Day-to-day, I am a Pre-Sales consultant at Telefónica Tech. In my down time, I run a blog which offers practical presales advice, tips and tricks. Read on and delve deeper into the Pre-sales world.
Background
Hello! I’m Craig McGeough, and for the last 18 months, I have been working in dedicated Pre-Sales… complimenting almost 3 years’ experience working in the Power Platform itself. But before all this, I worked as a recruiter specialising in placing Microsoft Dynamics specialists. This role increased my awareness of how niche and difficult finding a Pre-Sales skill set was and as such, Pre-Sales work often ended up landing at the door of Functional Consultants. This was often due to the loose similarities you could make in the responsibilities of the roles.
Introducing Practical Pre-Sales
Pre-Sales is an art and a skill-set very much distinct from that of Functional Consultants. Over time, I realised that there was very little information out there about how to actually do Pre-Sales and I felt this meant both customers and the functional consultants themselves suffered. The absolutely vital missing link of Pre-Sales also affected the overall delivery of digital transformation projects. Hence the genesis of where my Practical Pre-Sales blog came from.
Offering Practical Pre-Sales Advice
My Practical Pre-Sales blog aims to provide practical advice on Pre-Sales for those not fortunate enough to be surrounded by the wealth of expertise I have here at Telefónica Tech. My blog is aimed at individuals who will be tasked with building and delivering technical demonstrations, which as I previously mentioned, is very much a distinct specialist skill.
My blog provides fortnightly articles focused on the most common facets of Pre-Sales work broken down into real world. I also offer practical advice to steer people toward best practice and away from the common mistakes often made by those not experienced in Pre-Sales.
A common mistake made is how to set the tone of a demo around the vision of what could be, as opposed to how you would playback a finished solution at the end of an implementation. These are fundamentally different and should be approached as such, but it’s all too common (and totally understandable) that we see Consultants spending 99% of their time demonstrating production ready tech at the end of a lifecycle when doing demos, approaching their pre-sales demos in exactly the same way.
The goal
My aim of the Practical Pre-Sales blog is a very simple one – to give something back to those dipping their toe in to Pre-Sales. I was given lots of support from wonderful colleagues as I grew and developed in the Pre-Sales world in my previous roles, and this has continued as I work for Telefónica Tech. In my current role, I work with different specialist teams of Pre-Sales professionals with, at times, decades of specialist experience in the Pre-Sales world, but as aforementioned, many who are starting out in the Pre-Sales world are not so fortunate.
My hope is that my Practical Pre-Sales blog provides others with much-needed help and guidance to make their – and their customers’ – Pre-Sales engagements as painless as possible. Whilst I know there is no substitute for dedicated Pre-Sales professionals in Pre-Sales activity, the least I can do is pass something back down the line after all the help and expertise I have gained during my Pre-Sales career.
Pre-Sales at Telefónica Tech
Here at Telefónica Tech we not only have teams of dedicated Pre-Sales professionals, but we also have specialists who are technology specialised and vertically aligned. I, for example, work in the Financial Services space which means I not only understand Pre-Sales, but I understand Pre-Sales through the lens of what’s required for Digital Transformation utilising the Power Platform in Financial Services.
I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for someone working as a ‘generic’ Functional Consultant without these specialisms to try and run workshops and deliver bespoke, tailored technical demonstrations without this expertise. Is it doable? Yes, of course. Is it infinitely harder for both parties? Absolutely!
Pre-Sales spotlight
I feel very fortunate that I have been able to spread the Pre-Sales love outside of my Pre-Sales blog and role at Telefónica Tech, as of late. I recently guest starred on the Amazing Applications podcast, where I spoke about the role pre-sales play in setting up Microsoft customers and partners for successful Dynamics 365 and Power Platform project delivery. This episode is available on Apple Podcasts and can be accessed here.
But that’s not all. This summer, I will be presenting a session at Scottish Summit 2022 – the biggest Microsoft Cloud community event, taking place in Glasgow, on 10-11 June. To find out more about Pre-Sales, come along to my session – ‘Why Pre-Sales is the key to Power Platform success.’
