Case study: Pre-sales and sales engineering
A decade of enterprise pre-sales: discovery, demos and proofs of concept
Running technical pre-sales for enterprise software across healthcare, financial services and retail, from first discovery call to signed deal and go-live.
10+
years in enterprise pre-sales and delivery
5
promotions in 8 years at one company
Multiple
top-performer awards
Context
Enterprise buyers need someone who can go deep with their architects and IT teams, not just present slides.
The challenge
Win technical evaluations against larger competitors, then make sure what was sold could actually be delivered.
What was done
- Ran discovery and solution design with customer architecture and IT teams
- Built demos and proofs of concept on the buyer's real use cases, with written success criteria
- Answered RFPs and security questionnaires, and presented to executives
- Enabled agency and technology partners to sell and deliver the platform
- Moved between selling, implementing and supporting software, so recommendations reflected what happens after the contract
Results
- Worked on some of the largest deals in the company's history
- Five promotions in eight years and multiple top-performer awards
- Partner enablement and integration frameworks adopted across the organization
What it means for you
Having sold software, implemented it and supported it, we ask the uncomfortable questions early. That's the value behind our vendor contract reviews and fractional sales engineering.
These case studies come from our founder's work before Fourteener Technologies, at a leading local search and digital knowledge platform and at a systems integration firm he co-founded. Client names are withheld; figures are as reported at the time.