Happy Friday!
Learnings from someone else’s presales
I spent a lot of time over the last month with a mid-sized Salesforce SI to deeply understand their presales process. It was a real partnership - we did a bunch of working sessions going through their actual proposals, quotes, and SOWs, including a couple of projects that didn't go well.
I learned two things that I think are worth sharing with the presales leaders reading this:
For them, scoping is an art, not a science. I thought that you get the high-level numbers, plug them into your scoping tool, and, voila, estimate. But what actually happens, at least for this SI, is that the presales leader has a vision for what the project should look like (within timeline & budget constraints), and they adjust the numbers to match that, not the other way around. The “magic” part is a creative process that happens entirely in the presales leader’s head based on experience and intuition.
I’ve since talked to other presales leaders, and I don’t think this is universal. Every deal goes through negotiation, of course - but the “creative magic” of coming up with a holistic approach, rather than the more common approach of cutting scope to fit budget and schedule constraints, seems mostly unusual. Would love to hear where my readership lands on this spectrum.
Projects don’t go sideways because someone missed a requirement; they go sideways when a client agreed to something in scoping and then, once delivery starts, act like that conversation never happened.
You might think this one’s a little unsettling for a company that’s all about not missing requirements. But it’s really about having the receipts - a way to point back to the conversation and say, here’s the exact moment where you agreed to this. (You never want to have to do it, but you want to have it just in case.)
If you have a bumpy presales process - too many iterations on proposals and SOWs, what’s being scoped not matching what’s being delivered, or it just feels like you’re winging it too often, I would love to chat and learn more.
What We Shipped This Week & What's Coming Next
This week:
Notifications when your files are done processing - so no need to keep refreshing. When a file finishes, we email you and drop an in-app notification for the project team. Thanks for requesting this, Austin!
Conflict counts on the dashboard - we were previously including duplicates as “conflicts” but it makes more intuitive sense to just count contradictions there. Thanks for flagging this, Elaine!
Coming next:
Workflow diagrams - if you want me to run this v1 on one of your projects, let me know. I think it’s pretty cool!
MCP - get that requirement richness right where you work - whether it’s Claude, Salesforce, or somewhere else
Weekend Watching
A new short (~3 min) demo video, great for sharing with friends and colleagues!
As always, don't hesitate to reach out with questions, opinions, ideas. Thanks for being on the journey!
- Ali