Sales Engineering/Presales in professional services: Is this normal?
I’d like to get some perspective from people who have been in presales for a number of years, especially in professional services / consulting environments.
I joined a professional services company as a presales consultant after previously working as a solutions architect for a number of years. In my previous role, I led major implementations, enhancements, transformation projects, migrations, and support engagements for large enterprise customers in my area of speciality.
The presales role is still within the same specialist area, but the day-to-day work is very different from what I expected.
In practice, we usually have one or two discovery calls with a customer, then break the solution down into milestones, activities, deliverables, effort estimates, required roles, assumptions, dependencies, out-of-scope items, and commercial inputs. We also calculate the effort and discounts directly as part of the proposal process, not only for RFPs.
From there, presales creates the proposal and the customer presentation deck, then presents it back to the customer.
When we are not creating proposals, we are responding to RFPs. In those cases, we effectively act as the bid managers as well. We handle the response content, effort calculations, rate cards, third-party discounts, commercial calculations, managed service estimates, FTE costs, discounts, proposal wording, and the presentation deck for the RFP presentation.
The company does not sell software licences. We only sell professional services, meaning consultants on projects, managed services, advisory work, and similar engagements. Because of that, presales does not do product demos.
POCs are also not handled as presales activity. They are treated as chargeable professional services work.
The challenge I am struggling with is that the role feels like a constant conveyor belt of quick discovery calls, effort calculations, discounting, commercial inputs, proposal creation, customer presentation decks, and RFP responses. We are completely maxed out most of the time, so there is little to no time for vendor training, technical development, or deeper solution work (which management does not seem concerned by, they just want proposals and effort calculations done).
We are also not involved in the post-sales or project delivery side, so there is very little feedback loop once a proposal becomes an actual engagement.
Personally, I feel like I am losing touch with the hands-on and architectural side of my speciality. More importantly, I am concerned that this could become dangerous for my long-term reputation and career, because I am no longer enhancing my skills through real delivery experience or deeper technical exposure.
We also work on fixed salaries with no commission or bonus structure, so the role carries a lot of sales and commercial pressure without the compensation model usually associated with sales roles.
From my past experience working with presales consultants from vendors and other organisations, I always understood presales to involve more solution shaping, technical credibility, customer advisory, demos, POCs, strategic influence, and a proper feedback loop into delivery.
I may be completely wrong, and perhaps this is simply what presales looks like in a services-only organisation. But I would really appreciate honest views from people who have done presales for many years.
Is this normal for presales in professional services, or is this more of a bid/proposal/commercial role being labelled as presales?