CEO @ Alpha Presales | Teaching smart people to talk less and sell more. The smarter your sales engineers are, the more they need this.

I run Alpha GTM. We help B2B tech companies sell more by training their sales reps and sales engineers to lead prospects instead of following them. 

We do virtual training, in-person workshops, and sales kickoffs. 

Previously, I was a top B2B sales rep who closed millions of dollars in both software and services deals (I also lost millions, and that's how you learn). Prior to that, I was a top Solutions Engineer (Presales), and before that, a software developer and engineer. 

My sales career taught me that the biggest problem in B2B tech sales are: 
1- Sales Reps are too agreeable and don't LEAD the prospect
2- SEs are geniuses, but they aren't good storytellers

This led to the creation of Alpha GTM and Alpha Presales. 

Since 2022, we have trained over 1000 B2B sales professionals from 23 different countries. We've helped clients improve close rates on qualified opportunities from 41.7% to 46.9% for companies like: NICE, MongoDB, Paylocity, Optiv, Netwrix and many more. 

We've been named a Top 10 Sales Training Company and the #1 Content and #1 Speaker at multiple sales conferences. We're the #1 training partner for B2B tech companies who want to stop losing control of their sales cycles and start leading prospects to close.

Follow me if you like learning or join my newsletter. I post tons of free content, and I sell absolutely nothing to individuals.

Rew Dickinson

Every sales organization should have at least 1 person making $1,000,000 per year. Minimum. 

Some people think this is wasteful but it’s the smartest thing you can do as an organization.

When sales reps see their peers succeeding and taking in millions, it’s motivating. 

Every sales rep wants to be the person who makes the $1,000,000 and seeing your peers be able to hit it gives you something to believe in. 

So before you scoff at the idea and say that it’s unnecessary (it is), consider the price you’re actually paying when you put a cap on compensation…

When you limit compensation you demotivate salespeople. When you demotivate salespeople they don’t perform as well. When they don’t perform as well, your company doesn’t perform as well. 

It all flows to your bottom line.

Lastly, what kind of people do you expect to attract to your company when you subtly tell them that their upside is limited? Elite talent? I doubt it. 

Salespeople deserve every dollar they earn. 

Don’t put a cap on excellence.

This guy is amazing. He saw me speak in NYC last October and nominated me to be the keynote speaker at his company's Sales Kickoff in Dallas, TX, this past week. 

We did an interactive keynote/workshop on how to Win The Room With Storytelling for over 350+ Sales Reps, SCs, BDRs, and CSMs. 

Thank you, Alex Stanton, Keely Vallies (Hoover), and Alisa Chandler for your vote of confidence. 

Y'all are the best, and the RealPage team is the real deal!

I just spent 3 days in LA at Saviynt’s SKO. Here are 3 of my favorite things:

1. First off, we got to go to SoFi Stadium and take the field, which, as a kid growing up whose life was football, this was an amazing experience for me. 

2. This sales team is the real deal. Not only did they invest in storytelling training for the entire sales team and had me keynote their session, but we also did manager training beforehand, and an SE-specific discovery training the following day. That was so cool because, SEs never get any love at these events.

3. Whenever I go to an SKO, I can usually tell within a few hours if this is a “product-focused” company or a “sales-focused” company. I couldn’t tell with this one, so I asked some of the sales reps what the culture was and the overwhelming response was, “BOTH!” The sales reps were so happy to work here, and felt appreciated. I loved seeing that. 

I also met some awesome people like Ben, and traded war stories about running your own business. And others like Cameron who taught me a great line that I used in my speech “put on your listening ears.”

Thank you Kevin, Todd, Brooks, Paul, Sachin, Nick, Steve, Amar, Jaime, Mark, David, Ulrich, Jeff, Kevin, Jorge, Ari, and everyone else for having me! Saviynt is the place to be!

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I’m on my 3rd SKO of the year. Here are 3 tips for giving any presentation, regardless of whether it’s a sales kickoff or just a sales meeting:

1. Audience, Audience, Audience. This is seriously the only thing that matters. If your presentation is too long, if you don’t know what to say, if you are rambling…its all because you don’t understand your audience. When you get clarity on your audience, deciding what to present becomes easy.

