How to scale SE resources without burning out your SEs
Nick Capozzi -Head of Storytelling:
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another great session here at Demo HQ Day. We're putting the whole operation together for you. This is your headquarters, and we're so excited that you're here and joining us for our second to last session. But it's almost like we were saving the best for last, because we have another incredible panel here.
Real quick intro to this session. We're talking about how to scale SE resources without burning out your SEs, because let's be honest. The AE/SE ratio is rarely in the SE’s favor. Yet often they're required to be part of every demo. So with an overdependence on the solutions engineer and pressure to hit revenue targets, the potential for burnout is real. So how do we actually scale SE resources? We're talking about that with this group of gentlemen right here. We have Brent the VP of Solutions Consulting at Gainsight, Rob, VP of Solutions Consulting at Xactly, Devin Solutions Engineer at BetterCloud, and leading this session Dan Katz, Head of Solutions here for Demostack. I'll let you gentlemen take it away.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions at Demostack:
Thank you, Nick. Hey everybody, great to see you again. Happy to be here. Talking about one of my favorite topics - how do we maintain our health as SEs and scale, and do more without burning out. So i'm joined by 3 amazing panelists. Nick did a quick introduction, but I just want to share Rob from Xactly the vp of solutions consulting, I've had a chance to get to know as a customer - really great experience with him. Brent, VP of Solutions at Gainsight, also a customer, and then both of these gentlemen are part of the Vista family of of companies where I used to be at Aquia. So there's a really neat connection there. And then finally, i'm joined here by Devin, who services big customers at BetterCloud helping them do their technical validations and quick launches. But he also does some cool stuff that I didn't realize. If you ever see someone riding their bicycle without moving down the street, playing a video game, and raising money for their favorite charities at the same time, it's probably Devin. So welcome to you guys.
Why are presales professionals burnt out?
I think we'd probably all agree that we're one of the most resource-strapped roles in an organization. I've never been in an organization or heard of one that is overflowing with solutions, engineers. And it's because we're highly skilled, typically a little more senior. Not the least expensive resource in the company. And we tend to service a lot of different areas as well. And so as a leader in pre-sales, one of the biggest thing is things we have to struggle with, and in our challenges is protecting our team, helping do more without burning out, and with the state of the economy right now, companies are looking to stay lean, and it's even more challenging to do that. So that's the topic today, and I want to maybe start here with Brent. What would you think are some of the core reasons for us always feeling strapped for time?
Brent Krempges - VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
Yeah, I mean, you can see I’m a big football fan, die-hard Kansas City, and I feel like we're kind of like the one legged Patrick Mahomes and that we're being asked because we're incredible at everything that we do, and it's, basically you know, up to us to step up in those big time big game situations and deliver. But I'm like if my team saw this and that I was leading it, they’d probably think what's Brent smoking, because right now, and just like everything that's going on in the economy, I think we got to be real with ourselves. Sometimes we are strapped for either those resources, or just because we have such all stars on our team. It it is natural, and I think I remind my team a lot that it's a good thing to be needed. So as we go through this today, I think you're getting a lot of great ideas from the four of us, but I also think the reality is there's not always a silver bullet. There are just those times, and I think it's a good reminder that it's good to be needed. Let's share a bunch of ideas, but let's also be real with each other that there's gonna be times where you gotta do a lot, and we are going to be a little bit strapped.
Strategies to increase SE resource efficiency without causing burnout
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions at Demostack:
Yeah, it takes. It takes the desire to really want to do the job to be successful doing the job in pre-sales. But there's ways to get control over it and to manage it. And Rob, you know we were talking earlier about some ideas you had around leveraging strong processes to make sure we can do that.
Rob De Marco - Vice President of Solutions Consulting at Xactly Corp:
Yeah, absolutely. Process for us is extremely important, because if the reps don't understand the process in the sales cycle like looking at the sales cycle and understanding, when should an SC get involved? I mean, we're always being asked to get involved, whether it's stage 2 stage 3, whether it's a certain milestone, and understanding the process of making sure that sales understands the process of expectations, when to bring in the SE, and making sure they're bringing us in at the right time, because, like Brent said, sometimes they'll use us as a safety blanket, right? And they'll bring us in on the very first interaction with the customer. So you gotta make sure that everyone understands what the rules of engagement are, whether it's an SMB, maybe you get in later, and the reps do more of the demo discussion. And then maybe it's an enterprise where you get in the first stage, second stage for those longer sales cycles, so as long as they know that process and the sales cycle, I think that'll help out a lot.
