Most conversations about Solution Engineering assume one vantage point: you work for the software vendor. You own a product, a quota carries the deal, and you hand off to services after the sign. But there's another side of the table that rarely gets examined — the implementation partner. And the differences aren't cosmetic. They change what "good" PreSales looks like, how honesty gets rewarded, and where the value will sit when AI finishes reshaping the market.
Here's what the partner perspective teaches, drawn from a mid-sized Adobe and AWS partner that builds digital experience platforms for enterprise clients.
PreSales Consultants Who Also Deliver
The first structural choice a partner makes is whether PreSales is a pure sales function or something closer to consulting. There are two schools of thought, and they lead to very different teams.
One model builds a dedicated PreSales unit staffed only by people who sell — sharp presenters, strong storytellers, kept separate from delivery. The logic: the people who implement projects aren't always the most persuasive in front of a customer. They think in problems and constraints, not conviction.
The other model — the one worth studying here — refuses to let PreSales become a room of "demo and PowerPoint jockeys." A small core PreSales group (three people) sits inside the customer experience unit and stays involved in real projects. They don't just know the sandbox and the slides. They know what actually works, what breaks, and where the traps are. When an opportunity comes in, they pull in specialists from the wider consulting bench depending on the topic — personalization, data, forms management, marketing automation. Nobody knows everything, so the team assembles the right expertise per deal.
The trade-off is real. Delivery-grounded SEs sometimes lack the persuasive edge of a pure seller. But they buy something more valuable: credibility. When they say "yes, that works," the customer believes it — because the same organization will have to make it true.
The Honesty Constraint Is a Feature
There's an old sales joke: the customer asks a question, and the rep answers "Yes, of course — what was your question again?" It's funny because it's common. And it's exactly what a partner playing a long game cannot afford.
A vendor SE often enjoys a quiet advantage: because commission depends less directly on any single deal closing, they can afford a more neutral read. They can look at a shaky opportunity and privately think, please just delete this one. A partner whose entire business model rests on repeat delivery has that same neutrality baked in structurally — as long as it isn't driven by the quarter.
This is the core of the trusted-advisor idea, and it's worth being precise about it. Trust plus advisor means a person or firm that accompanies a customer over a long horizon. That relationship sits above any short-term win. It survives a partner leaving and coming back, a project pausing and restarting.
The enemy of that relationship is quarter-end pressure. "We have three days left, we need to close, so let's do X" is precisely the behavior that erodes trust. Owner-led and not investor-driven, the partner can optimize for the relationship instead of the fiscal calendar. No faked, pre-recorded demos that look great and then can't actually run. That discipline is the product.
Takeaway for vendor SEs: you often have more permission to be honest than you use. Spend it. A clean "this won't work the way you want" is worth more to your win rate over years than a rescued forecast this quarter.
Where Partner and Vendor Collide
Selling alongside the software vendor produces both synergy and friction, and the difference comes down to one thing: clarity of roles set early.
When it works, the rules of engagement are agreed up front. The vendor handles the demo, fills the RFP, and walks the customer through the vision; the partner talks through how the project would actually be set up, which people it needs, what size it will be. Everyone knows their lane.
Where it grinds is implementation. Many vendors now run their own professional services arm. The bigger the customer and the bigger the opportunity, the more the vendor wants that delivery revenue too. A partner can do all the early work — PreSales, demos, customer trips, even originating the deal — and then watch the vendor try to take the implementation. That's the friction point, and it's structural, not personal.
There's a rough segmentation logic underneath it. Vendors keep the large strategic accounts (the DAX-level names) close and want to be in the driver's seat on demos, RFPs, and customer contact. The smaller the opportunity, the more it's handed to the partner, who then leads. Knowing where you sit on that gradient tells you how hard to push and when to expect a turf fight.
Bring PreSales Into Account Planning
One detail is worth copying regardless of which side you're on: account planning done with the unit, not as a pure sales exercise.
Too often account planning is an account-management ritual, and PreSales gets informed after the fact — if they're lucky. That wastes well-paid, well-informed people who have worked the account and have a view. A better model brings account managers, project managers, and product owners into the room together, discusses what will be relevant to the customer next year, and builds a shared playbook. Everyone has to commit to the numbers anyway, so build them together.
The caveat: use PreSales capacity where it earns its keep. With SE-to-seller ratios often running one to five or one to six, you can't drag Solution Engineers into every top-of-funnel activity. Pull them in for planning and shaping, not for every early business-development touch.
AI Is Rewriting the Unit Economics
The sharpest strategic question for any services business right now: where does the money come from once AI is this good?
The historical ratio for enterprise experience projects was roughly one euro of software license to ten euros of services. It drifted toward one-to-five. It keeps shrinking. The work is moving away from heavy implementation toward configuration, consulting, no-code and low-code, and enablement.
AI accelerates that. A full event app that once might have cost tens of thousands to build gets assembled with "vibe coding" and no hand-written code. But there's a ceiling on the DIY story. Anyone can generate a simple app. Making it enterprise-ready — 100 markets, 30 languages, integrated with the CRM and CMS and data layers — still needs an architect who is now radically more efficient with AI, not a business user.
That shift breaks two things worth watching:
- The talent pyramid. Juniors used to grow into mid-level, then senior, then architect through project reps. If one AI-augmented architect matches a whole team, how does anyone become an architect? Firms will have to design deliberate development paths rather than relying on projects to grow people.
- The pricing model. Day rates and utilization stop making sense when a 20-year architect with AI produces the output of a team. Expect a move toward value- and outcome-based pricing — and possibly a renaissance of fixed-price projects.
And there's a deeper point about what clients actually buy. As with auditors and lawyers, the deliverable may commoditize while accountability appreciates. AI can't sign a contract or carry liability. The human — or the firm — who stands behind the result becomes the thing worth paying for. "Enterprise-grade" increasingly means someone is accountable, not someone typed the code.
Career Advice for the New PreSales World
The title says it: PreSales Consultant. Not developer. In a world where implementation shrinks and advice grows, the consulting instinct is the durable skill — every technical person now needs a measure of it. Then find a good mentor inside your organization and think honestly about direction, including sideways moves: into account management, into professional services if you want to build and not just sell, or toward leading a team. Whatever the path, have someone who guides you through it.
The broadest reframe is optimistic. AI reshuffles the deck and hands smaller players reach they never had — visibility earned through good stories and citations rather than big SEO budgets. Many companies can't realize those advantages on their own. That gap is exactly where a trusted advisor earns the next decade of relevance.
Listen to the full episode
Hear the full conversation with Martin Brösamle on PreSales from a partner's point of view: PreSales Unleashed: PreSales beim Adobe Partner eggs unimedia, mit Martin Brösamle (268)