SolutionExec Live. Episode 13 - The Burden of Proof

Nobody has led a Solutions org through a market like this one. When we brought 100 senior Solutions leaders together at Off the Record in the Bay Area, the room wasn’t looking for someone on stage with all the answers. They wanted to work it out with each other.In this episode, SolutionExec co-founders James Kaikis and Jeff Margolese recap Off the Record Bay Area: what’s changed since New York, what resonated with the leaders in the room, and why Solutions leaders need to define the role before someone else does it for them.In this episode:→ Why “sparkling sales engineers” is a label worth owning, and what’s actually new about the FDE role→ How buyers’ demand for proof is compressing the path from discovery to production→ Bringing new ideas into a 2,500-person org versus building from scratch at a startup→ “Ready is a myth,” and why waiting for a playbook is the riskiest move right now→ Why AI adoption needs to be somebody’s actual job, not a side projectWe’re recording a year-end mailbag episode. Got a question about the year ahead, or a prediction for the Solutions profession? Email [email protected] or send James a voice note on LinkedIn.---This episode is brought to you by Provarity.Technical evaluations are a revenue blind spot, and Salesforce, spreadsheets, and Slack were never built for presales. Provarity Instynx is. Trusted by Gigamon and Cyera to lift technical win rates and lower CAC. Request a demo: https://bit.ly/45WyFGn---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

Most field teams never think about margin. But that era is ending. A ServiceNow finance leader explains why AI is forcing Solutions into the P&L conversation, and why the best SE talent is still one of the most defensible bets a company can make.In this episode, Jeff Margolese sits down with Hervé Duborjal, SVP of Finance at ServiceNow, to unpack how finance actually evaluates investment in Solutions, what AI is doing to software margins, and how pricing and comp models are being rewritten in real time.In this episode:→ How a CFO decides where to fund, and why "can this team actually deploy the money" beats the spreadsheet→ The real margin pressure behind selling AI, and why 90% gross margins aren't coming back for every use case→ What outcome-based and consumption pricing mean for how Solutions teams get measured and paid→ The FDE question: charge for it or build it in, and why there's no workable middle---This episode is brought to you by Provarity.Technical evaluations are a revenue blind spot, and Salesforce, spreadsheets, and Slack were never built for presales. Provarity Instynx is. Trusted by Gigamon and Cyera to lift technical win rates and lower CAC. Request a demo: https://bit.ly/45WyFGn---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

For two decades, “avoid a POC” was standard sales advice. That advice is now backwards. Buyers have been burned too many times to take your word for it, and the teams winning are the ones running proof as a weapon.In this episode, James Kaikis sits down with Steve Davis, CEO of Provarity, on why the burden of proof is rising and what it means for the future of the Solutions role.In this episode:→ Why buyers now demand to see the product working on their own data before they'll buy→ How to flip the POC from a dreaded time-sink into a competitive advantage your rivals won't match→ The AE and SE convergence debate, and where the line to FDE actually sits→ What a proof motion looks like two years out as agent swarms take over the manual work---This episode is brought to you by Provarity.Technical evaluations are a revenue blind spot, and Salesforce, spreadsheets, and Slack were never built for presales. Provarity Instynx is. Trusted by Gigamon and Cyera to lift technical win rates and lower CAC. Request a demo: https://bit.ly/45WyFGn---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

Most Solutions orgs get measured on how much they cost. The best ones get funded as a growth engine instead. Here's how one leader made that shift stick with her finance team.In this episode, James Kaikis and Jeff Margolese sit down with Leah McTiernan, Group Vice President of Solution Consulting at DocuSign, to talk through how she's using AI, experimentation and a real partnership with finance to reposition Solutions as a revenue driver.In this episode:→ Why Solutions sits at the center of the customer, the seller, and the product, and how that vantage point drives decisions for the whole company→ Inside a four-way pilot testing traditional coverage, near-shore support, an AI deal-guidance agent that works like a virtual SE in Slack, and live AI inside customer meetings→ Turning skeptics into believers when rolling AI out across a global team→ Making the case to finance: positioning Solutions as a growth accelerator, not a lower-cost org---This episode is brought to you by Provarity and Storylane.Technical evaluations are a revenue blind spot, and Salesforce, spreadsheets, and Slack were never built for presales. Provarity Instynx is. Trusted by Gigamon and Cyera to lift technical win rates and lower CAC. Request a demo: https://bit.ly/45WyFGnStorylane is the #1 rated demo automation platform for marketing, sales, and SEs. Trusted by 5,000+ teams. Start for free: https://bit.ly/3POPKx5---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

