Leading PreSales | The Solution Engineering Leadership Show
Jan-Erik Jank & Tim Brömme
Podcast
Two voices. Two perspectives. One goal: making you a better PreSales leader. Leading PreSales is a weekly podcast where Nate Hargrove and Ava Vasquez break down the real challenges of solution engineering leadership — in five minutes or less. Nate brings 12 years of SE leadership experience from enterprise SaaS. He's the pragmatist who's seen it all, led through reorgs and acquisitions, and knows what actually works at scale. Ava brings the builder's perspective — five years of leadership in high-growth Scale-Ups, where she built an SE team from zero to twelve and went from Series B to IPO. She challenges conventional thinking with modern frameworks and a coaching-first mindset. Each episode: one topic, one honest conversation, one practical move you can use the same week. Topics include 1:1 coaching, discovery skills, demo strategy, pipeline management, hiring, retention, and everything else that keeps SE leaders up at night. ⚠️ Full transparency: The voices and characters in this podcast are fictional. The content, frameworks, and experiences are based on real-life SE leadership — informed by years of working with 250+ Solution Engineers across companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zscaler, and more. The conversations are scripted by humans, performed by AI. Produced by SE Rockstars (serockstars.com)
What Am I Actually For? [8]
Gestern•4:47
A six-week-old new hire asked Ava a question she couldn't answer in the moment: if AI does the research, drafts the RFP, handles the standard demo, and now negotiates quotes — what am I actually for? Ava's first answer was good. Nate tells her it's dangerous. Together they land on a better one.
You Were Never Actually In That Deal [7]
Vor 4 Tagen•4:45
One of Nate's SE Directors just lost a deal she was convinced she was winning. Three-vendor shortlist, great demo, champion fired up. Week two — gone. Nate explains why the deal was probably lost before it ever showed up in her pipeline, and what that means for how SE teams should operate.
I Cancelled Every Technical Deep-Dive [6]
Vor 6 Tagen•4:34
Ava pulled her team out of every standard post-demo technical deep-dive. Her team thought she was insane. Win rates went up. In this episode, she tells Nate what triggered it — and Nate pushes back on the 'cancel them all' framing with a sharp point about necessary theater at enterprise scale.