Art of the technical evaluation for presales metrics and AI integration, with Steve Davis

Competition in SaaS has gotten a lot tighter. Especially when it comes to running a strong POCs. A strong POC can be the difference between winning a deal… or losing it to a competitor.

And most of the time, that falls on your Sales Engineers.
Here’s the problem though…
A lot of teams think they’re running a solid technical evaluation.

In reality, they’re just running demos or missing key important aspects and they just don’t know it

I’m bringing in an expert this week: Steve Davis, CEO of Provarity to break this down with me.

Steve has seen it all..from doing it himself.. To building winning team and now to running and building a winning company!

We’re getting into:
→ The difference between running a demo and actually winning the technical evaluation
→ What a strong POC really looks like behind the scenes
→ The KPIs and metrics pre sales teams should actually be tracking
→ What’s changing with AI in pre sales workflows
→ What’s getting harder in the hiring market right now and how to stand out to hiring manager

If you’re a founder, GTM leader, or part of a pre sales team…

This will give you a much clearer picture of what’s actually happening in your deals.

Elite Talent Recruiting helps B2B SaaS leaders hire high performing Pre Sales and Post Sales talent when speed and quality actually matter. 

We are on a mission to prove Pre Sales and Post Sales teams are just as crucial to revenue as offensive linemen are to quarterbacks. 

They accelerate sales, fuel growth, and help SaaS companies win bigger deals faster. 

We build SaaS GTM teams by headhunting top Pre Sales and Post Sales talent and delivering hires in 35 days or less, including Sales Engineers, Solutions Consultants, Solutions Architects, Customer Success, and Technical Account Managers. 

If your team is stretched thin, specialized roles are sitting open too long, or you are scaling fast and need reliable recruiting support that actually moves the needle, we help you hire the kind of talent that drives growth, innovation, and customer success without wasting months in interview chaos.

Check out our website: https://elitetalentrecruiting.io/

Connect with Arvi directly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvi-carkanji/ 

All other resources: https://linktr.ee/elitetalentrecruiting

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

All right. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Pre-Sales Unplugged, the pre-leader or the leadership playbook. I'm Arvi, the founder of Elite Talent, and I work with SaaS companies to help them hire top-tier pre-sales and post-sales talent. But today is not about me. Today really is about the leaders, the that build, the go-to-market teams, and the strategies that actually work in today's market. If this is your first time joining us, one quick note before we jump in. These conversations on live are live and intentionally unedited. So what you hear here today is real and exactly how it happened. We stream it live. You can also catch the replay on our podcasts across Apple, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever it is that you listen from. If you get value from this conversation, make sure to always follow, subscribe, or leave a review. I personally read every single one of them. And today I'm actually being joined by Steve, which is the CEO of Provardi. And correct me if I said that wrong, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

I I should have actually is typically what it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Proverity.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

It comes from the I've heard Latin and Spanish word like prover, which means prove it pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Oh, love that. Okay. Yes. I actually, my apologies. I should have uh practiced that a little bit before we went live. But I'm really excited to have you on today. Obviously, you have a really strong record uh and track record in this space. Uh thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to hear your story and just all the value that you're gonna share today.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, well, happy to be here, Arvi, and uh always, always glad to talk about pre-sales.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Love it. Um, Steve, I'd love to get started. Give if we can give the audience a little bit about you. You know, how did you originally start? How did you even find out about pre-sales? And then, you know, obviously how'd you end up to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, I got into software. I was really lucky. I followed uh a gentleman along who said, you know, I think you'd be a good BDR. You know, I had I've had every role in sales. Um and then I loved the technical side of it. So what I ended up doing, you kind of have two paths from BDR world, and it's whether it's sales, maybe it's sales engineering, maybe it's something completely different marketing. Um, and I like the technical side. So I said, you know what, let me learn the pre-sales uh occupation. And so I followed a couple incredibly tenured and seasoned vets. Um, and I was at a company called PeopleSoft, large ERP company in the 90s. Couldn't have picked a luckier, luckier for me, better place to kind of learn the trade and really enjoyed it and did that for a number of years. I was probably a pre-sales sales engineer, I think probably like seven, eight years. Um from there, I became a technical director and had a bunch of people under me. Um, and then when I uh I had moved around the world, I'd helped start up a couple of different territories. When I moved back to the States, they said, Do you want to make the leap into sales? And at that point in my career, I'd done pre-sales for a while. And I said, Yeah, you know what? Maybe I'll try that side. But the reason I became a pretty successful sales rep was because of my pre-sales background and my technical background. Um, I was able to kind of match value to product features instead of just selling product features. So um that's how I got into it. Yeah, I was from BDR into pre-sales and then just followed some of the smartest pre-sales folks I I've ever met and still have ever met.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Thank you for sharing that. And Steve, I think you're literally my first guest that had their pre-sales career started on the sales side first. Yeah. So I'd actually love to ask you. Um, there's always this like kind of a way, um battle online of like, um, the sales side is harder to learn or the technical side is harder to learn. Yeah. You started in sales, kind of transitioned into technical. What uh how hard was that for you at the time?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yeah, it's all hard. I mean, sales is hard, right? It's a hard job. So um I always it's funny when people ask me, you know, uh the differences between the roles, there's major differences. However, at the end of the day, if you're good, you're still in sales, and sales is hard no matter what. The hardest role I think I've ever had in my life was being a BDR, and that includes being CEO. Like CEO is crazy, it is nonstop. There's everyone wants your time. BDR is brutal, it is the hardest job. And I always try to remember how hard of a job it is. Um, for me, pre-sales, the hard part, of course, is getting up to speed on technical know-how and how technical are you going to get under the covers? I was definitely better. There are people way more technical than me. Um, like a lot of sales engineers, I kind of was better at the business customer side, really good engaging the prospect. Um, so when I gave a demo or I walked through a session, a technical discovery, I always had the customer, their pain points, and kind of the value we were bringing in mind. Where there were other folks who were like, let me build this for you, let me do this. You had to still do that. And that was the harder part for me, learning to, you know, learning Java. You know, I wasn't a computer science guy, right? So you're learning all that stuff depending on what you were selling. Um, and so you had to be, you had to have technical chops, but I was I excelled more at the business strategic sales engineer, trusted advisor side. Um, but you need both. And so I always laugh. Like the people who can do both are very rare. There's a few folks I've met in 30 years who can really like are technical experts and they're great on the business side. I was kind of that typical. It was more 70% better presenter business strategy value and 30% on the technical side, where you you need both. But to answer your question, what's harder? Harder to get into it's all hard. And what ends up happening is when you get into sales for the first time, from either pre-sales or BDR, you realize quickly, wow, I've got to build my own pipeline. And if I don't sell a bunch of deals, I'm going to lose my job.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

