The Art of Presales

 

Presales is one of the most crucial operations when selling a product or a service to a client. Many businesses underestimate the importance of presales and perform this poorly.
Poor or bad presales can lead to losing a client or complications after what looks like a successful sale.

In this blog, I am mainly relating to process of sales of software and related services, less to the sales of goods and physical products. The principles are valid and may be applied to other domains beyond software and related services, with some adaptations.

The difference between presales and sales

Presales and sales are two totally different things. Sales deals with deals. Once marketing gets leads and prospects, sales starts kicking in. The aim of sales is obtain the contract with the client, with the best possible commercial terms. Sales will use presales in order to reach its goal. 

Presales is the professional side of the sales process. It is presales main task to convince the client that the product and/or services fit the requirements and needs of the client. 
People performing presale tasks do not have to be salesmen and visa-versa.

So, what is presales? 

Is it a position, is it a process, is it an operation?

The way I will define presales is as follows:
A set of tasks and procedures required to convince a client to purchase a product or a service.

In some instances a salesperson can perform all or some of presales tasks, sometimes this will be a dedicated person to perform these tasks. When selling complex software, services or projects a team of people are required to perform all presale task in an efficient and convincing manor. 

Customer Facing?

Most of the presales tasks are customer facing. They must be performed by a person who is convincing, not just professionally, but also with a strong ability to articulate the content convincingly to the client. There are portions that need to prepared up front, behind the scenes, but always keep in mind, these are to be presented to the client and for the client's consumption at the end of the day.