2. Tell the audience what you’re going to give them within the first 60 seconds. Ditch the long intro. Until you tell the audience what they’re going to get, they are silently thinking, “what’s in this for me?”

3. Do not think of the audience as an audience. Think of them as your family or best friend. When you think like this you erase your fears because you’re so focused on them, you forget to worry about yourself. 

What other tips you got?

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Founder

Sales + Sales Engineering

Consulting + Software Engineering

Financial Analyst

Helping CROs and CSOs run a predictable GTM

CEO @ Alpha GTM

POV: You’re a sales trainer doing a sales kickoff (SKO) in Vegas. 

Here’s a fun activity to do as an ice breaker: One Word Story”

- Go around your table
- First person starts by saying one word
- Next person adds to the story
- Keep the story going, one word at a time 

What’s your favorite ice breaker?

P.S. If you’re looking to up your storytelling game, check out Alpha GTM.

Alpha GTM

Everyone wants a fun sales kickoff event...and this was no exception. 

I'm so grateful for Intelex having me at their Revenue Kickoff (RKO) in Niagara Falls, Canada, yesterday to teach them the Alpha Storytelling Methodology. 

During our planning sessions, Cheryl told me the team loved to compete, so we put together a 14-team March Madness-style storytelling competition and had them compete head-to-head until we crowned a winner. 

This picture captures what I loved most about the event... every team gathered around their spokesperson and cheered them on during the competition, while our referees (Sales Leaders) judged.

Thank you, Cheryl, Eleni, Ben, Amy, Kelly, Brian, Gavin, and Robb, for having me!

Your team is amazing, and it's such a pleasure to work with them.

SALES, PRESALES, SOLUTIONS PEOPLE: Mark your calendar for DEMOFEST! 

What is Demofest? 
• It's the biggest presales conference on the planet with over 2000+ presales and many other GTM professionals and it's 100% FREE. 

When is it? 
• February 10-11, Virtual

Who should attend? 
• Anyone in the GTM, but especially Presales and Presales Leaders. 

Why anyone? 
• Because there are a lot of sessions that aren't just for Presales. 
• For example, I'm doing a workshop on how to "Win the Room With Storytelling" which is relevant to anyone in presales, sales, and leadership. 

Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/gd6DQuhR

Send this to your Slack or Teams channel and tell your friends. 

P.S. Who are you excited to hear from?

When I was a new Sales Engineer, I worried about everything: “What if I pause for too long? What if I don’t know what to say? What if I don’t know what to do next?”

The problem with this is that we're worried about ourselves instead of worrying about our audience. 

We worry so much about how we’re going to look, but the truth is that the more polished we look, the less compelling we tend to be. 

Being too polished is often a distraction. People focus on how impressive you are, and they lose sight of why they’re there -> to solve their problem. 

This is important for presales professionals to remember. 

“Looking good” in our demos provides absolutely zero value to our clients. It just feeds our ego. 

Think about it. If someone was selling to you and they paused, stuttered, said, “wait, I need to think about this for a second,” because they were so focused on helping you, would you think less of them? 

No way. You’d respect them even more for caring more about you and your success than their performance. 

That’s sales.

It’s service. 

P.S. SE Leaders: For monthly tips on how to improve presales, join 200+ presales leaders who get our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr

Sales Engineers (SEs/SCs) are often the rock of the sales team: longer tenured than sales reps, consistent, dependable. But they usually don’t speak up nearly as much as they should. 

Here’s a quick story from my own experience as an SC and why it matters for SCs and Managers to speak up...

---

It was my first year as an SC, and I had by far the worst sales rep I’ve ever worked with.

- Zero social awareness
- Had no clue what the product did
- Told you what to do and how to demo

Some (not all) of these things are forgivable if you’re performing, but he wasn’t. 

We were wasting massive amounts of time on unqualified deals and had closed nothing. 