That's hard. So getting into it probably pre-sales is hard, learn like hard higher learning curve. Um, but sales at the end of the day is is you lose your job if you don't if you yeah. If you don't sell, if you're great at pre-sales, you can have a job for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. And I think all the VDRs in the world listening to this right now are probably highly heard and valued from what you just said. So um, yeah, I I love that you share that. Um, is there like a habit or routine that's maybe made a bigger impact on your life that you expected?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, I've been doing this for 20 years, this habit. It's really funny, it's ridiculous, especially with the AI world. There should be no need for this. Um, every single day. So I start my, you know, people start with a copy or a tea, um, and I go through my handwritten notes list, this habit, and what it lets me do, it just clears my mind every day. So I'm up pretty early. Um, I'll get my tea, I'll sit down.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Before I jump into my thousand emails, before I do any of that stuff, I look at the list and kind of get it in my head, and then I'll go to the emails calendar and kind of look through the day. Then you try to hit the gym and you try to do this. And of course, if something's blowing up, I'll skip the gym. But you know, um, that habit, somebody um, again, a long time ago, basically said, start your day and get your shit together. Like you can't start on an email. The second you jump into emails, you're like, oh my God, everything's on fire. Like get it together, understand the day, and you're not gonna check everything off your list. It's just not how it works. But for me, it lets me get my house in order, and then I can start off being like, okay, I know what we need to do. So again, this day and a everyone's got their their you know calendars and their notes, and do this. It still helps me to write it down, look at it on my desk. I've got all my electronic stuff, yeah, but I still have this crutch. So it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Listen, I I totally understand. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Love it, love it.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

I'm I'm the same way as you. I need to write it down, um, and you know, and then kind of get into all the technology stuff. So I totally get that. And I agree, I think that it's it's way easier to just kind of like clear your head first, dump all your ideas that you probably forget later, anyways, and then jump into like you know, handling fires and all that that good stuff that comes with every single day.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

100% right. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah. Um, I'd love to just kind of dive right into our topic for today if you're okay with it. But um, most teams think like technical evaluations equals demo. I'd love to know your thoughts of like where does that thinking go wrong? How do you differentiate the two?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah, they're very different. Um, you know, we Proverity, we are uh targeted at enterprise companies, like we deal with complex enterprise companies. Um, small, medium market, uh, fast B2B SaaS sales, demo might be the most important part. Um, and AI has taken over a lot of that. So if you are what we used to call a demo jockey, if you were a pre-sales person and that's all you did, you better learn something else quickly because AI is coming for RFPs, it's coming for demos, it's coming for discovery. The last bastion of what it's really coming for is the complex strategic part of presales or the technical evaluation. So a demo gets the prospect excited and interested. I want to learn more. When you then have to prove out your product in a complex manner to your prospect, you might get into a proof of concept, right? Or proof of value or point of value, like whatever everyone has all these different names, a workshop, a pilot, um, a trial. So depending on that, um, if that's your motion and that's your go-to-market motion, and again, the prospects and customers we talk to, they're all doing POCs. AI is helping get rid of the mundane manual tasks. But the strategic part and how you work through a POC, that is a really um complex part of the process. So demo is used, um, and you're gonna use demos throughout the entire sales cycle for sure, but that's one of the pieces of your technical evaluation that's very different than doing the actual POC. Because when you're doing the actual POC in a demo, you can click around the best and worst parts of and the art of that from a like a great pre-sales person, they know where to click, they know what doesn't look good. Product software products aren't perfect. Um, it's just the way it is, and that's an art. And then when you get into a POC, you're hiding none of that. It's like here's the product, give us your data because the customers we're with the companies we're talking to, they want to use their own data. You know, oh, we want a custom demo. That's great for a while. But if a customer is giving us a couple million dollars, they're like, Yeah, we're not buying that until you test it with our data. So um, very different demo. You need it, it's important, but it isn't often the strategic lever that's gonna get you to the to through through to closing the deal. So and there's all different stages of the technical side of a of a uh sales cycle. So um, but demo is super important, risky. POC is even riskier.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, from what you said, obviously it's like demo still has its place in the sales process, especially if you're enterprise mainly just very slightly the beginning. And then obviously, you know, the technical demo and the POCs are the things that actually help you win the business.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Um, on that end, on the technical evaluation, when that's like fully done right, what is happening behind the scenes? Like, what does a sales engineer need to make sure they hit so that they can do a technical evaluation right?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yeah. Great question. Loaded, right? There's a lot that goes behind it. Um, we could spend a couple hours on that. But the the what they do today and what we want to get them to do is very different. So it what interests me about Proverity, um, I I was talking to our founders and talking to the venture capital folks who back Proverity. They knew my background. They said this is like a great fit for you. And I was shocked that companies are doing POCs the same way they did when I was in SE. Um, it's you know, Excel, it's Google Sheets, it's Slack, it's custom Salesforce objects, it's project management tools, and it's this whole mess. So behind the scenes, you are literally herding cats. You're getting all this data in and knowledge in from a prospect. You put it into a system somewhere, you're communicating back and forth via Slack, that's getting lost. You might be collecting product gaps that goes into a spreadsheet, maybe into Jira. Your product team may get that or not. So you're collecting all of that. You're trying to manage success uh plans. Oh, if we hit this lever, we check it off. And is that working with the prospect? You're trying to manage all these different steps through different products. Um, Excel, Google Sheet, trying to manage and maintain this whole very complex process with 20 different people, right? You've got 10 people in your own company, 10 people at the prospect, and things are getting lost. And what's missing, and these are all a lot of manual tasks, there's not a lot of strategic uh uh initiatives going into this. And what we wanted to bring to the table was do this differently. You know, in two clicks or less, you should be doing all the manual stuff. AI should be doing a lot of that for you. You know, taking gong. We've got this conversation, taking gong, putting that into the notes for you. Like there's no reason to rewrite notes and try to track these things down. But what's really missing is the intelligence. And we're big on the analytic side, and that's why like pre-sales leaders love us. SEs themselves will get in and say this is a healthy POC or not. And it's not just based on their gut, and that's but that's the way it's been done forever. So there is an art to sales, but there's a lot of it that data can show you instead of me saying, Oh, I really think this. I there's a mantra I had an old boss who would say, Yeah, I don't care what you think. What's the data set? You'd be like, Oh, interesting. You know, and and salespeople are famous for that. Well, I think it's gonna close. What's the data tell you? And so what we're trying to do is put intelligence behind the scenes of the POC. We're looking at the health in real time. We're having the analytics for the SC and the pre-sales leaders and the CROs saying, How is this really doing? And so behind the scenes, you're doing all these different tasks and you're trying to keep up with managing a POC. We're trying to take a lot of the manual steps away. So you're really focused on what's important in the POC and what the analytics are telling you what's going on. And that way you can try to win more uh technical evaluations.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

