IT Pre-Sales

[Delta3D]

Hey,

Anyone here transitioned from technical IT consulting to IT Pre-Sales?

I'm currently a consultant that specialises with VMware/DataCore/Veeam and the likes. A bit of cloud knowledge, but by no means an expert, enough to get by.

I'm getting increasingly bored of my current role as finding it's difficult to progress in my company, so considering some future possibilities.

Would love to hear if anyone here is in IT Pre-Sales and advice on transitioning or knowledge to learn?

 

[Delta3D]

Hey, so I wouldn't say I've transitioned into pre-sales however pre-sales does make up a "decent enough" part of my role at work on a weekly basis.

What I would say is that in most cases I don't think it is a case of just "doing pre-sales" 24/7 as in order to spec up the best possible solution you need to have a good understand of what is out there, how it works and the potential issues and quirks that the sales documentation often doesn't cover meaning that you need to have some on the tools experience on a regular basis.

From my side I'm mainly 365/Cloud SaaS which I decided I wanted to specialise in a few years ago, it helps with the pre-sales as my colleagues who work with more traditional stuff (Hyper-V, VMWare) or Azure IaaS stuff will cover off those workloads and I cover off the 365 stuff.

In your scenario with VMWare/Veeam being your specialisation you can continue with that or if you want to move into something else start to specialise in another area which are interested in e.g. Azure, AWS etc. I would say don't be scared to pivot into new areas but in pre-sales it really does help if the solutions you are scoping are in an area that you enjoy as it makes learning the "nitty gritty" much more interesting and enjoyable.

Other than that to start moving into pre-sales if you are in the MSP landscape you can speak to those who already work in that role to help take the load off of them or start to play more of a part in the initial scoping and quoting stage, most places now seem to be expecting a hybrid of that combined with the regular roles of installing and supporting anyway

In terms of knowledge to learn, just try to learn as much as possible about the area you are working in and how it applies to your standard customer base, for you in VMWare I'm guessing it would be compatible hardware, hardware with known bugs etc when paired with other setups, licensing tiers etc

Thanks, I feel like I have a lot of the technical side of it under wraps.

My role is that of which is kinda hybrid, I do everything from start to finish. Just frustrating as when comparing to other companies, the salary is wildly underpaid.

Currently at an MSP, will probably look at reaching out to some pre-sales people on LinkedIn for advice too.