Presales Manager
About the role:
The Presales Manager plays a critical role in supporting revenue growth by aligning customer needs with the organization’s solutions and capabilities. This role acts as the central coordinator for presales activities, ensuring opportunities are properly qualified, resourced, and progressed with high-quality deliverables. The Presales Manager partners closely with Sales, Consulting, Technical teams, and Leadership to shape winning strategies, develop compelling proposals, and maintain operational discipline across the presale’s lifecycle.
Key Responsibilities
Presales Intake & Resource Allocation
- Review incoming presales requests and assess scope, complexity, timeline, and required expertise.
- Assign the best-fit consultants or technical specialists to support RFIs, RFPs, demos, discovery workshops, and scoping sessions.
- Balance resource utilization to prevent overallocation while ensuring priority opportunities receive appropriate support.
- Maintain a forward-looking view of presales demand to proactively plan staffing.
Opportunity Support & Solution Shaping
- Develop a strong understanding of each opportunity, including customer drivers, success criteria, competitive landscape, and risks.
- Partner with Sales Executives in customer meetings to provide solution credibility, discuss implementation strategy, and guide conversations toward viable outcomes.
- Support the development of indicative pricing, high-level scope, implementation approach, and phased delivery strategies.
- Identify assumptions, dependencies, and potential risks early to improve deal quality and delivery readiness.
Proposal & SOW Development
- Collaborate with Sales as opportunities mature to refine proposals and Statements of Work (SOWs).
- Ensure scope, pricing, timelines, and deliverables are accurate, aligned to customer expectations, and achievable by delivery teams.
- Respond to customer questions related to scope, commercials, and approach with clarity and consistency.
- Drive version control and maintain high standards for professionalism and quality across all presale’s artifacts.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Act as the primary liaison between Sales and internal teams, including consulting, technical specialists, product leaders, and management.
- Facilitate internal discussions for complex opportunities, custom requirements, or non-standard commercial models.
- Consolidate feedback and translate technical input into clear, customer-ready messaging.
- Escalate risks or constraints early to support informed decision-making.
Presales Operations & Governance
- Own and manage the internal presales pipeline and resourcing tracker.
- Prioritize requests based on strategic value, revenue potential, timelines, and resource availability.
- Ensure equitable distribution of opportunities across the team to support skill development and growth.
- Implement structured processes that improve responsiveness, transparency, and predictability in presales execution.
- Continuously evaluate presales workflows and recommend improvements to increase efficiency and win rates.
Key Skills:
- Strong commercial acumen with the ability to balance customer needs and delivery feasibility.
- Exceptional organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple concurrent opportunities.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
- Ability to translate complex requirements into structured, solution-oriented proposals.
- Strategic thinker with strong problem-solving capabilities.
- High attention to detail while maintaining a big-picture view of opportunity health.
- Collaborative leadership style with the confidence to influence without direct authority.