I love that. Um, and besides the technical side, do you have a framework that you guys run by internally of like, you know, this is what a technical evaluation needs to have for uh for it to be considered successful?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah, for sure. And that's the KPIs or the success plan. That's a major part of our software. Um, every company we deal with, all of our customers have super complex success plans. And again, this is enterprise. This isn't like the check mark, hey, we integrated their data. Yeah, that's a step. You know, that's good. And then what did we do with it, right? It it gets super complex. So, yes, we, it's funny, like when we sell our software, we always say you're gonna POC our POC software. And so we have our own success plan depending on who we're working with. And if they are working with their prospect to take in their data, the idea is you need to be intelligent enough and have flexibility to manage all different types of success plans. And that's where things get really complicated. You know, some of our customers have multiple products that they're selling. You've got to be able to handle multiple products at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Tell me a little bit more in depth about your guys' solution. And like, I know you may you made that great comparison of like, hey, we'll take your Nilton Gong and like bring them over here. Give me a couple other more like in-depth of like how does your solution really help benefit you know its customers at this point?

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah, we really look at um the product in two succinct areas. One is the orchestration, which is actually working through a technical evaluation, all the steps that are are needed. Um, and then the analytics side. And the analytics side, we blow the market away. I'll just be, you know, puff out the chest. What we're doing there is groundbreaking. It's really cool. So it mixes classic analytics with integration from data points all over um all over uh an environment, as well as uh what we're doing with the AI within the analytics piece. It's really cool. Um, so the orchestration side is in our product you're managing through. We talked about success plans, um, taking in data from all different sources. A lot of companies can do this, right? You know, if I'm being straightforward, like we do it really well. There's a lot of companies. People are now trying to vibe code their own. Hey, we can do this ourselves. Where that falls down is just like the classic build versus buy. Um, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. You know, we always go back, yep, you can vibe code parts of this. But just like any build versus buy, you have to maintain this. Our job is to work with all of our customers and keep the best features and functions and the know-how in the market in our product. So if you go with Proverity, you're getting the latest and greatest, right? Um, so you have that side of it, the analytic side adds a ton of value. And that's what, again, when when leaders want to use Proverity, they can quickly see what's going wrong, what's happening to their business. That's what they want to see. So those are the two parts of what we do. And then there's a lot of intricacies that go within you know what we're doing in the products, but that's how we look at it because that's how our customers look at it.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah. Yeah, I love that you said that and that you were also transparent about it because nowadays there's always the option of like, yes, I can go build it myself, or I can hire the expert of you know, doing what they're good at. You guys are actually focusing your entire time and attention to make this product good every single day, make it better. What's changing, you know, what's what's happening in the market, AI, how it's evolving, all that good stuff. Versus, like you said, you can vibe code parts of it or you can do it internally. And you know, you'll get an aspect of it, but not the best thing. So there's always values to both. And I think that there's times where companies maybe are at a stage where they might need to just do it internally for a little bit, and then they get to that stage where it's like, now we need Steve and his team to get this done for us.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

So love that. One of the biggest things you mentioned that your product does really well is the analytical side, uh, the analytics. I I think this is like one of the biggest and kind of in a way sexiest topics to talk about is like metrics. What should we track? What should I care about if I'm a leader versus an individual contributor? Um, maybe you can share some industry standards too. That'd be awesome. And then how do I compare myself to industry standards, you know, and things like that as a IC versus a leader?

