Explore every episode of the podcast Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show

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	Title	Pub. Date	Duration
	Clash of Titans: Getting Your SE and Sales First-Liners on the Same Side [62]	11 Sep 2026	00:05:53
First-line PreSales and first-line Sales sit on the same org level but got there for opposite reasons, so the friction is structural, not personal. Nate shares the tandem model and qualification vote that cooled things down across his regions, and Ava stress-tests both until they hold up.
	Spot the Super-IC Before the Numbers Do [61]	09 Sep 2026	00:05:49
Nate shares the behavioural signals that expose a first-line SE manager who's really just a super-IC with a title — visible in how they design their forecast call and how they write email under pressure. Ava pushes on whether that's coachable or structural.
	Fifty Leaders, One Borrowed Office [60]	07 Sep 2026	00:06:00
Nate has paid for enough conferences that were four sponsor pitches and a sad sandwich. Ava walks him through the community's on-site evenings, the 49-euro commitment fee, the new member portal, and the European roadshow that starts in London on 13 October.
	The Loneliest Job in the Building [59]	04 Sep 2026	00:06:00
Ava had a comp question and nobody in her company to ask. She took it to a community of 250 SE leaders and had twenty answers by lunch. Nate has watched a dozen of these groups die and wants to know what's different.
	The Seven-Figure Promotion [58]	02 Sep 2026	00:06:04
Nate breaks down why promoting your strongest SE into a first-line seat with no readiness path is an unbudgeted risk, not a reward. Ava pushes back from a 12-person scale-up where a title is the only retention lever she's got.
	Your SEs Don't Need the Price List. They Need the Metric. [57]	31 Aug 2026	00:06:22
Ava's SE told a customer the product "just scales" - and missed a ten-x volume question. She and Nate split pricing knowledge into two very different skills and show which one every SE has to own.
	One Sentence: The Pricing Guardrail Every SE Team Needs [56]	28 Aug 2026	00:06:13
Ava's SE quoted an eight-month-old price with no AE on the call, and the walk-back cost more than the number ever could. She and Nate work out the one sentence every SE should say — and the directory that keeps it from sounding like a dodge.
	400 Licenses Is Not a Number [55]	26 Aug 2026	00:06:02
Ava asked one of her SEs how big his upcoming deal was and got "400 licenses" back — a unit count, not a number. She and Nate unpack why deal-value visibility is the precondition for both your incentive plan and your team's week planning.
	When 'Show Nothing Extra' Becomes Handcuffs [54]	24 Aug 2026	00:06:18
Nate brings a coaching note that told a whole region to show nothing the customer didn't ask for, and argues that imposed focus isn't focus at all. He and Ava rebuild it as a scope decision made in discovery, out loud, with the customer in the room.
	Your AI Doesn't Give Bad Demo Advice — You Gave It Nothing [53]	21 Aug 2026	00:06:21
Nate saw a one-line prompt produce textbook-generic demo advice, and a comment section full of people saying "it needs more context" without ever building any. He and Ava work out how SE leaders turn that context into a shared enablement asset — and what it does for coaching between 1:1s.
	The Metric No SE Leader Can Quote: Cost Per Won Deal [52]	19 Aug 2026	00:06:15
Nate's managers spent forty minutes arguing focused entry deals versus full bundles — and nobody could say what one won deal costs in SE effort. He and Ava build the cost model live, then Ava pokes the hole in it: land-and-expand only pays if the first module actually gets used.
	Coach the Chain: From Symptom to a Number [51]	17 Aug 2026	00:05:57
Ava argues that value isn't a separate framework: it hides inside Identify Pain and Metrics. She and Nate break down the exact escalation from customer symptom to a euro figure — and why that number decides whether you should even stay in the deal.
	Sales Rolled Out MEDDICC Without You [50]	14 Aug 2026	00:06:11
Ava keeps meeting PreSales leaders whose sales org rolled out MEDDICC and never invited them. She and Nate work out which letters SEs actually own — and how to claim a seat at that table without turning it into a turf war.
	MEDDICC Without a Quality Bar Is CRM Theater [49]	12 Aug 2026	00:05:57
Ava read the Metrics field on two live deals side by side and couldn't tell which customer was which. She and Nate dig into why qualification frameworks collapse without a published quality standard — and where the reinforcement actually has to live.