Brent Krempges - VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
And that's where I think for us, just to kind of double down on what Rob just said, I think for us, that's one thing that I really have realized this year is like, I think SEs are just naturally all Yes people, which is a great thing like we're always going to help. But what I've realized, and it starts with me as the leader, because i'm a Yes, person as well, you have to put things in place to Rob's point. Some structure, some rules of engagement. It's basic, but sometimes you can easily forget about it, or it's like you had those sound good on paper, but how do they translate to the real world? So I think to Rob's point, how can you protect your team, where, as leaders, you're able to say no on their behalf? Because it's so unnatural for any of us, I think, in this role to say no, and it just doesn't feel right, because we want to be that trusted partner. So just putting that process and leveraging everything that Rob said to be able to say no, with sensible business reasons… I think, is really key in this topic.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
Yeah, for sure. I've heard people refer to SEs sometimes as the team of last resort. It's like it's not only hey, come on and help at the beginning of the deal, but when things are going pear-shaped, oh, man, we need to get an SE on this quickly, and there's a lot of pressure there. So Devin, how do we deal with that as leaders with that kind of pressure?
Devin Domingo - Solutions Engineer, Large Accounts at BetterCloud:
I mean, I agree with everything that we just said, especially Brent’s idea of saying yes to everything, and knowing that there is this pressure to want to perform, be that organizational glue between a lot of these different technical teams. And if you think about it solution engineers, we're good at what we do, because we're inherently curious people who really understand the technicalities and how things work. And I think you know kind of how this whole question was for him to begin with, like in this macroeconomic climate that we're in, there's a need to completely understand your business differently. We know not every deal is gonna trickle in the way that it used to. And there's a greater emphasis on trying to really be a better business partner. So it kind of puts you in the role where they need to kind of reinvent their playbooks a bit. So we're definitely seeing SEs having to lean in earlier in the cycle, to just understand the fundamentals. Are we saying the right things and do our customers value the same things?
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
Yeah, let's get into that a little more. You mentioned organizational glue Devin. So you know what are those other functions in your organization that your SEs are expected to support?
Devin Domingo - Solutions Engineer, Large Accounts at BetterCloud:
I'll say, from my perspective, what I've seen a lot of our SEs do really, we work a lot with competition and collateral. What is your strategy? What are the high level talk tracks that we know that our counterparts are going to use, because we've seen it kind of tried and true with a lot of our customer base. So we're really interfacing a lot with how that will work from a competitive standpoint. We're influencing a lot of our go-to-market strategy and especially at the start of the year, we work a lot with our product team on their yearly roadmapping process, we will help participate in their design, figure out what the top challenges are we're seeing from an expansion point of view. And of course that will hopefully influence what our deliverables look like for the rest of the year and bring the rest of our customers value.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
Yeah. So it sounds like a lot of internal facing and not just external facing. And I know, Rob, you and I've talked about this a bit, too.
Rob De Marco - Vice President of Solutions Consulting at Xactly Corp:
Yeah. The organizational glue. I like that. I think that there's so many cross-functional teams within the company, and a lot of them are working in silos. And the SE team is very unique in the sense that we work across all those different silos. So we are bringing those people together. I mean, not just sales and marketing. We work with a global training team, right? We do a lot of onboarding and enablement help for sales. Reps work with the product teams, the product marketing teams, proposal management. I'm sure everyone loves RFPs out there, so we manage those along with IT engineering. So we integrate a lot of these cross-functional teams. We cross over on a lot of those as well, so to Devon's point, absolutely from a go-to-market strategy but also all the planning that leads up to it. You know we are heavily involved in that. So it's not just the customer facing doing demos. That's what I always try to tell my team internally in management. It's like when you're talking about ratios and number of SEs needed to support reps it's like… that's not it. You got to think about all this other internal stuff that we support as well.
Presales compensation and motivation
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
So Brent, at Gainsight like do you comp your SEs on all this other stuff?