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah, it's interesting. So pre-sales folks have been really left behind on the analytics side.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Uh, and again, like things we used to look at 20 years ago, they're still looking at, and there it doesn't have the intelligence behind it. It's a lot of gut feel, it's a lot of forecast. Classic is the sales, the sales rep will say this is gonna close. The SC is like, we haven't talked to them in six weeks. It's not gonna close. So, so there again, there's art, but we want more science and more intelligence. So, you know, our customers and they talk to us, the number one metric anyone cares about is technical win percent, right? Now remember there's a difference. So, sales folks will be looking at deals closed, but most pre-sales people aren't closing the deal. And technical win conversion and percent can really tell you a lot about your business. So if you're you're high, you have a high percent win, uh, technical win rate, product's probably pretty good, and your sale, a pre-sales team's probably pretty good, right? And again, a lot more goes into it, but you're doing well on that. If the deal then doesn't close, you might have a pricing problem. Uh, you might have a negotiation legal problem, uh, you might have a value problem because, oh, look, I've got this really cool product, but you know what? It's not enough for me to replace what I have. Um, so it tells you a lot. So our leaders, they look at that, and then all of our data is really focused around how do we get the best data, uh, the best information to our leaders to show them what they need. So technical conversion rate. You asked about SEs. SEs are much more into the tracking of the POC. Um, and pre-sales folks want to look at that as well. Um, so we've got so many metrics around uh the POC health and in real time and what that means. Um, I don't want to get into all the nitty-gritty underneath because that's our secret sauce, but the way we do that, we think is second to none. But that's what they care about at the end of the day, that they've never had access to in real time done for them. It's always been kind of a cut feel. Hey, we haven't talked to this prospect in a while. Hey, there's there's a lot of things going on that I'm not really happy about. Well, we're looking at all the data points and saying, okay, here's here's what's really happening in the POC. And you do it up front, so it's not too Late because a lot of times what happens is, oh yeah, I wish I had known that. And then you lose the deal. And then that affects your technical win conversion rate. So it all plays together, but people are running their business around that on the pre-sale side. There's a million other metrics. At the end of the day, that's what everyone cares about.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

I love that. Do you think it's important maybe you guys help with the solution already in terms of like reverse engineering a lost deal?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Sure. Yeah, you learn way more from a lost deal than you do from a lot deal. I'm not the first person who's ever said that. Um, I wholeheartedly believe that. I can even, you know, personal experience. Uh, I lost a deal when I was a sales rep 20 years ago with American Eagle Outfitters. I don't even if you know who that is, right? They were a huge retailer, um, you know, clothes for, I don't know, kind of the cool kids. It was like teens, 20s, 30s. That was kind of your American Eagle Outfitter. That was their their sweet spot, their ICP. Um, I thought I had won that deal 10 times over. It was like, there's no way we're losing this. And I lost that deal. And it was one of the more painful deals. I hope that guy's still, I know the guy's name still. I hope he's listening. So um, but I didn't, I couldn't see when I was in the deal that I was actually losing. And they were yesing me to, oh yeah, you guys are the oh, everything's great. And I was loving it, eating it up. Oh, we're gonna win. This is a multi-million dollar deal, it's a big deal. And what I you learned from it, and I had a good boss at the time. Um, we deconstructed that for, and it was like a five-month, you know, it was, and I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, oh, yep, yep, yeah, and I'm like, oh my god, if you don't ask the hard questions because you don't want to hear the answer, you're probably losing the deal, right? And so what we do is we try to train pre-sales folks and sales folks, ask the hard questions. Um, you know, and you'll get answers you may not want to hear, but you'll learn them up front, and then you have an ability to write the ship. And again, analytics can help with that. If we're showing you up front this is going awry, ask a hard question now. And uh you usually get an answer. You may not like it, but it's better to get it up front um than to get it later on and lose last. You never want to lose last. And I lost last. I lost yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

I think we've all had those um those things happen. And honestly, it's like kind of like you said, it's sometimes it's the ones that hurt the most, but you learn the most out of it. And you know, you learn to never do it again. And one thing I was gonna add to what you said is like, yes, you may ask them the hard question up front. Maybe you don't get the answer you want to hear. But if you do ask that question up front, maybe you still have a chance to overcome that answer that you got that you didn't like and still have a chance to win, versus, like you said, lose last and like I should have done this, I should have done that. Um, those are always the the biggest things you beat yourself up over.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

So um that's true.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Um, when it comes to like technical win rates, how should a leaders think about that? What is you know strong versus concerning? And maybe you can share some industry stats on that end as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, metrics are different, right? So we have a lot of cyber customers, data platform customers. Um, and we doubt again, it's a much more on the enterprise side. So we have customers who are like 50% technical win rate's great. We have others who are like, that's garbage. We wouldn't go near that. It's got to be between 70 and 80 percent. Question I always ask is okay, whatever the metric is, how many of those deals actually then close? So you got 70% technical win rate. Do you then close 90% of those? And you have companies that say, Yeah, we've got great salespeople and pre-sales. If we get the technical win 70% of the time, we'll close 90% of those deals. We start to look at the data and say, Yeah, we we've got great pre-sales product. We close, we get 70% technical win rate, but we only close about 50% of those deals. The issue often is it was an unqualified deal to begin with. So now you just wasted SE capacity, SE timing, um, you know, pre-sales ability to work on better deals. And so again, the data tells the story. Um, so for metrics, you know, we do see, and it runs again 50%, 80%. Um, but it really depends on how good the product and the pre-sales team is and how well they're trained. That's what we see the 70 to 80 percent versus the 50 to 70. The 50 to 70 tells a different story, and uh typically it means the pro that the deal was never qualified correctly in the first place. Um, and now you've got okay, let and proverity helps you look at that. Like up front, we're looking at like, oh, why was this given to us in the first place? And so that's another big deal, especially for the CRO. Um, we talk to all the time about that. So unqualified deals kill businesses.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah, very true. And obviously, you talk to a ton of leaders, a ton of companies, and you've probably seen it all at this point. Maybe not, there's always something that surprises you down the line.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

