Winning Deals Is Getting Harder—Is Your Company's Presales Management Keeping Up?

PMMI · Presales Management Maturity Index

Deals are getting harder to win.
Is your presales management keeping up?

The difficulty of winning has fundamentally changed.
Has the way we manage presales changed with it?

01

We've been honing presales skills, but may have overlooked "managing" presales

Customers are more cautious with budgets, decision chains are longer, and competition is fiercer. They're not just evaluating products and solutions—they're increasingly focused on business value, ROI, and delivery risk.

So we keep pushing presales to level up: understand customers better, understand business better, understand competition better, understand value better, communicate better—and now, understand AI better too.

All of that is right. But many companies haven't given the same attention to presales management itself.

When a major deal comes in, the manager jumps in personally. When a proposal needs polish, the manager rewrites it. When a critical presentation is on the line, the manager delivers it. When team members fall short, the final response is always the same: "Forget it, I'll do it myself."

02

A strong manager doesn't equal a strong team

Why does a company put 5, 10, or even dozens of people under one presales manager? Certainly not to create a "super presales" with a higher title, more responsibility, and a busier schedule.