How Should B2B Companies Manage Their Presales Solutions Teams?

In B2B companies, managing a presales solutions team is one of the most perplexing—and frankly, awkward—challenges for executives and presales leaders. It often feels like a "chicken rib" problem: not enough meat to matter, but too much to throw away. Consider the paradox:

Is the presales solutions department critical? Not really. For business development, it's less important than sales; for technology, it's less important than R&D.
But is it unimportant? Absolutely not. The moment any presales engineer drops the ball, a deal that sales has painstakingly pursued is lost.
Manage them as technical staff? They're directly involved in sales. If you don't tie their performance to sales targets, you worry they won't push hard enough.
Manage them as salespeople? Their impact on sales isn't that direct. Hold them to sales quotas, and they might all quit.

We won't rehash the strategic value of presales solutions here—you can read this article to understand our research findings.

The B2B Deal-Winning Playbook Even McKinsey Is Watching—How Much Do You Know?

For the direct supervisors, team leads, and managers of presales solutions departments, the challenges are often these:

1. No Management Training or Enablement

80% of presales managers got promoted because they excelled as presales engineers—the company took its "best presales person" and made them a manager or director. But fighting and leading troops in battle are completely different skills. The company provides no management training whatsoever, let alone guidance on running a presales department—a unique unit that lacks a clear value proposition internally and sits at the crossroads of sales and technology.

2. Stuck in "Firefighter" Mode

Many presales managers are "managers" in title only. In practice, they're still super-presales engineers, deeply involved in major deals, or jumping in to rescue opportunities when subordinates underperform. They spend little time actually managing or leading—most of it is putting out fires.

3. Caught Between Demanding Sales and Reluctant Subordinates

On one side, they face sales' insatiable demands for presales resources and complaints about performance. On the other, they lack the carrot-and-stick power to motivate. They're left cajoling and coaxing disengaged team members to get the work done. It's like the old Chinese saying: a mouse in a bellows—squeezed from both ends!

4. Dual Reporting Lines, Serving Two Masters

Many presales managers report to both a sales leader (e.g., local sales manager) and a technical leader (e.g., presales director). These executives have vastly different—sometimes completely contradictory—priorities and KPIs. The presales manager is often left paralyzed, not knowing whose goals to serve.

5. All Demands, No Resources

Beyond shouldering increasingly unattainable sales targets, any customer-facing technical work in the company is immediately dumped on the presales team—for free. The company won't hire another presales engineer, won't invest a dime in training, yet expects flawless execution. And when things go wrong, presales is the first to take the blame.

Someone even compiled a list of the "Ten Have-Nots" that presales managers and directors face—a stark and all-too-relatable reality:

1. No "People": The company gives you only 10 headcount to cover 300 key accounts.

2. No "Money": Your budget gets siphoned off by sales managers for channel rebates. Training, POC equipment, and travel expenses are always on the chopping block.

3. No "Authority": Sales can pull your people away for emergencies with a single sentence, and you can't say no.

4. No "Weapons": Product development can't keep up with customer needs, so you're fighting hard battles with nothing but PowerPoint decks.

5. No "Path": Customer procurement is locked down by compliance, bidding, and budget constraints—there's no fast track to a win.

6. No "Metrics": When the boss asks, "How much revenue did presales contribute this year?" all you can say is "helped close 200 million RMB"—with no metrics or data to prove your value.

7. No "Cards": Competitors win deals with low prices and kickbacks, and you can't quantify your technical superiority.

8. No "Voice": In internal meetings, presales leaders always speak after sales, product, and marketing—if they get a chance to speak at all.

9. No "Recognition": Customers remember the sales rep, not the presales team burning the midnight oil to craft the solution.

10. No "Stability": 70% of your team is new hires, turnover is through the roof, and you're putting out fires every single day.

Facing these ten ambushes, traditional "motivational pep talks" and "scattered tips" won't cut it. You need a systematic, repeatable, and executable playbook.

The World's Only Presales Management Book: Here to Help You

John Care, author of "Mastering Technical Sales: The Presales Way" (售前之道), teamed up with presales executive Chris Daly to co-author "The Sales Engineer Manager's Handbook" (published 2020). Drawing on their experience as presales leaders at globally renowned companies, this book offers a lifeline to professionals struggling in presales manager and director roles. It is the only known book in the world written specifically for presales managers and published for public distribution.

You can find it on Amazon, though it's currently sold out and out of print:

https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Engineer-Managers-Handbook-Mastering/dp/B087FFMMBW/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Fam4otWQnZDzOf9tJGwT5gKmqoirST4lsd6oOsiXLttmJDhM1JeOWkuQzMj-w-cG4Nmj7_zMoqJ5FrZNpdwoS39E7xIuxPuLzMRMCOKrN75p9ROgT49popIH0eUs7pb5sKaxBbHlcThxHQUrqz4LY6SPKhWQg1JsInwfAC1uLCUshI396VE91Umrg-eflxzglx-cPmCQnslqJMgrcj9BXXV47_bsrdBByRXw-fKn9QE.X3ENlJAMw1LtfQAQ1nL7slbY8FXPH5woqSodsb5htAQ&qid=1754700889&sr=8-1