But it's well, everything these days, AI is is mind-boggling. The stuff we're able to do in in five to ten days versus 90, it I I mean, none of us is no one's ever seen anything like this. But uh yes, I do feel like I've seen everything, but it's uh AI is pretty mind-boggling.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Yeah. Um, on that aspect, I was gonna ask, is there like a metric that most teams just are not tracking? And it just kind of like blows your mind that even to this day, it's like, how can you not be tracking this at this point?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Yeah, I think it's all the pre-sales metrics. Like that blew my mind when I came to Proverity. Um, they're all looking at technical win conversion rate, obviously, but it's the data underneath, and when they're looking at it, it's always post, it's post-mortem. Like, yeah, because it's too late. Like, you need to look at all of the indicators that lead up to those metrics before it's too late. Um, you know, all of the real-time intelligence that still blows my mind, like this is new. So I'm like, why is this new? But it is. It's just it's always been left aside, pushed aside. The CRO, and I was a CRO for six years. We get all the metrics. It's in Salesforce, whatever I want. I had 8,000 reports, 15 dashboards, and I'd get a metric or two from the pre-sales guy. How are we doing on those? Oh, we're doing well. Okay, great. You know, as a CRO, I'm looking at the bigger picture, that kind of thing. So pre-sales, we've really got it at the, you know, how to run your national or international team, national region team, all of the data. One one metric I philosophically don't agree with, um, and this comes up a lot, and this is it gets religious, um, tracking SE time. I argue uh vehemently against this. And here's why activity-based tracking. So you do want to look at you want to know what people are working on for sure. But do I care if an SE spent five hours on a task and they close no deals versus my top SE who spent 20 minutes on the same task and they closed a million deals? Or your top guy looking at it that way, it's just like it doesn't tell me enough. What is important about activity-based tracking is I want to look at are the SEs um are they are they pulled like in too many directions? Are they stretched too thin? Um, are my top folks working on all the deals and my bottom folks are working on worse deals? Is that the reason? And that's always been the hard thing with an SE. You know, the best SEs work with the best reps. Oh, they close all the deals. However, you might have an SE over here who's incredible, but they're stuck with the lower tier uh AE. And so looking at just their activities, uh the time tracking, I'm like, yeah, that what is that showing me? That they've worked on a ton of RFPs that didn't close again. It's manual mundane work. I want to know the activities within the deal they're working on that are strategic. How much customer time have you had? Are we doing things over Zoom? Is it in person? Like those to me, as a leader, start to tell me a better story than you know, Bob worked on an RFP for six hours last week. Yeah, okay, I guess. Yeah, we need to get Bob off of doing all the RFPs. It's helpful, it's not strategic. And people disagree with that. Like we I will fight with people, but I'd much rather spend, you know, the metrics that are important to me are what is happening within the deal, not how much time am I spending in a deal.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

No, I agree. I think that activity-based tracking tells a part of the story now. Like, for example, like you mentioned, if you have an SE that's not performing, now you can start to layer back all the pieces of like, okay, what is leading to that non-performance? So activity-based tracking can tell you part of that story. And kind of like you said, it's maybe they're not performing because they're not a good SE. Maybe they're just stuck doing these tasks that are not necessarily what he should be focused on, or the AE they're paired with is not great. And now you can use that to tweak things, you know, to make that SE or take things away, or like you said, you know, if the if the team is stretched in now, okay, let's figure that out. But I mean, I'm I'm of the same opinion there where and not just, you know, I'm I'm saying this obviously on the SC perspective, but I think this goes to any business activity in general, um, where it doesn't necessarily tell you what is happening and why that thing happened. It's just more like it's part of the story. It helps you um, you know, dig into the layers and figure out the true reason from there. But yeah, I think you explained it very well. And I guess I'm also surprised that people still don't agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, lots. Uh, there's a lot. And what ends up happening, and and it's typically hated by SC teams. It's like big brother tracking. Like leaders love it. I can see their old team, I can look at every activity. Um, the SCs hate it, right? They just want to do their job. And and so it's a it's a funny uh cultural uh part as well of the company.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Well, I think at that point they might feel micromanaged, you know, and it's like there you have the leaders that don't want to micromanage, but they're still doing it. So then, you know, it becomes like a whole bit cultural thing. So that makes a lot of sense. Um, and I you mentioned when you were a CRO, you get like thousands of these reports for sales, you know, et cetera. And then two or three maybe metrics on the pre-sales. How do you tie pre-sales to just revenue generating activity? What are either reports or things that you think if this maybe there's a CRO right now that's listening to this and is like, I'm in that same spot. How do I tie that to my revenue?

