Define a first presales leader around the technical buying journey and the team needed to support it. Clarify whether the person will primarily handle complex opportunities, build a presales function, or do both.
Do not use a leadership title to conceal a fully individual-contributor role without time or authority to build the function.
Map the customer journey
| Stage | Ownership to clarify |
|---|---|
| Discovery | Who establishes the technical and workflow requirements? |
| Demonstration | Who connects capabilities to the buyer’s problem? |
| Evaluation | Who defines success and bounds the technical trial? |
| Security and architecture questions | Which specialists provide approved answers? |
| Commercial decision | What belongs to sales? |
| Delivery handoff | What must implementation teams receive? |
Presales should not promise product capabilities or delivery work that the relevant owners have not approved.
Define the leadership work
Specify hiring, coaching, evaluation design, demo quality, knowledge management, and coordination with product. Decide how much direct customer work remains.
A leader cannot improve the operating model if every hour is consumed by urgent demonstrations. Set a mechanism for prioritizing support and escalating requests that exceed capacity.
Assess both customer judgment and team judgment
Use a fictional opportunity in which the buyer requests a broad proof of concept without clear success criteria. Ask the candidate to narrow the evaluation, identify decision owners, and explain what should happen before committing resources.
Then ask how they would coach a teammate who responds by promising every requested feature.
Look for commercial awareness, technical credibility, and a practical boundary around commitments.
Inspect past contribution
Ask what the candidate personally improved: evaluation quality, team capability, handoff clarity, or another concrete responsibility. Separate their work from the company’s overall sales results.
Do not require private customer identities or confidential deal terms.
Set an early operating outcome
An initial mandate might establish a consistent evaluation process and a clear handoff to delivery. Define the evidence that those changes are being used, alongside role-specific commercial expectations.
Use the FDE versus solutions engineer comparison and forward-deployed strategy guide. Discuss a technical GTM leadership search with Refery.