Like most SEs, I didn’t think it was my place to speak about problems with sales reps, but I spoke with my manager anyway.

I’m so glad I did because my manager thanked me for not letting problems go unnoticed and encouraged me to talk to the sales rep's manager directly.

I ended up doing so and the sales manager thanked me for it as well. 

It turned out that the sales manager had inherited this sales rep from another team and wanted to give him a fair shot before cutting him loose, but the feedback from me (who he respected) was an important data point for him in making his decision on what to do with the rep. 

Here I was, a 20-something-year-old SC who was afraid to speak up because of the negative repercussions, when in the end, I was applauded and respected more for doing so. 

SEs - always speak up, your voice matters. 

Managers - it’s our job to be an example. 

P.S. SE Leaders: For monthly tips on how to improve presales, join 200+ presales leaders who get our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr

If your sales reps aren’t using MEDDPICC or BANT it’s because you haven’t shown them why it’s valuable. I used them all the time as a Sales Rep and SE. Call me lazy, but I didn’t care as much about qualification as I did about knowing “how much work do I have to do?” 

Here’s why they’re valuable for AEs and SEs...

---

The question isn't "Is this deal qualified?"

It's "How much work do we need to do to close this?"

Because every deal is unqualified until it's closed.

The AE and SE’s job is to qualify it. And close it. 


MEDDPICC has gotten too long, so let's use BANT: 

Budget - Do they have it? If yes, the deal moves fast. If no, you'll need to build a business case. More work, but doable.

Authority - Are you talking to the decision-maker? Let’s be honest, you’re probably not. That’s okay. But if you are talking to them, stop pitching and figure out what needs to be done to close. 

Need - This is the big one. Is this critical or nice-to-have? If it's nice-to-have, you'd better create urgency.

Timeline - Is there a deadline? If not, you're sitting in limbo. Another reason to build that business case.

Your reps and SEs should look at any deal and know: "We have 3 out of 4. We need to uncover Authority and then we can close this," or "We only have Need. We have a lot of work to do."

If they can't assess this themselves, they're wasting time on deals that will take forever to close instead of building pipeline. Which is as big a problem as bad forecasting.

How do you use MEDDPICC or BANT?

Sales Leaders need to stop saying: “Sales is all about relationships” because a lot of AEs and SEs are missing the point. 

I watch so many calls where the sales rep acts all jolly and nice, and thinks that they’re building a relationship, when really they’re just looking like everyone else. 

Yes, relationships are important, but how that relationship forms is important. Share this post with your team if you agree with it...

---

First off, despite running a sales training company called “Alpha” GTM, I’m one of the nicest and most empathetic people you’ll ever meet.

The truth however, is that most buyers are not looking for more friends. They’re not looking to have relationships with strangers. They’re looking to go home on time. 

Let’s take an example from when I was selling B2B software. 

Gary was one of my clients. He worked for the largest global truck manufacturer in the world. 

When I first met Gary, he was friendly. As I got to know him though, I found out that he’s not friendly because he wants to be, he’s friendly because he likes to avoid conflict and not waste time. He’s an engineer, and his goal is to get through the day as efficiently as possible. 

Gary’s has a family, a wife and kids at home. He isn’t looking to build relationships with sales reps (me). He has enough friends. 

Instead, he wants to do his job, and get home on time. 

So I could focus on building a relationship with Gary, or I could focus on getting him home on time and not adding more work to his plate.

I picked the latter. 

Whenever I scheduled a meeting with Gary, I was fully prepared. I told him where we were going, what I had done beforehand, and what was needed to get there. I ran an efficient meeting. 

It didn’t take more than 2 or 3 meetings with Gary for him to start liking me. Not the fake-friendly kind of liking, but the kind you reserve for people who always bring value to your day. 

When I left sales to start my own business, I told Gary that I was leaving and he told me that he loved working with me. I asked him why and he said, “So many sales reps waste my time. I can’t stand wasting time. I loved working with you because you never wasted my time and I really valued that in you. Thanks.” 

