultimately drive success that impacts the organization as a whole.
In this session, our panel will discuss ways to delegate successfully and how to shift from being the star of the show to a great supporting player.

Moderated by: Amin Ibrahim - Senior Director, Value & Solutions at Hootsuite
Featuring: Katey Houseman - Director of Sales Engineering at Dynamic Yield
Alicia Cruz - Sr Manager, Solution Engineering at Salesforce
Tony Francetic - Solutions Consultants Manager at Thomson Reuters

9:00 - 9:30 AM

The New PreSales Org: Designing for 2023 and Beyond

We’ve seen massive changes in the world over the last two years. Not only must leaders support employees to avoid burnout resulting from remote and/or hybrid work, they must also navigate an evolving customer landscape, with increasing (and more complex) demands from buyers and sales counterparts alike.

In this session, we’ll discuss how to redesign your PreSales organization to support this new landscape and provide tactical advice to improve AE:SE ratios, understand PreSales capacity planning, and build out job specialization functions to better support your team.

Moderated by: Majorie Abelkrime - Leader, Migration Success at AWS
Featuring:
Tina Phillips - Director HCM Business Consultants at ADP
Lee Johnson - Director, Sales Engineering (PreSales) at Virtustream
Ryan Lavallee - VP, Solutions Engineering at Salesforce

9:30 - 10:00 AM

Applying Product-led Growth in the Full Customer Life Cycle

Business leaders are now keenly focused on determining how and where to implement product0led growth within their organizations.

Historically, what we call product-led growth (PLG) was thought of as only applicable to top-of-funnel prospects and for low-cost, self-service products. But today’s market has evolved and PLG is now a full funnel strategy that reaches across the entire customer lifecycle.

In this session, you will learn why PLG is such a powerful approach, what it looks like, and how to implement it for buyers at all stages of your customer journey.

Moderated by: Paul Vidal - VP, Solutions Engineering at Reprise

10:00 - 10:30 AM

Managing Organizational Shifts through Acquisitions and Mergers 

Acquisition; merger; whatever situation you find yourself in, blending multiple PreSales teams is no easy endeavor. Join this session to hear panelists discuss their own experiences in bringing teams together to create new, successful organizations.

Moderated by: Ashley Gunderson - Group Manager Solutions Engineering at Blend
Featuring:
Chris Browne - Director of Solutions Consulting at Lattice
Jeff Stewart - VP, Sales Engineering at SolarWinds
Bonnie Alexander - Presales Manager at Botkeeper

10:30 - 11:00 AM

From Great Demo to Buyer Experience: The PreSales (R)Evolution

PreSales has officially crossed the chasm from the Demo Group to...what? In this presentation, Matt Darrow discusses the convergence of several key events -- including the impact of COVID, the rise of digital selling, and the changing nature of buyers themselves.

In doing so, Matt makes the case that the true mandate for PreSales is identifying, owning, and optimizing the Buyer Experience across an organization -- something which is critical to a company's growth, but which individual departments are disincentivized to champion. Matt explains why PreSales is the natural owner of the Buyer Experience and why it's the next phase of PreSales' strategic evolution.

Moderated by: Matt Darrow - CEO and Co-founder of Vivun

Moderator & Panelist

Sr Leader, Migration Success
@ AWS
Presales Manager
@ Botkeeper
GVP, Solutions Engineering
@ Eightfold
Global Head of Solutions Engineering
@ Atlassian
Director of Solutions Consulting
@ Lattice
Sr Manager, Solution Engineering
@ Salesforce
CEO and Co-founder
@ Vivun
Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering, Acquisition & Growth @ Sprout Social
Manager of Solutions Consulting
@ SAP Concur
Sales Engineering & Strategy
@ Guru
Solutions Consultants Manager
@ PreSales Collective
CEO
@ Demostack
VP, Global Security Sales Engineering
Organization @ Cisco
Group Manager Sales Engineering
@ Blend
CEO
@ Consensus
Director of Sales Engineering
@ Dynamic Yield
Senior Director, Value & Solutions
@ Hootsuite
Head of Enterprise Solutions
Architecture @ Stripe
Community and Events Manager
@ PreSales Collective
Director, Sales Engineering
(PreSales) @ Virtustream
Co-Founder
@ PreSales Collective
VP, Solution Engineering
@ Salesforce
Head of Community
@ PreSales Collective
SVP, Worldwide Sales Engineers
@ Tenable
Director HCM Business Consultants
@ ADP
Head of Content Strategy
@ Gong
Director, Solutions Architecture
@ BlueVoyant
VP, Sales Engineering
@ SolarWinds
VP, Solutions Consulting
@ Braze
VP, Solutions Engineering
@ Reprise

Partners

PreSales Leadership Collective.

PreSales Leadership Collective (PSLC) is a global community of PreSales leaders coming together to help and support each other in our careers. Our vision is a world where every PreSales leader has the tools, resources, and support they need to achieve their professional potential.  

We welcome you to join our community of PreSales operators to learn, share, and network in a safe, private space with a support system of other leaders who share similar goals and face similar challenges.

Learn More