What Makes Presales Solution Management So Difficult?

This is the translator's preface to the Chinese edition of SE Manager's Handbook: The Art of Presales Management, the world's only dedicated work on presales management.

If you ask which management role in a B2B company is the most challenging, "presales management" would undoubtedly top the list. As the author notes repeatedly throughout this book, "Presales management is one of the hardest jobs in any company." And in mainland China, the difficulty factor is arguably an order of magnitude higher. Every presales solution team manager from mainland China who reads this will likely smile knowingly—a smile tinged with a certain bitter self-awareness that says, "You know exactly what I mean."

Over my 20-plus years in presales-related roles, having witnessed and personally experienced the challenges and hardships of presales management, I once deliberately kept my distance from "presales management" positions. If I could be a top-tier individual presales professional—earning no less than a presales manager while avoiding the chaos, stress, and the ever-present risk of being blamed for things that go wrong—why would I willingly take on that burden?

So, to those of you holding this book while fighting on the front lines of presales solution management—whether you're a presales manager, presales director, or VP of presales—I have the deepest respect: you are the true warriors who rise to the challenge.

So where exactly does the "difficulty" of presales management lie?

The first difficulty: the "intangibility" of value measurement.

Presales management lacks direct, objective performance metrics for measuring job value. While we can list many potential candidates—win rate, or even technical win rate (e.g., POC results or technical scoring rankings in bids)—too many factors beyond presales capability significantly influence these outcomes. So we're constantly searching for the "Holy Grail" of fair performance evaluation for presales solution teams: a management lever we can firmly grasp, an "ironclad proof" we can present to the company demonstrating the team's value. This lack of "value visibility" is the foremost challenge troubling every presales manager.

The second difficulty: the "dilemma" of value recognition.

Most company leadership teams lack awareness of presales value, and consequently fail to invest in it. A paradox prevalent across Chinese B2B companies leaves presales professionals both amused and exasperated: if a deal is won, leadership and sales credit it entirely to the sales team's frontline efforts—no one remembers the presales contribution. But if a deal is lost, many leaders and sales reps assume presales must have failed to provide adequate support somewhere, causing the loss despite "excellent customer relationships" (were they really that excellent?). It seems that whenever a project goes wrong, it's "obviously" presales' fault. On the other hand, the presales role demands practitioners be "hexagonal warriors"—mastering far more than just technology, including communication, writing, presentation, bidding, leadership, project management, and even sales acumen. Yet the compensation budget companies allocate for presales roles often struggles to hire even a qualified "triangular soldier," let alone provide ongoing incentives and development. This easily traps the presales function in a vicious cycle: "high expectations—low investment—hard to show results—value questioned."

The third difficulty: the "twist" of management relationships.

Presales managers must contend with solid-line or dotted-line reporting to sales leadership. Even when reporting solid-line to a higher-level presales or technical executive, presales managers must still accept "guidance" from peer-level and senior sales managers. In this delicate "matrix," disappointing a sales manager can send a presales manager's career at the company into a tailspin. We're not blaming sales managers—they carry the crushing weight of short-term quota attainment, and their mindset is naturally trained to be results-driven and present-focused. Presales capability building and the realization of business value, by contrast, is more like "gardening"—requiring patience, craftsmanship, and a longer cycle, deeply dependent on meticulous talent management. Presales managers thus find themselves squeezed between "short-term quota delivery" and "long-term capability development," bearing the strain of this double bind.

Of course, were it not for space constraints, the hardships of presales managers would extend far beyond these three points. This is precisely why I once again express my admiration for every reader: all who dare to take on presales management roles are warriors who, having seen the truth clearly, still choose to love and commit to the fight.

As a former presales management practitioner and the founder of PresalesChina Community (售前青云荟), China's professional presales community, I am committed to being a steadfast career ally for presales managers and a "Trusted Advisor" to them. The introduction and publication of this book is a key step in fulfilling that commitment, designed to help you further solidify your professional foundation and broaden your career path.