Brent Krempges - VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
Yeah, I mean so not on all of it, obviously. We're still in sales and we’re all still motivated by revenue. And as we're going into a new fiscal, and going through one or some of the new changes to variable comp, it's actually starting to expose everything that Rob and Devin said. Instead of it just being all in terms of net new revenue, it's actually like some of the concepts that we're throwing out right now, it could be deliverables to your PM, team to do the competitive stuff, or it could be that these are XYZ renewals or saves that were part of our customer base. What I'm realizing is a lot within the organization doesn't realize how much the SE team is supporting. So then I start to have these fun conversations around… Well, we could change this variable comp and maybe we need to start thinking about where the budgeting is coming from, because the reality is as much as all our sales generate, and we're all revenue facing it's like we are that catch all. It's starting to bring more of all this stuff that we're referring to, and expose it through comp instead of it just being net new, because then it doesn't feel like the structure of your compensation is directly tied to he day to day, and just all the at it complexities that come with the the job.
Rob De Marco - Vice President of Solutions Consulting at Xactly Corp:
Just to add to this, with my team you’re measured on individual revenue and new revenue.And then when you start asking about, hey, you gotta support this customer for just a revamp of the executive demo. It's like, well, what's in it for me right now? I don't get paid on that. We don't have full control over whether things close, or the best job ever to get the technical win doesn't close. Is that your fault? You don't get comped on that.
Brent Krempges - VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
I think SEs, because again we're naturally curious, we want to do stuff, and we get bored. There's also that incentive of… I feel like a lot of my high performers want to do special projects, and I want to put them on special projects. But then, sometimes it's like, well damn, I just did a lot of work for that special project. So it forces me and my leadership team to think about looking for priorities to start to put the right processes in place. And really do that 9,100 day forward-looking because you gotta get those comp so there's a lot of other benefits that I didn't really think about in terms of how we're starting to structure this. And again, a lot of this is still not done yet, but it's very exciting.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
And so again I'm feeling really full. You know, hearing all of this, and a little anxious about it because it touches a nerve so much. So you know, we kind of addressed that hard stuff. What are the things that we can really control here and in your org? What can we do tactically to scale solutions engineering without without burning them out? And demos come up a lot. I know that's a common thing, that don't we don't necessarily need to be in every demo, or can you be on every call, and your SEs are expected to do every demo, and to be on every demo call.
Devin Domingo - Solutions Engineer, Large Accounts at BetterCloud:
I would say in our org the way that we've always culturally worked is that we sell an enterprise technical product to a person who is our technical buyer. The same person is gonna be benefiting the most from this. So our SEs are very much inclined to join these calls just because we don't know if our AE is really gonna understand every technical nuance that comes up in that account, and our SEs are really the ones who are expected to really know that detail. Very fine brain. I think, to answer some of the earlier questions, are there ways of tactically even moving this a little bit earlier in the sales cycle? Are there ways that we could be importing more knowledge where we're not necessarily on a demo itself? But are there ways that we could give previews to pieces of our environment, or maybe some of the essentials just to even qualify these? Do they even need a demo in the first place, is kind of where we've been going and where we've been discussing a lot of our plans for this year just because we know we're gonna want to touch more accounts, talk to more people. But we know how many at bats you need to do before something even resonates and makes sense by the first demo. So that's where we are.
Rob De Marco - Vice President of Solutions Consulting at Xactly Corp:
Yeah, very similar to me, Devin. Those are great points. We look at our product, there's the SMB market versus Enterprise right? And so typically with SMB you want to try to put the reps and give them some tools and assets to be able to talk before we get involved, because they gotta be qualified. It's got to be the right people. Hopefully, you're not getting involved in those you can get bogged down with a bunch of demos that just don't go anywhere. But we also want to make sure that on the Enterprise side, we're following the right way to get involved in discovery. It’s absolutely crucial here. So before we do any demos, we want to do full discovery, and we know that's kind of changing right now, because we're getting a lot of pressure, I think, SEs out there, maybe the same way getting a lot of pressure of showing product, because customers and prospects know a lot more information before they engage with the sales rep. They want to go straight to product, and that is always the biggest thing with us is, hey? We want discovery. It's like no, don't add more steps to the whole sales cycle. Now let's get the product. But then you sit there and go. Well, we don't know about what they want, so we can't give a great demo, so it's always that push and pull that we're seeing. But we're utilizing some of the stuff that Demostack is doing to hopefully help that out.