	How Can I Make Your Life Easier? [48]	10 Aug 2026	00:05:59
Nate noticed that new SE managers introduce themselves to sales by explaining the presales process, and it builds resistance before anything else happens. He and Ava work out what to open with instead, and how to map the counterparts you actually need.
	Thirty Minutes a Week Sales Doesn't Get to Cancel [47]	07 Aug 2026	00:06:26
Nate noticed one of his managers had cancelled her team's weekly learning slot nine times out of eleven, always for a good reason. He and Ava dig into why a fixed thirty minutes only survives if the leader is willing to have the awkward conversation with sales.
	Translate the Strategy Before Your Team Asks Why [46]	05 Aug 2026	00:06:11
Nate argues that corporate strategy is written so abstractly that most SEs never connect it to their week — and the first-line SE leader is the only person who can translate it. Ava pushes on whether a three-hour kickoff discussion survives when the strategy itself is mush.
	Thirty Seconds That Sells [45]	31 Jul 2026	00:06:24
The highest-leverage thing one team built all year, for almost nothing: thirty-second customer stories, AI-distilled and memorized. Craft and machine in one move.
	Follow the Breadcrumbs [44]	29 Jul 2026	00:05:57
A lovely discovery call that produced zero numbers. Customers scatter breadcrumbs — 'slow', 'error-prone' — and the whole skill is following them to a figure.
	Feature, Capability, Outcome, Metric [43]	27 Jul 2026	00:06:22
Your SEs are great at explaining what a feature does and terrible at answering 'so what?' A simple four-word tool that drags a team out of feature-dumping.
	If This Were Your Business [42]	24 Jul 2026	00:06:04
Nate once fixed a team's morale with a finance lecture. Why business acumen is the top future skill — and the one we're collectively worst at.
	The Vertical You Can't Fake [41]	22 Jul 2026	00:05:51
Same product, four industries, and a customer who smells a tourist in one question. Is vertical expertise something you hire, or something AI can now fake?
	Forward Deployed — Real or Buzzword? [40]	20 Jul 2026	00:06:04
FDE is on every job posting and triggering half the industry. Nate and Ava separate what's genuinely new about Forward Deployed Engineers from what's repackaged.
	Stop Chasing Efficiency [39]	17 Jul 2026	00:05:47
A room full of leaders kept saying 'efficiency' — and none could measure it. Why depth, not efficiency, is the goal AI should serve.
	Can We Even Record This? [38]	15 Jul 2026	00:05:53
Every AI use case in this series runs on transcripts — so: are you even allowed to record? The consent and compliance reality, from works councils to defense sectors.
	Leaders, Followers, and the Refusers [37]	13 Jul 2026	00:05:51
Every team splits into AI first-movers, followers, and refusers — and the gap widens daily. Why handing out logins isn't enablement.
	Bottle Your Best SE [36]	10 Jul 2026	00:05:39
Your best SE's judgment walks out the door at 6pm. Nate and Ava on capturing it in a reusable skill — and why one bottled brain is fragile but a voting funnel is a moat.
	Thirteen Pages, Nothing Validated [35]	08 Jul 2026	00:05:16
AI turns three bullet points into a thirteen-page document that looks like a costly consultant deliverable — and validates none of it. Why polish isn't proof.
	Garbage In, Confidence Out [34]	06 Jul 2026	00:05:45
AI makes good work faster-good and bad work faster-bad — and now the bad work looks polished. Before you automate discovery or demo prep, you have to define what good looks like.
	The Octopus Problem [33]	03 Jul 2026	00:06:12
You're tracking dozens of opportunities across meetings, emails, and chat threads — and the context never comes back together. Nate and Ava on taming the 'octopus' with AI, without requesting seventeen integrations.
	Hire or Pass — The Scoring Problem [32]	01 Jul 2026	00:06:38
Part 4 of 4. Three interviewers, the same candidate, three completely different evaluations — and the loudest voice won the debrief. Four months later: performance plan. The structured scorecard that fixes it.
	Eight People, One Demo — Who Are You Talking To? [31]	29 Jun 2026	00:06:20
Part 3 of 4. The single biggest improvement to Ava's hiring quality came from one change — adding a live scenario round. Three scenarios that surface what behavioral questions never will.