We had a great relationship. Not because I focused on the relationship, but because I focused on something he valued - his time. 

This is why I’m all for building relationships, but I find that building the relationships is a consequence of doing the right thing and providing value. 

Do the right thing, and the relationship will form as a result.

Sales Leaders need AEs and SEs who aren't afraid to push back on clients. And yet, I'm constantly asked to teach teams how to do this.

Let's break down why they don't (from my personal experience being both an AE and SE): 

AEs: They get into “Deal preservation mode.” That’s where they’re so worried about keeping enough pipeline that they focus on "not losing" instead of winning. Ironically, this is exactly how they lose deals, it just takes longer.

SEs: Conflict avoidance. Most came up through a career path where pushing back wasn't the norm, so they're uncomfortable with it.

Here's what I learned looking back at my own sales and presales career:

1. I never once lost a deal because I was too bold. But I lost plenty because I was too docile.

2. My best clients were the ones where I created constructive tension. I pushed back, they told me the truth, and they thanked me for it. Those relationships were stronger and the business was healthier.

3. My worst losses were with people I didn't challenge and I gave space to do whatever they wanted.

Bottom line: It's your job as a manager to encourage boldness.

Stop playing not to lose. Start playing to win.

P.S. What'd I miss?

I made this mistake as a Sales Engineer and I just had an SE in Alpha Presales training who almost made the same mistake. This is especially important for SEs and SE Manager’s to teach their team...

Story: 

I was training a sales team and during the break, an SE came up to me and asked, “If my sales rep has already shown the prospect the evaluation process we’re taking them through, I shouldn’t show it to them again, should I?”

Yes. 

Yes, you should show it again. 

And again and again and again. 

I can’t reiterate this enough...repeat yourself regularly in a sales evaluation.

If this sounds odd to you, think about it this way…


We need to put ourselves in our prospect’s shoes for a second…

If they are talking to us, they are probably talking to 3 or 4 other vendors. 

Each vendor is probably giving them a 90-minute demo. 

That’s 4-6 hours of information being dumped on them.

Holy smokes. 

How much of that information do you think they’re actually going to remember? 

Probably nothing. 

So it’s good, in fact, it’s encouraged to show them the same thing over and over and over again. 

I did this regularly as an SE because I learned it from an SE Manager. 

To my surprise, it usually took the 3rd or 4th time I showed something to the prospect for them to finally say, “Oh yeah, I remember you showing this, good idea.” 

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your prospect is going to remember everything you say the first time. 

There’s a lot of noise that other vendors are introducing, and repetition will help your prospect cut through the noise. 

P.S. SE Leaders: For monthly tips on how to improve presales, join 200+ presales leaders who get our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr

No one really taught me this when I was a Sales Engineer: 
1- Your buyer can be bought into your product
2- But not bought into buying

Let me say that again...

Your buyer can be:
1- Bought into your product
2- But not bought into buying

To get someone to buy from you, you need them to be bought into both. Here’s how you do it, so you can better serve your buyers. 

---

This may seem counterintuitive, so let’s use an analogy: 

I’ve had 2 ACL surgeries. 

I tore the first one snowboarding and was back on the slopes the next day. When I visited a doctor (surgeon) a week later, I was evaluating two things: 

1 - Am I bought into this product? (i.e., am I bought into this surgeon?)
2 - Am I bought into buying? (i.e., should I even get surgery at all? Is it worth it?)

The surgeon didn’t sell me on his product.

Instead he: 
1- asked me questions about my lifestyle
2- laid out the pros and cons of getting surgery versus not
3- told stories of other patients (customers)

I ended up getting surgery and getting it from him. 

---

How do you apply this as a Sales Engineer? 

Well, most buyers that we demo to are asking themselves two questions: 

1- Should I buy from this vendor? 
2- Should I even buy anything? 

Most SCs are really good at answering the first question: “Should I buy from this vendor?”

But the 2nd question is the more difficult one. 

The problem is that demos don’t answer the 2nd question. 

Telling stories and building business cases answers the 2nd question. 

Most SC teams need to get better at those things. 