Qualifying sales opportunities to determine the need for demos
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
Yeah, I'm curious just to drill down a little bit more on that, Rob. How much time do you think you guys were spending on unqualified demos previously.
Rob De Marco - Vice President, Solutions Consulting at Xactly Corp:
I would say it's a good 30% or so. And plus when you start getting into a influx of new reps where you have to hand hold maybe a little bit longer to get them onboarded, you are definitely seeing some unqualified demos, and waste of time, and that gets to the resources as well. So we are trying to arm the reps as much as possible to do as much qualifying as possible.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
For sure. Devin, you’ve shown me a couple of things before with how you help your buyers self qualify a little bit through a product tour. Can you share a little bit about how effective that is?
Devin Domingo - Solutions Engineer, Large Accounts at BetterCloud:
Yeah, I see this one comment in the Webinar chat. No, disco, no demo. It's what we're trying to think about. Is there a sensible leave-behind? Maybe after the discovery call. Is there something that we could do? A bit of a disco hybrid demo approach is the way we're trying to layer in a transition. And the way we see that in between are Demostack product tours. So we've been testing making a use case library of some of the most common things that we'll hear about that we know that are aligned to business challenges. And the way we see it, why not give them a sample product tour where they could click through, and we will have a better idea of qualification before they show up for the live demo.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
That makes sense. I'm also curious - Rob, you were saying 30% of time on unqualified Demos. There's probably some prep time associated with each one of those. How are we handling those requests to customize demos right now? Brent, you've talked to me a little bit about that at Gainsight.
Brent Krempges - VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
Yeah. So for us we're trying to fight what Rob's referring to. And so what we've done is a give, get with our reps where it's like… Hey, what you all really want is a customized approach to our engagements. But in order to do that, we need all this. The right disco upfront. And so basically what it has allowed us to do is then we have a template, you know we have internal templates that are - we call it colorizing. So how do you all want to colorize this? To then show up and make it look and feel as if it's all the attributes of that specific prospect. And so really being able to leverage that team, and it goes back to what Rob talked about at the beginning. Really, what we did is we did a deep analysis of where we're spending our time, and we realized that not only was it early in the cycle, but within that early early part of the cycle we are doing so much time, and the build itself. So that's where the build was where we realized that we've got some expensive resources doing that. How do we then start to scale that out? Get the build in place, and it gets us about 80 to 90% of the way there, the SEs are then presenting. Go in and make some tweaks an hour before the demo, but that but that team in India has really helped us scale out that that customization/colorization in our sales cycles.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
Very cool. I want to just pause for a second. There's a couple of good questions in the chat that are related to this. So Nolan was asking Devin to dig into a little more about the single use case or use case specific product Demos… Are they small nuggets, or different use cases that are combined? How long are they?
Devin Domingo - Solutions Engineer, Large Accounts at BetterCloud:
Yeah, I think, Nolan, you're right. 3 to 5 min has been our best practice here, and it should really only cover one use. We know there's maybe a top 5 to 10 use cases that we know people are going to ask for or mentioned as part of the initial discovery. So we leave it up to matching exactly what it is to what they would probably be showing in the product, and the idea is that these tours are gated so you had to have an initial discovery call with them. We trust them, where it's a limited access sort of thing, where it will only be live for a certain amount of time. A week at most, basically the amount of time there would be before they even meet with us for a live demo. So that's sort of the idea of how we kind of do a bit of that stitch of the discovery with a light demo, to a full demo.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
Makes sense. There's one other comment that I'm curious to bring in here. Joshua said, “There's a difference between wanting to see product versus wanting to see how the product solves their business issues.” And I think if we bring that back to scaling, SEs are generally pretty good at those value conversations and asking so what, and why it matters.Do these these types of customize or colorize demo templates that you do Brent, or Devin with the product tours, or Rob the demos that you're building with Demostack help? How do you convey this “so what” versus just showing product?
Devin Domingo - Solutions Engineer, Large Accounts at BetterCloud:
It's a tough one. I mean there's a bit of a gap of the best practice to personalize and customize as much to the business value as possible. But here we are saying it's a template. How do I really get good at personalization? And I don't have a perfect answer. But the way I think of it is, it's like the AE should hopefully, from their discovery, especially if they're a really strong rep, know how to match a bit of what we're showing in the platform to the story that they're tailoring as they're doing the discovery and sharing leave-behind material. So I hope that is kind of what carries it over the line. I always preach that discovery drives customization, right?