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, it's interesting. And things are starting to change for pre-sales. Like it's having its moment, it's just starting. The moment hasn't fully come yet. But you know, pre-sales tools, if if you know our leaders we work with want to buy tools, they're still going through the CRO, they're still going through the VP of RevOps. They very rarely have their own budget uh for tools. So that's number one, and that's got to change. Um, and and when they fully, when they fully have their moment, they'll have their own budget for this. Um, what we do, and and we've got years and years of pre-sales expertise, approverity. Everyone I try to hire has that background somewhere um in their past. We're trying to expose the data to a CRO that they would want, which is, you know, how is my forecast impacted? Right? Start there. So some of the metrics that we work with, you know, we talk to the CRO, um, they're like, yeah, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care. They care, but they really care if their forecast is messed up. So if we're giving them data that's giving uh increasing their forecast accuracy, that's huge. Then they'll start to care more, right? And there's a number of ways to do that looking at all the data we collect. Um, another one, you know, when you talk to CROs, they've got their classic dashboard, you know, and it's it's revenue and cost. That's what it sort of boils down to. And then you have your 8,000 reports underneath. So, how is this affecting my cost? Give them that data. That's what they care about. Forecast, accuracy. How is this affecting my cost? If you can take you know, the 100 reports we're going to give you and boil it down to that and integrate it directly into Salesforce. They're not they, you know, CROs aren't using Proverity, they're using all the data that comes from Proverity. Um, the last thing a CRO wants or needs is another tool. You know, whether it's Salesforce and Salesforce and Clary, Salesforce and Exactly, whatever forecasting tool you're using, um the data has to supplement that data and make it smarter. And that's what we're trying to, when we work with uh pre-sales leaders, like give them the information they want. That's what they want.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah. Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you, do you feel like you guys do a lot of um teaching in a way to CROs of like the value of this data and how it you know leads to the bottom line revenue? Yeah. Because I feel like when you say like they say I don't care, I think it's just maybe lack of knowledge of how that relates to bottom line revenue.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah, I was a little flippant there. They care, they care. Yeah, yeah. It depends on the business. Um, but yes, we talk to CROs, and it's not in a siloed approach. It's you guys are one business and you all have the same goals. You're all trying to hit revenue targets as a company, as a region, as a as a team. Um, and in order to do that, we're here to help you because on the technical evaluation side, you know, this is what kills quarters, right? Technical evaluations make or break quarters. We talk about that all the time. So when I talk to a CRO after being one, I'm like, what killed or made my quarter was how well we did on the technical evaluation side. If we can't win that, we would, you know, if we can't win the technical evaluation or get selected there, we wouldn't make our number, right? Which was worse was when someone said this is closing and it doesn't, because then it was forecasted and potentially committed. And you're now like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what just happened? You committed that deal, and now it slipped. Well, it slipped, we didn't know, and uh all the same excuses that everybody's had for a million years. So um that's when we talked to CROs like technical evaluations make or break your quarters if you're not thinking that way, you're you have a blind spot.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Yeah, and I think you guys also have a unique perspective in the sense of what you said, like you teach how to do POCs, but like you're also running them yourself, too. So you can literally speak from first hand experience on that end.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

All of us, and all of us have been in pre-sales at some point. We're like, this is what we hated about it, this is what we liked about it. Yeah, there wasn't much to like. And and and the other thing we talked to CROs about is you know, uh, as a CRO, I did this. I was like, we're not doing POCs, run away from that.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

They elongate the sales cycle, they're too risky. But I had a competitor who was able to do them and they kicked our ass. Right? Because they were like, no, test our product, our product's way better than theirs. And the reason they won't POC their product is because it's not as good as ours. Yeah, they had figured out a way to do lightweight, heavyweight, whatever it was they were willing to do it. We weren't, and it killed us. It killed us. So now I talk to a CRO and they say every, you know, eight out of ten. Uh we don't do POCs. And I always ask why. Why can't we do them? Oh, they elongate the sales cycle, they're too risky. They elongate the sales cycle because you're not managing them properly.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Manage and orchestrate them properly, you can do a POC and use that as an advantage against your competitors.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Um, you mentioned we talked slightly about AI, a couple of different aspects of it. What parts of the workflow um, you know, do you think realistically AI can replace?

SPEAKER_00 38:14

So for the pre-sales workflow, I just had this discussion on Monday with a different group of pre-sales leaders. Um AI is coming for different aspects of the pre-sales job, right? The parts that it won't ever replace, in my opinion, is the highly complex strategic. So, for instance, if you look at kind of a pre-sales start-to-finish process, and you might stop with start with the RFP comes in. There's got to be a hundred RFP tools out there that are AI-based, that which is great because RFPs are horrible to work with, um, that can take AI can do that job. The RFP create, no one wants to work on it. It's not strategic typically. A lot of times your column fodder, AI is doing a great job. There are a lot of tools that do that. After RFP, yep, we're a we're a finalist, you know, we're down to three or four or five. Now we go into demo world. Well, AI is starting to do what we used to call the buy-in demo. Um, here's the original demo. You want to see it? Send you this. What are you interested in? Consensus is a partner of ours. Consensus does a great job of this. Oh, I've got a demo, I've got a set of demos they want to see. Um, based on, you know, you put in a few things. Here are the videos you you should look at. Great buy-in top of level, like, yes, I'm interested. I want to learn more. Then you get into a little bit of the deeper dive or discovery, technical discovery. That's typically going to be human for now, but AI-led eventually. Um, you'll have some avatar walking you through the steps until the person's like, Can I talk to a human, please? You know, one of those. But AI is going to help there tremendously. Um, the best part of special is like Gong and Zoom. You have the recordings, take the contextual information and throw it into your system. So, you know, granole notes, all of that stuff. That's you know, all the AI and software that's that's working on technical discovery, super helpful. Then you get into more of the complex, harder demo, and you're starting like AI can do some of it, but you're still gonna need a person to figure out, okay, what exactly is needed. And then you get into the POC side. And right now, for us, the AI piece is getting rid of the manual tasks, but not the strategic part. And that's kind of where we see it. Then there's product gap analysis and post-sales analysis, and we're trying to send that information over to the right groups, and there's a lot of products on that side. So, you know, what gives us like a massive opportunity and advantage as Proverity really focused on that one piece is I think it's the last part that AI is going to come from, uh, come for uh uh like holistically. You know, five years from now, is it doing everything? Maybe, you know, who knows? I don't think I'm a big believer in human in the loop. Um, I think AI has its piece and its part. We're an AI native platform. You know, we rebuilt our platform because I felt plugging an AI agent on top of a traditional architecture was no longer good enough. And you know, Proverity's been around four years. We have great knowledge of what the market wants, great product feature. But if it's in an older, antiquated architecture, you're gonna get caught up eventually and like we can't keep up. So we rebuilt it from scratch, took all the knowledge we had, all our customers' great uh uh information, and then built uh instincts is the name of the product, which is an AI native proverity, uh, sorry, an AI native pre-sales platform.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely very interesting to see where we're gonna go in the next five years and how things change.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