How do you answer the 2nd question? 

P.S. SE Leaders: For monthly tips on how to improve presales, join 200+ presales leaders who get our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr

Coform just did a study on how Solutions Consulting/Presales teams are compensated. 

If you want to know what's working and what's not in terms of SC comp, join Yuji Higashi, Sara Jones, Pam Dunn, Ryan Krueger, Max LÜPERTZ, and I as we break it down on LinkedIn Live next week. 

https://lnkd.in/g84qXh4C.

Coform

Co-Founder of Better Career ◆ Co-Founded PreSales Collective ◆ Helping PreSales & Sales ICs and Leaders land jobs, build strategic networks, and accelerate their careers ◆ SE & AE Recruitment

Leading The Solutions Conversation | Chief Solutions Officer | “The Wonder Woman of Customer Service” | Driving the Presales Evolution

PreSales Leader | Strategic Advisor | Featured Speaker | Curious and Continual Learner | Startup Enthusiast | Podcast Junkie

Senior Solutions Engineer @ Glean | Enterprise AI & Presales Leader | Public Speaker & Host, Diary of a Sales Engineer

Better Demos. Bigger Deals. 💰 | Stop Losing Your Deal After the Demo | Actionable & Engaging Demo Workshops for SaaS | 🌈 Cologne Presales Meetup

The problem I see over and over and over again in B2B sales is sales reps not owning the sale. They get to the end of a meeting and say things like, "What would be helpful for next steps?" or "Should we follow up next week?" and they give control to the client. You will NEVER be successful in B2B sales if you do this. Here's a 5-step plan that will help you own the sale in a way that is also ideal for your buyer. 

---

Last month, I had my first SKO of the season. This is an abbreviated version of an exercise we do in Alpha GTM workshops, which you can do individually or as a team to help you own the sale and lead your clients to a solution more quickly: 

1. Document what YOUR ideal sales cycle looks like (no extra meetings, demos, and POCs that are unnecessary). 

2. Now that you know what YOU want, ask yourself if that is the ideal buying process for the buyer?

3. If what YOU want and what your BUYER wants are not aligned, then rework things until they are. NOTE: This is sales, which means you should serve your buyer, but you shouldn't be SUBSERVIENT to your buyer (there's a difference). 

4. Now that you are aligned, turn the ideal process into a clear visual diagram or slide. 

5. Take that diagram/slide and use it in every single meeting you have with the buyer. 

When you do this, one of two things are going to happen: 

1. Your clients are going to be so happy that you gave them a plan for navigating the buying journey. Or...

2. Your clients are going to tell you more about their own buying process so that at least you know what's going on and don't get ghosted. 

Special notes for other roles: 

- Sales Managers -> If you can't forecast, this is why. Your reps are not owning the sale

- SCs -> It's your job to own the sale too. Do NOT, get to the end of a meeting and say things like, "we're happy to schedule a follow-up to go deeper into the product." 9 times out of 10, you solve nothing by showing more. 

Try this exercise in your weekly team meeting and never forget: 

You have done this hundreds of times. 
But your buyer hasn't. 
So LEAD them.

Over/Under?: 30% of your Sales Reps, SCs, and Managers talk for way too long? 

If it’s over 30% of your team (and it often is in B2B sales), get ready to sound like every one of your competitors. 

Here’s how to fix it...

---

During my career in consulting, sales engineering, and sales, I’ve seen way too many sales presentations with 5-8 bullet points per slide.

And...
You guessed it…
I’ve remembered absolutely nothing from those sales presentations. 

To stop this, I use a framework that I call the CCC. 

It’s so simple that every Sales Rep, SC, and Leader can use it whether they’re giving a sales demo or a board presentation. 

CCC stands for “Cut, Categorize, Combine.”

Every time I see a long PPT slide, a long sales email, a long elevator pitch, a lot of adjectives, a boring sales presentation, I ask myself: 

1. What can I CUT from this list that is not important? 
2. What can I CATEGORIZE? 
3. What can I COMBINE? 

My goal is to get the list down to just 3 things or less. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it needs to be 4. 