Rob De Marco - Vice President, Solutions Consulting at Xactly Corp:
So we look at different types of demos that we can give depending on what type of discovery we have. If we have zero discovery, unfortunately you're probably going to see a harbour tour, but we probably want to send you some things like Devin's talking about like, hey here's an interactive tour. Tell us what's interesting to you. And then we start getting into things like basic discovery. Maybe they send over a few things here and there. We can tailor a demo and change some labels, change some wording to make it sound a little bit more personalized, and if we get full discovery by all means, let's go build out the value pitch and show it exactly like they want to see it. And hopefully, you can convince the sales teams because typically they want to cut corners and get to close as soon as possible. But hopefully, you can convince them that discovery drives customization and customization can help drive what the value truly is, and you're gonna have a better demo, even though it may take longer with an extra step of discovery. It's gonna end up shortening the sales cycle in the end.
Presales Demo Templates
Brent Krempges- VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
That's good. I love that. I'm just gonna say for us just to get tactical. I mean, basically we have like our 4 primary value drivers. So you kind of always know those are the 5 business outcomes that most organizations are looking for. Those are your templates. And then to Rob's point, the configuration and customization of whatever that value driver is in the demo evolves with discovery. So the first one, maybe off the shelf that has their logos, little things that you can just quickly learn from G2 or something, and then it can evolve into specific use cases. So that's kind of the way that we think about it from off the shelf, and then just start to let that evolve.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
It's a gift to get it right, so the prospect is investing in you if they're engaging with you in deeper discovery, and so that you can invest in them with a more tailored customized demo or POV type experience, right? Another way I think about it is the bite snack meal approach. So that zero harbor tour. That's the little bite... Okay, I'm interested. I'm gonna have a snack which is a little more in depth. And okay, we're ready for the meal. I'm really ready to sit down and and sit at the table with you. We'll do a full kind of exercise. This is great. So we're running out of time here. I want to ask one question to our panelists: what is the one piece of practical advice you have for our audience on how best to scale your SE resources?
Devin Domingo - Solutions Engineer, Large Accounts at BetterCloud:
Use Demostack. I will say there are some cool tools. I didn't get to talk a lot about this, but we use sandboxes as a leave-behind to kind of go back to that bite, snack, meal model. If there's more efficient ways for us to produce snacks, that's what’s been helping us a lot as we try to scale more and touch more accounts.
Rob De Marco - Vice President, Solutions Consulting at Xactly Corp:
And I think if you have a very close working relationship with sales and sales management, and everyone understands expectations and understands the sales cycle, that permeates down to the reps and permeates down to the SE when you start talking about who's going to get assigned? When are they going to get assigned? How do we push priority deals? When do we say no? Those things have a direct effect on your resources, how much your SEs are going to be overused. So I think if you can get that down and really focus on that, and then use some tools as well to fill in the gaps if things aren't exactly right. But I think it’s expectation setting and working with sales management.
Brent Krempges - VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
Yeah, me, too. I was just gonna say, don’t say yes to everything. But in order to do that, you do have to have that partnership with your sales leadership. Because if not, there's gonna be a battle.
Dan Katz - Head of Solutions Engineering at Demostack:
Yeah, excellent. I'm just taking a look at our chat here. There's a couple of other questions that I wanted to highlight. We were talking about some of our challenges, how much should SEs be involved in the annual business planning, as they have so much visibility upstream and downstream of what's going on, and in your organizations are the SEs involved in QBRs? And how does that cadence work?
Brent Krempges- VP of Solution and Value Consulting at GainSight:
We are a big, big, big piece of it again. We've got a great relationship with our sales leadership, and they see us as that value add. I mean, for us what we really started to do is we just added that SE sentiment as part of our overall opportunity, and it goes into just predictability in a pipeline. So it starts by those weekly pipeline reviews, and this is where we're off between sales and SEs or AEs. We started small and then once that value became so obvious that now it's like QBRs, FY ‘24 planning, all of that. Now it's just the natural, it doesn't even get questioned.
Nick Capozzi:
I apologize, I have to interject gentleman, just because we have to wrap this. This was an incredible session. This has been a really exciting day here at Demo HQ Day. Appreciate all your time.