	I Don't Know — And That's the Right Answer [30]	26 Jun 2026	00:06:19
Part 2 of 4. The bluffer who didn't flinch — and what that moment told us about how he'd behave in front of a customer. Two signals that predict an SE's ceiling: coachability and self-awareness.
	Stop Hiring Resumes [29]	24 Jun 2026	00:06:17
Part 1 of 4 on hiring the right SE. The perfect-on-paper hire who fell apart in month three — and the reframe that changed how Ava interviews. Filter for thinking and coachability, not experience and storytelling.
	Your AE Won't Brief You — Now What? [28]	22 Jun 2026	00:06:46
Most SE leaders frame the briefing problem as "AEs don't respect our time." The honest reframe: SE teams have to create the demand for the briefing — and build an escalation path for the AEs who never respond.
	Just Show Them the Product [27]	19 Jun 2026	00:06:22
When the AE says "the prospect just wants to see the product," don't fight it. Take the meeting — and steal the first fifteen minutes for a mini-discovery that changes the demo on the fly.
	Define SE-Qualified — Or Your Calendar Will [26]	17 Jun 2026	00:06:33
An SE org found that 31% of customer-facing hours went to deals that died in stage two. The fix wasn't more discipline — it was a written, agreed-upon definition of what "SE-qualified" means.
	I Switched Sides [25]	15 Jun 2026	00:06:44
A former presales leader took a Head of Sales role and discovered the parts of the funnel he never saw before — and the cross-functional changes only an SE-turned-AE-leader can push for.
	Score the Call, Not Just the Quarter [24]	12 Jun 2026	00:06:18
An SE leader uses AI to score every customer call on two categories — compelling event and technical win — and aggregates the scores per deal and per SE. The result is leading-indicator data SEs can actually act on.
	Two Pillars, One Team [23]	10 Jun 2026	00:06:32
An SE leader running thirty SEs split his enablement into two completely separate tracks — internal product team plus external sales partner — and refused to let one absorb the other.
	Thirteen Direct Reports and a Prayer [22]	08 Jun 2026	00:06:08
An SE leader scaled from three to thirteen direct reports in eighteen months before getting team leads approved. By then he wasn't coaching anyone — he was doing triage.
	Hire for Domain, Train for Sales [21]	05 Jun 2026	00:06:23
An SE leader scaling from five to twenty SEs stopped hiring from the presales talent pool. His last six hires were former controllers and accountants — and they ramped faster than his traditional SE hires.
	Liability Is the Moat [20]	03 Jun 2026	00:06:05
When demos commoditize and AI-first competitors look better on paper, what wins deals? Nate makes the case that accountability is now the durable moat — and explains how SE leaders need to retrain teams to sell it.
	Show Me Your Release Cycles, Not Your Roadmap [19]	01 Jun 2026	00:06:08
Ava walks through how she now evaluates every vendor — and why the way she buys software today is exactly how her customers will buy from her tomorrow.
	The GUI Is Dead. Long Live the API. [18]	29 May 2026	00:05:51
SaaS vendors are still hiding their API behind the Enterprise tier — and your customers are about to start asking for it. Nate breaks down what API maturity now means for SE leaders, both as buyers of software and as builders of their own product story.
	Nobody Showed Up — Because You Didn't [17]	27 May 2026	00:06:19
Ava sent twelve SEs to a leadership course; six finished. The vendor wasn't the problem — she was. Nate and Ava unpack why training dies without manager reinforcement, and the one move that flips completion from 30% to 80%.
	Fifty Times Faster, Fifty Times Wrong [16]	22 May 2026	00:07:16
Nate shares an experiment: two SE teams, same AI demo tool, wildly different results. The difference? A fifteen-minute discovery gate that most teams skip.
	The SE Who Rewired the Team [15]	20 May 2026	00:06:18
Ava's team runs on agent orchestration that one of her SEs built on weekends. Nate pushes on the hard leadership questions this raises.
	Prep the People, Not Just the Demo [14]	18 May 2026	00:06:13
Your SE ran a dry run, sent a strategy reminder, and built a tight agenda. Five minutes into the demo, an AE went off-script and the whole flow collapsed. Nate and Ava break down why prepping the content isn't enough — and what SE leaders should do instead.
	Are We Even Doing the Huddle? [13]	15 May 2026	00:06:17
Before you can optimize the pre-demo huddle between your AE and SE, you need to make sure it actually happens. Nate and Ava discuss habit-first, quality-second.

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