In the next 18 months. I it's like every week, yeah. Everything's like, oh, you know, cloud code. So you look at cloud code, cloud code like six weeks ago, we're doing different things than we are today. I it's it's great.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Yeah, it's pretty insane for sure. Um, but I do agree as well with what you said that the human aspect of it is still very important. I actually had uh Ben Hills, I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, the uh co-founder or founder of Iris AI, and he's uh they they do an RFP like AI product. And um, I mean they've just they are hold in that hole, but like their most important go-to-market strategy is like community, like being in person with team members and seeing and getting to know people. A lot of their prospects come that way.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

So they do that as well as anyone, yeah. It's a it's a good company. Ben's a good guy, they do that uh as as well as everyone. They are out there, they're they're yeah, trying to do every event. It's it's a it's it's a uh it's a smart approach to get your name out there in the market for a small company for sure.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

For sure. Yeah, and it's just I mean, that I think it just goes to show me they're an AI first product, just kind of like you guys are, but the human aspect of it is just as much there as AI is there.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

So yeah, I think too. Uh, and I'm a firm believer, like everything comes full circle. You know, the cost of doing events was always the reason a lot of companies stopped doing them for us. If I look at the uh plethora of digital nonsense that I get in my mailbox and all stuff, and you it's really hard to cut through the noise. And so we're now back to doing in-person events. You know, we're focused a little bit differently than they are. Um, we've partnered with them before on events last year. It's great for the SC community. Um, a lot of our events are are are really focused at leaders. Um, but yeah, the SC community, pre-sales collective, solution executives. Um, there's just a lot of these out there and they're great. It's great for pre-sales.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And with that being said, I think it's a great way to kind of segue into my next kind of section here of. You know, shocking. We're going to talk about hiring because I'm a recruiter as well, right? But um, I'd love to know your perspective. I think the job market has, you probably heard of it too from you know, people that are looking for jobs right now. Yes, it's really hard. But I'd love to know your perspective of like what's been challenging for you as a hiring manager in this job market, you know, with VAI with all these tools and everything out there. What's been challenging for you guys finding top talent?

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Yeah, I think it's always pre-sales is really hard to hire. Um, I'm super particular too about it. It's terrible because I'm biased of like what works. Um, but pre-sales, the the challenge is in this day and age, how do you find someone who's as good? This has always been the challenge, as good technically as they are in front of the prospect as they are strategically and business-wise. These days, I think it's even harder now trying to keep up with the latest and greatest than AI. So, you know, we did an interview a couple weeks ago with someone, and they were like, Yeah, I vibe coded an entire product and this, that, and the other thing. I'm like, show me it, bring it, you know, talk me through it. They were great at talking through what they built, but there's no value, no. So I kept trying to ask, so why did you build this? Oh, it makes my life easier. Okay, great. How many hours does it save? I don't know. A couple, yeah. And I kept going, yeah, so this is great. You're a tool person, so that's valuable, but I don't know if that's strategic enough, right? And so it's the hardest part with iron pre-sales, it's always been this way, but the bigger challenge now is with the rate of change with AI. It's how does a pre-sales person keep up with the latest technology that's changing every week?

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Yeah. And I I think, I mean, I I mentioned it, nobody's picked up on this yet. I mean, I've heard you say strategy and strategic a lot throughout our interview. And clearly that's very important, especially nowadays. Like you said, there's so much noise out there. So, how can we strategize? And what is it that we're doing that actually leads to, you know, again, bottom line revenue? What is the strategy that takes us there? So anybody listening to this and wants to, you know, stand out in front of Steve, I think the key word here is strategy. You know, what is it that what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Yeah, that I always tell, like, you know, and this is important. Again, it's been all from you know, great mentors I've had. I've had a really lucky career. I followed a lot of smart people, a lot of great companies. At the end of the day, as much as things change, it's it still comes down to do we help your business enough to warrant you purchasing our software? I mean, that that's so you have the status quo, yeah. You know what? We can see it's not great. We're band-aided and it's all tied together and it's Excel and Slack. And it, but you know what, it works. Okay, then we didn't prove our value.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah, very true.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

And that means a lot of different things, but um, it still comes down to that. Sales still comes down to, you know, are you offering enough value to replace either what you have or your current status quo process?

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Yeah, and I do think that sales has become more of a value selling nowadays than it was probably ever before with everything else that's out there. So that's the yeah, that's true. Um, you know, I I think I have an idea how you're gonna approach this question, but in your eyes, what separates like an eight-player SE versus like a good SC?

