Five Reasons Why Acumatica Resellers and ISVs Leverage Fractional Presales Teams

Acumatica resellers and ISVs use strong presales to increase middle-of-the-funnel success in their sales cycle. Put more simply: presales increase win rates (Mangum). 

Companies struggling with pre-sales have two ways to overcome their deficits:

1) Hire a full-time solution engineer (SE)

2) Hire a fractional presales team

This article explains why many SaaS companies (wisely) choose the latter.

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Factors to Consider

When choosing any solution, you must consider the key factors at play. When deciding on a presales solution, here are the five key factor categories to consider:

1. Cost of Solution

2. Speed of Solution Implementation

3. Quality of Solution

4. Flexibility of Solution

5. Implications of Solution

Taking these one by one, I will show why (for many companies) it is smarter to hire a fractional presales team than employ one full-time solution engineer.

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1. Cost of Presales Solution

This category needs no introduction, because everyone understands the key role of “cost” in decision-making. 

Cost: Studies show it costs thousands of dollars to hire a new employee (Navarra). Creating and reviewing job postings, interviewing, onboarding, and training are expensive. All this, and the new SE hire may not even be highly experienced. Bringing on an experienced solutions engineer will mean paying an even larger salary, on top of healthcare, retirement, taxes, and any additional benefits. The overhead costs involved in a standard hire are high. On the other hand, fractional/subscription hiring is much less costly, as you‘re only compensating them for a discrete number of hours per month.

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2. Speed of Solution Implementation

This category also needs little introduction. Solutions respond to problems. Faster resolutions are superior to slower ones, ceteris paribus.

Deployment Pace: Hiring a new pre-sales SE and getting them up to speed typically takes several months. By the time an SE is found and trained, the bottleneck moment (or under capacity) in a company’s business cycle is often behind them. Contrast this slow pace of deployment with that of a fractional SE: fractional presales teams can be ready to work within a company in days or weeks, compared to the months of the standard hiring process. This rapid deployment allows companies to plug and play with fractional presales SEs when they are most needed – not two months too late.

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3. Quality of Solution

This category is broader than the previous two. Quality is notoriously difficult to quantify, and many factors contribute to a solution’s quality. Even so, here are several relevant factors related to solution quality.

Specialization: Fractional presales teams often have specialists in specific verticals. If a firm hired a single SE to cover manufacturing, construction, field service, nonprofit, etc., the SE would either have to have extremely broad experience (expensive) or be a broadband generalist (lacking in vertical-specific knowledge). On the other hand, by using a fractional presales team, a firm gains access to experts in several verticals and numerous ISVs, all for less than the cost of hiring one SE (who simply can't be an expert in every vertical).

Network Effect: When a firm hires a team of fractional SEs, they not only acquire access to deep industry expertise but also an entire team of ERP professionals who can help brainstorm technical solutions. Designing bespoke solutions for clients (which frequently consist of several software products from different vendors) takes a lot of intellectual firepower and industry knowledge. A team of fractional pre-sales SEs (with exposure to many resellers and various methods of handling a situation) has the capacity for much more robust problem-solving.

Diverse Experience: Fractional SE teams inherently work with a wide variety of resellers. They see more deals and more situations than a traditional W-2 SE. Diverse experiences catalyze broad perspectives and helpful insights.

Productivity Incentives: Self-interested employees produce according to the incentive structures in which they work – this is human nature. Fractional presales teams are heavily incentivized (motivated) to earn the trust of their employer, demonstrate their value, and convert deals. Accomplishing these goals helps them to maintain their contracts and earn commissions. Full-time, internal SEs (even when earning commissions) will not likely feel the same pressure (motivation) to impress and convert.

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4. Flexibility of Solution

Rigid solutions would be just fine, so long as the business environment was static. But, since that is not (and will never be) the reality, more flexible solutions are better.

Scalability: Most presales professionals want full-time work and take salaried positions. Imagine a company hires a full-time SE, and it’s been a slow month in the sales department. The company either has to furlough the employee or pay them despite underutilizing them. However, if a company using a fractional presales team experiences a slow month, they can bank some hours for later in the year when they are needed.  Alternatively, if the company is having a big month (or few months), they can immediately scale up, skipping the job search and training process. A fractional presales team can scale its support to match your pipeline’s needs. A single hired employee cannot do this without either tremendous waste or stress. 

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5. Implication of Solution

Solutions have implicit advantages. One advantage of a fractional team is below.

Industry Relationships: Fractional presales SEs work with dozens of companies across the ERP ecosystem: VARs and ISVs. Over time, this provides presales teams with deep relationships with many ISVs, service partners, and other key individuals throughout the ERP's channel. In B2B selling, industry relationships can be extremely valuable. Working with fractional presales SEs can be a shortcut into lucrative partnerships.

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Conclusion

When choosing a solution to fill your “presales gap”, consider the following: Solution cost, speed, quality, flexibility, and implications. Choosing a fractional solution may be an unprecedented step for some companies. But, given the existing choice set, it is very likely smarter to take this approach than to add to your company’s W-2 payroll.

TL;DR

Why might it be wiser to hire a fractional presales support team than an internal SE?

Cost: Fractional SEs are cheaper than hiring a full-time SE

Rapid Deployment: Fractional SEs are ready faster than new hires

Network Effect: A team of professionals, with pooled resources, is better than one

Productivity Incentives: Fractional presales SEs get paid when you do

Specialization: When selling products in several verticals, vertical experts matter

Diverse Experience: Fractional presales professionals bring helpful insights

Scalability: SaaS sales can be lumpy – Fractional support is flexible 

Industry Relationships: Relationships in the ERP ecosystem are valuable

References

Mangum, F. (2021). Presales can unleash more revenue growth for the C-suite. Harvard Business Review Analytics Services.

Navarra, K. (2022, April 11). The real costs of recruitment. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/real-costs-recruitment