That’s okay.

The less you talk, the more people remember what you say. 

P.S. SE Leaders: For monthly tips on how to improve presales, join 200+ presales leaders who get our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eKaaGeZr

When I watch sales calls, I see most sellers and SEs give the same pitch regardless of the audience. That’s why they’re good at getting a deal to Stage 3 and then it dies a slow death and never gets to the CFO. 

Here’s an exercise you can do to help your team fix this...

---

Let’s take an example to make this real: 

I don’t have a full-time CFO or CRO for Alpha GTM so I act as both. 

This past year my team and I decided that we’re going to do more SKOs this year, so we wanted to get some live footage from one of my events so that we could share with prospective customers to see what we’re all about. 

I was speaking to a group of 400+ people in London so my team decided that we should film the event and create a 2-minute highlight reel for marketing our services. 

The team called a few film agencies and we got some quotes. 

$2,500 bucks. 

When I heard that, CFO Rew said, “are you [expletive] kidding me!?”

$2500 for 45 minutes of filming!?

That’s $3,333 per hour!

CFO Rew was out. 

But then CRO Rew jumped in and thought, “When we do SKOs, we often do a keynote as well as workshops. That can easily net us $20,000 or more. So if this 2-minute highlight reel gets us just 1 more SKO this year, it pays for itself 8x over.” 

CRO Rew was in (and since we’re in growth mode, CRO Rew usually beats CFO Rew).

---

The challenge for sellers is knowing who your audience is. 

As a general rule of thumb: 

- CFOs often prefer to save money because it increases margin which is often how they’re compensated. 

- CROs often prefer to make money (revenue) because it’s often how they’re compensated. 

- Most other people just want to go home on time and not work on weekends. 

Next time you are getting ready to give a sales presentation ask your team, “How would you change this sales pitch if we were only speaking to the CFO?”

If your pitch doesn’t change, then you probably have a lousy pitch. 

P.S. Here’s the highlight video: https://lnkd.in/gP3hseXu

P.P.S. If you were selling to ‘CFO Rew’ how would you have pitched this?

There are a few quotes that I cite regularly in my sales training workshops. This is one of them...

MLK: "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."

The reason why I cite it in my sales training workshops is because it is just as applicable to salespeople as it is to leaders. 

Enterprise Sales is an extremely strategic job where you can't just go around looking for people who agree with you. 

- You have to shape people's opinions.
- You have to listen.
- You have to project manage.

You have to get 15 to 25 people, all with competing priorities, to come together, ditch the way they've been doing things, and do something new. 

That is insanely hard and you don't do it by learning how to present.

You do it by learning how to LEAD. 

Thank you, MLK.

Epic time in Canada with the Intelex team! Sales training, competition, and an incredible team! Thank you Cheryl, Amy, Brian for having me!

What happens when you mix a storytelling framework with playoff brackets and add 100+ Intelexians ready to compete?
 
New ways to connect with customers and build stronger trust.
 
The energy and teamwork on Day 2 of RKO 2026 will help us make an even bigger difference for our customers.
 
Special thanks to Rew Dickinson and Alpha GTM for coaching and inspiring our team!
 
#RKO2026 #AllSystemsGo #Storytelling #B2BSales #GTM #SalesEnablement #MarketingAndSales #Intelex

Chris Schneider is Vice President of Solutions Engineering at Corva, where he leads the development and deployment of advanced real-time technologies that drive operational excellence and digital transformation across global drilling programs. 

With a foundation rooted in hands-on field experience, Chris brings a unique blend of technical expertise and strategic vision to enable performance optimization and automation at scale. His early career included engineering consulting and field engineering roles supporting deepwater operations in the Gulf of Mexico and unconventional plays across U.S. land. 

Chris is a licensed Professional Geoscientist in Texas and holds a U.S. patent for innovations in real-time hole cleaning and cuttings analysis using radiometric density sensors. He is passionate about leveraging technology to reduce operational risk, enhance efficiency, and deliver measurable business value.

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