《经济日报》官网刊发专访：被忽视的“销售核武器”——《B2B生态人物2030》专栏系列 | 赵成栋（CD） -专访全文

On June 13, 2026, the official website of Economic Daily's Economy magazine published an exclusive interview: "The Overlooked Nuclear Weapon of Sales — B2B Ecosystem Leaders 2030 | Zhao Chengdong". Access the full article here

Prologue: The Eccentric Client in the Corner

In the spring of 2025, in a business meeting room at the headquarters of a central state-owned enterprise (SOE) in Beijing, a technical exchange meeting for a multi-million-dollar software project was underway.

A top-tier vendor had sent a ten-person team—an impressive show of force. They followed their familiar playbook: small talk, PowerPoint slides, product feature demos, and promises of "we can meet all your needs." The client's attendees either scrolled through their phones or nodded politely.

But in the corner of the room sat a client representative who was different. He didn't speak; he just listened, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth. It wasn't a mocking smile, but more one of recognition—the look of someone who "knows your playbook"—because he had once been on the vendor side himself.

This man was Zhao Chengdong, known in the industry as CD. Approaching fifty, he holds an MBA from Tsinghua University and a Master's in Computer Science from Beihang University. He spent eighteen years in presales and consulting at four top-tier multinational companies—IBM, HP, Cisco, and BMC—and was named Top Presales in the Asia-Pacific region by BMC for three consecutive years. Now, he was serving as an external management expert hired by the data center division of this central SOE headquarters, with the core task of optimizing procurement processes. His salary was more than 30% higher than that of the data center's general manager.

But he didn't come to the SOE for the high salary.

"I came to learn, undercover," Zhao Chengdong later recalled. "I wanted to find out: when the vendor starts thinking, does the client actually laugh?"

The answer is: yes, they do. And they laugh loudly.

His next mission was to take this "client perspective" back and once again upgrade the presales and deal-winning capabilities of Chinese B2B companies.

(Photo: Zhao Chengdong hosting an AWS marketing event / Courtesy of Zhao Chengdong)

Chapter 1: From "Working Yourself Sick" to "Methodological Awakening" — A Presales Professional's Self-Rescue

1.1 IBM's First Lesson: All Overtime Pay is Just Medical Bills for the Hospital

Zhao Chengdong's presales career began with a pay cut.

In 2006, he took a salary reduction to join IBM's services division. At the time, he was the General Manager of Product at a listed company, responsible for product marketing across all product lines. Joining IBM meant starting from scratch as a junior presales architect.

"I just wanted to see what that legendary presales system at a multinational company actually looked like."

At IBM, he was stunned by the discipline of the "regular army." Everything had a standard—from sales methodology to client communication skills, even dress code. He absorbed it all like a sponge.

Young, ambitious, and eager to prove himself, he worked tirelessly, often staying late into the night. Within less than a year, as a presales engineer, he won IBM its first non-product services contract with State Grid Corporation of China. It was a breakthrough deal for IBM's services division with State Grid, and it was significant.

But right after the contract was announced, Zhao Chengdong collapsed. He was so ill he couldn't sleep or eat properly, surviving only on soy milk.

Lying in the hospital bed, he wrote a sentence that would become his professional creed, and set it as his computer screensaver:

"All overtime pay is just medical bills for the hospital."

Behind this statement was the awakening of a pragmatist. Zhao Chengdong began to wonder: is there a better way to do presales? Can we win deals not by burning the midnight oil and sacrificing our health, but through other methods and capabilities?

"From that point on, I started seriously thinking about more effective presales methods, rather than treating overtime as the secret to career success. Of course, in the early days, I focused mainly on efficiency methods, not yet on effectiveness."

He would ponder this question for eighteen years.

Before leaving IBM, a casual sales opportunity gave him a major strategic insight into presales.

He was "forced" by an account manager to accompany a bid.

"The RFP had already been issued when we found out about the project. Looking at the content, it was all about the competitor's strengths. I said this is just a formality bid (陪标), I'm not going. But the salesperson wouldn't let it go, and the dispute went all the way up to his boss." Zhao Chengdong recalled. "Finally, his boss said: go and explain to the client why we can't participate. If they understand, then it's settled."

He went. In the client's office, instead of complaining, he pointed to a technical specification in the RFP and said: "This requirement for '99.99% system availability'—based on our calculations, just this one item alone might exceed your budget. Theoretically, there's currently no data center in China that can meet this standard."

The project manager was stunned: "No one told us that. They all said it was no problem!"

Zhao Chengdong then walked through several similar issues. The look in their eyes shifted from confusion to shock, and from shock to trust. The project manager invited him to present to the leadership. Zhao Chengdong agreed, but with one condition: the leader with decision-making authority for the project must be present.

A week later, he was invited to give a presentation to the client's senior leadership, titled "Typical Causes of Failure and the Path to Success for Project X." The meeting room was packed, even the head of HR showed up.

After the meeting, the client's deputy general manager in charge of technology invited him into his office: "If this project were given to you, how would you approach it? Could you be the project manager?"

"From a formality bid to a sole-source deal, it only took one valuable, professional presales conversation," Zhao Chengdong said. "Presales isn't about 'performing'; it's about 'solving problems.' If you help the client discover problems they didn't even know they had, and provide targeted solutions, you win."

This dramatic experience pushed Zhao Chengdong's thinking to a new level: presales isn't just about improving efficiency; it's about investing more effort in strategy to drive sales effectiveness. If presales strategy is sound and capabilities are exceptional, presales can absolutely determine the outcome of a sales opportunity—this experience was solid proof.

1.2 The HP Upgrade: When Presales Has to Teach Sales How to Sell

In 2009, Zhao Chengdong moved from IBM to HP, more than doubling his salary. At HP, he was responsible not only for presales but also for delivering the consulting services portion of projects and overall project management—he was accountable for the entire project lifecycle. This experience further honed his consulting skills and gave him firsthand insight into the significant impact presales has on project delivery and customer success.

But what struck him about this HP division was that its sales management mechanisms were far less systematic than IBM's. Some salespeople lacked professionalism, and often, as a senior presales engineer, Zhao Chengdong had to coach young salespeople on how to win deals.

"At IBM, sales led and presales supported. At this HP division, I found that sometimes presales had to push sales forward."

This misalignment made him realize: the collaboration between sales and presales in Chinese B2B companies is itself a massive structural problem. It led him to deeply contemplate the value proposition and division of labor for the presales role within the entire sales system.

In less than three years, he moved from HP to Cisco, doubling his salary again.

1.3 Cisco's Exploration: Using Consulting Methods for Presales

At Cisco, Zhao Chengdong worked as a management consultant in its consulting division, initially on consulting delivery, and later responsible for both winning deals and executing them. Cisco is a company whose core business is networking products. Figuring out how consulting services could help drive core product sales was a perennial survival question for Cisco's services division, especially its consulting arm.

Cisco China's consulting services division spent decades grappling with this challenge. The