PreSales Collective

What PreSales Collective is

PreSales Collective describes itself as a global community for people in presales roles and anyone who wants to move into one. Presales covers the engineers who work alongside salespeople before a contract is signed: sales engineers, solutions engineers, solutions consultants and similar titles. The community reports more than 50,000 members, with over 16,000 in its Slack workspace.

What the free tier includes

Free membership is open to everyone. According to the community's own overview, it includes:

• Slack access, where members ask questions about discovery, demos, proofs of concept, tools and career moves.
• Weekly virtual events and webinars, with archives you can watch later.
• A bi-weekly newsletter and the blog, which cover the craft of presales work.
• Local meetups in a number of regions.
• A job board focused on presales, solutions and sales engineering roles.

Free versus paid

The paid tiers add private channels and more structured learning. Pro, listed at $175 a year, adds private Pro Slack channels, regional workshops and roundtables. Pro+, listed at $600 a year, adds full access to the enablement courses and, for people who lead teams, the Leadership Collective. You do not need a paid tier to learn what the job is like: the free Slack, events and blog are enough for that.

Why it is useful if you are exploring these roles

Titles in customer-facing engineering are inconsistent, and blog posts often describe an ideal version of the job. Reading how working sales and solutions engineers talk about their week, their targets, their demos and their frustrations gives you a far more honest picture. The job board is also a good way to collect real postings and compare what companies ask for.

How to use it well

• Lurk first. Read the channels about discovery, demos and career changes for a couple of weeks before posting.
• Watch two or three recorded webinars on discovery and demos, and take notes you can use in your own practice calls.
• Collect twenty postings from the job board and sort them by coding, travel and quota.
• When you post, ask specific questions, such as how someone moved from support engineering into a solutions role.

Common questions

Is it only for people already in presales? No. The community explicitly welcomes people who aspire to the role.

Is it useful for forward deployed engineers? Partly. The discovery and demo material transfers well, but the community is centred on presales rather than post-sale engineering.

Best for: engineers exploring solutions or sales engineering who want real practitioners, real postings and free events.