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Presales is the most awkward role in a technology company. Sales sees presales as technical staff; R&D and after-sales see presales as commercial staff—definitely not technical. This creates a thorny challenge for performance evaluation and incentives: Should presales be assessed based on the nature of a sales role or a technical role?
Many managers either don't realize that proactive presales can significantly boost win rates, or they deliberately choose to ignore it. As a result, presales teams lack motivation.McKinsey published an article in the Harvard Business Review stating: It's time to focus on presales to improve sales performance! Companies with excellent presales teams can maintain win rates between 40% and 50%.
Once we recognize the immense value of presales, figuring out how to evaluate performance fairly and effectively becomes an even bigger challenge! I've personally experienced over 10 different evaluation models, each with its own pros and cons. The right choice depends on the company's specific stage and circumstances. Our recent PresalesChina Community (售前青云荟) executive closed-door sessions have all centered on presales evaluation and incentives, sparking deep and intense discussions!
But regardless of the approach, companies must honor their commitments. Performance bonuses shouldn't be revoked on a whim! The people who make such policies are not only incompetent but foolish! Think about it—after a policy like that, would capable people still be willing to go the extra mile? How do they expect this year's targets to be met?I remember over 20 years ago, when I was a Business Unit General Manager at a company, a newly appointed (parachuted-in) CEO required all business units to sign performance assessment responsibility agreements. A question occurred to me, so I quickly asked him: "If our division exceeds its targets, but the company as a whole doesn't meet its overall targets, would we still receive our performance bonuses?" He replied, "How could that be possible? If the company's overall targets aren't met, there's no money to pay you bonuses!"
Well then, thank you for your candor. I soon left that great company!
At the time, I thought I'd encountered a truly bizarre professional manager. But looking at the behavior of some of today's corporate management, they're even worse than that candid oddball!
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Adithya is the Head of RevOps, Revenue Management and Growth at Everstage, a sales commission automation platform. Previously, he spent 5 years at Freshworks, where he led RevOps for global partners and the rest-of-world markets.
Let me start this blog by saying that I can be absolved of all responsibility if I get this wrong. As a career business operations professional, one of the hardest things in compensation management is crafting an ideal presales compensation plan that everyone agrees on.
Most of my experience comes from working at Freshworks, a unicorn startup that now has over 400 SEs. During my time there, I built and experimented with SE compensation plans from scratch, scaling from small teams of 5-10 people up to SE teams of 70.
Every 6 months, we would revisit the topic to see how we could create a fair evaluation and incentive plan for SEs.
If you're new to this, let me explain why this is generally an almost impossible problem to solve.