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Yeah, you know the answer. So it's it's it's the blend. Like the the best SCs I've worked with were able to blend. Um, yeah, I'll give you one like one you know, subtlety when you when you talk to candidates and when I talk to candidates, I want to know what questions they are going to ask the prospect. A lot of SCs, and I I ran into this too in my earlier career as an SC. I'm the smartest guy in the room. I want to just show off, and here's my demo, and look at all these feature functions and blah blah blah, right? Yeah, best SEs are qualifying as they're demoing, they're asking questions as they're demoing. So it doesn't look like I'm asking a question. It's just part of the conversation. That's the art, and that's that's separating like an SEA player is able to have a conversation while differentiating your product while showing the solution, um, without the prospect even knowing they're doing discovery questions and like that kind of thing. So those are the A players. Um, and I always talk about, like you said, strategy business stuff, but it's both technical questions and it's business questions without stepping on the toes of the salesperson. Like you're not asking pricing questions, you're not asking about legal and procurement, you're not asking about who else do we need to talk to, like, but you're asking, how would you use this? What do you use today? What don't you like about what you're using today? Right? Could you see yourself doing this process this way? You know, and is this important to you? I'm showing this. This is what like it's little, subtle things, and those are the people you're like, okay, these guys get it.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I want to peel the layer one more, you know, backwards and ask before we get to talking to you, what are you looking for? You know, obviously we know right now you'll post the job out there and then you'll probably get flooded with, I don't know, 500 applications. Um, half of them are AI that just auto-applied for you. But what are you looking at? If you look at that quote unquote piece of paper on the computer, what are you looking at that stand outs to you that stands out to you nowadays that will say, hey, let me talk to this person?

SPEAKER_00 49:42

Yeah, I'll tell you the number one thing that jumps out where I it goes in the trash, right? I am not interested in talking to jumpers. So if I see a resume and it's one year, two years, one year, two years, one year, two years, two years, one year, there's a problem.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

And it's just right in the trash. And look, I'm not telling people to do or not to do that. Um, the only time I'll maybe make an exception is if it's like was acquired, was acquired, was acquired. Like, okay, that's typically out of your hands. So I'll look at that. Yeah, but if it's there's no acquisition involved, and there was just jump that it's the number one thing, and I've learned that the hard way. And you hire a jumper, expect a jumper. Like, oh, I can't believe they left. I'm like, really? They were they've never been anywhere more than two years. What do you mean you're you're shocked they left? Yeah, yeah. That's the number one thing, and then you know, things I look for. Um I love I it's it can be rare. I love resumes that show me that do both start, you know, big company and startup experience. That's a that's a plus. So I know they know how you know they can talk to a big company, they can work within a startup environment, which is wildly different. Um, I do like that a lot. Uh, but again, it's it can be rare to find.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Yeah. Question for you, Steve. Do you care? Um, this is actually a question that a lot of leaders kind of I've had both perspectives, and I think it's just, you know, depending on your personality too. But how much do you care about their LinkedIn profile if it's updated, if it exactly matches the resume or not?

SPEAKER_00 51:20

Yeah, I think it's exactly match. It doesn't have to exactly match what it does when there's conflicts, like real conflicts, like this says the years you were here is at this company, this says something's wrong. That is a huge red flag. You know, they have different words for like I did this here, I did this here. As long as there aren't discrepancies that are major, then it can it doesn't have to match word for word. But I I mean we've we've seen that a lot. I mean, we had one guy who said he went to MIT, and then on his on his LinkedIn, it was MIT, on his resume, it wasn't MIT. So then I asked, I was like, Did did you take a course at MIT or did you go to MIT? That's a big difference. Oh well, it was more of a course. I'm like, I don't trust anything you're saying because he had written MIT like he went, and everyone like look, people like you want to take an executive course, that's great. Go to MIT, like that's awesome. Just put put put whatever. But if you're gonna lie, make sure you don't match it. So ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Uh that that's that quickly. That ended quickly.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Yeah, you know, I'm I'm of the same belief of like nowadays, it's not that I feel like I I think a lot of uh people that are looking for jobs right now think that hiring managers have like really intense requirements. And every time I talk to hiring managers, it's not about intense requirements, it's more like, are you communicating? Do you have the technical skill set I need? Like you said, is everything matching? You know, are you lying? You're not lying, and are you doing something that stands out to me? Yep. And last but not least, you know, are you a job hopper? You know, are you jumping from everywhere? And then obviously, does the culture fit? It's very foundational stuff that honestly just has not changed in hiring. But for some reason, job seekers think that there's more to that.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

The real, I mean, the found if you can't so here's what I would I always tell candidates if you can't get beyond the foundational stuff, yeah, then you're never gonna get to the hard requirements. And we have hard requirements, like a lot of companies do, but we absolutely start with the foundational. And if because if that that's my benchmark, that that that's like here's the benchmark. If you can't get to here, you're not getting to the second and third interviews.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Right, right. No, absolutely agree. Cool. How um how can people find you, Steve? If somebody's looking right now, what what can they do? How can they reach out to you or maybe the team if it's not you directly?

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Yeah, I mean, LinkedIn's probably the easiest. I am inundated on LinkedIn, but um, reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can go to our website as well. Um, you can go to the Proverity LinkedIn account. Um, but those are the three easiest. Uh, people want to email me, they can do that. I know that's old school now. But uh yeah, LinkedIn's probably the easiest either on my page or the Proverity page. But yeah, I would love to chat with folks.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

Cool. Yeah, it's crazy that we think email is old school now.

SPEAKER_02 54:17

It is yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you for sharing all of your insights, your value, and just being super transparent. Uh, this was pretty awesome. I appreciate you joining and you know taking the time to walk through it with me. So much notes to take from this episode. Honestly, this was like very well rounded, all the way from like leadership to like IC roles. There's something anybody can take from this. Uh, for those of you watching live, thank you for joining. Or if you're catching the replay later, make sure to connect with Steve or drop any questions in the comment. I still keep eyes on them. And of course, you know, I'll link his LinkedIn profile as well on our show notes so that you guys can make it easier to find him. Uh, but yeah, thank you again. I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

RV, pleasure being here, and uh, thanks for having me.