For years we treated the signature as the finish line. The buyer never did. Now the pre-sales and post-sales orgs are collapsing into one, and the reps who survive it will look nothing like the ones we hired five years ago.In this episode, James Kaikis sits down with Nalin Senthamil, founder and CEO of Storylane, to unpack how changing buyer behavior is rewriting the solutions profession, from AI-ready teams to the merging of pre and post-sales under a single leader.In this episode:→ Why the buyer's lens should drive every GTM decision, and what changes the moment you go try to buy software yourself→ How AEs and SEs are merging into a new strategist role as buyers show up more educated than the reps→ The AI readiness gap, and how the best leaders build an internal ladder to separate real productivity from AI slop→ Why the outcome, not the assist, is the metric that matters, and where the next 10x in GTM comes from---This episode is brought to you by Storylane.Storylane is the #1 rated demo automation platform for marketing, sales, and SEs. Trusted by 5,000+ teams. Start for free: https://bit.ly/3POPKx5---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

Most Solutions leaders want a blueprint for forward deployed engineers. Shannon Hogue, Global Head of Solutions at Vanta, has a different answer: there isn't one yet, and you have to be okay with that.In this episode, James sits down with Shannon to unpack how she scaled her org from 24 to 52 people in 11 months, restructured her team around a Center of Excellence, and iterated her FDE model in real time as Vanta pushed past $300M ARR.In this episode:→ Why Shannon built a Center of Excellence early, before the "textbook" maturity stage→ How SE, SA, and FDE roles split across SMB, growth, and enterprise segments, and why POC rates shift from 13:1 to 7:1 ratios along the way→ The hiring mistake that burned out strategic SEs when the field wasn't ready for an enterprise motion→ Why FDEs report into engineering, how the "menu of pre-approved tasks" cut turnaround from 2-3 weeks to 24-48 hours, and Shannon's framing of FDEs as "product acceleration engineers"---This episode is brought to you by Storylane.Storylane is the #1 rated demo automation platform for marketing, sales, and SEs. Trusted by 5,000+ teams. Start for free: https://bit.ly/3POPKx5---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

We hear from Solutions leaders all the time that they love their Solutions role, but want to think about what’s next. So what is the real next move in a solutions career, and which paths actually hold up?In this episode, James Kaikis and Jeff Margolese map the routes opening up for solutions leaders taking their next step, from product owner to CRO to chief customer officer, and what it takes to make each move work.In this episode:→ The transferable skills that make solutions leaders natural generalists, and why that is both the blessing and the curse of the role→ The two most common exits, into sales and into product, and what separates the people who succeed from the people who wash out→ How the forward deployed engineering motion is pulling solutions talent into product orgs→ Why solutions leaders can make strong chief customer officers, and the "day two" mindset the role demands→ What owning the number really feels like, including the procurement grind nobody warns you about---This episode is brought to you by Opine and Storylane.Opine helps presales leaders prove team impact, and teams at Docker, Gainsight, Snyk, and Tailscale use it to drive 30%+ more technical wins. Book a demo: https://bit.ly/3RLlsMYStorylane is the #1 rated demo automation platform for marketing, sales, and SEs. Trusted by 5,000+ teams. Start for free: https://bit.ly/3POPKx5---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

Too many Solutions leaders are single threaded into the CRO. While the relationship between Solutions and Sales is important, the leaders who stand out are the ones who build relationships across the whole company, in legal, finance, HR, and IT, long before they ever need them. Jeff Margolese shares his approach to becoming known throughout the organization and building relationships through genuine curiosity.In this episode, Jeff sheds some light on how he’s built relationships across his organizations, and how those relationships can help protect your team, get you the resources you need, and change how the business sees the Solutions function.In this episode:→ Why relying only on the CRO puts your team at risk→ How to build real relationships outside sales without it feeling transactional→ Using cross-org trust to protect headcount, comp, and resources→ How to architect "collisions" to build connections across your organization—This episode is brought to you by Opine. Opine helps presales leaders prove team impact, and teams at Docker, Gainsight, Snyk, and Tailscale use it to drive 30%+ more technical wins. Book a demo: https://bit.ly/3RLlsMY---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

Every leader has been told no to something they knew was right. Not because they were wrong, but because the business doesn't understand what Solutions actually delivers. This profession is at a crossroad, and the leaders who cross the chasm will define what it becomes. The Modern Solutions Mandate names what's actually happening to this profession right now, and what it's going to take to get through it. James Kaikis opens with the case for why Solutions has to move from reactive resource to proactive innovation arm. David Maloof breaks down the five forces compounding against every org and the Sarah Problem hiding inside our success stories. Jeff Margolese closes with what he's actually doing about it at ServiceNow.In this episode:→ The five forces reshaping the profession (the buyer, compounding complexity, flat headcount, the AI gap, and dissolving role boundaries)→ Why the Sarah Problem means your system survived, it didn't win→ How ServiceNow scaled from 700 POVs in a decade to 2,500 in a single year→ The CFO and CHRO relationships every Solutions leader should be building, and why→ What it takes to be bold with your CRO when the org needs to change---This episode is brought to you by Storylane, the #1 rated demo automation platform for marketing, sales, and SEs. Trusted by 5,000+ teams. Start for free: https://bit.ly/3POPKx5---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast

What does it actually take to scale a Solutions org without breaking it? A 3B+ company and a 1B company with 400+ SEs sit down to compare notes, and the answers are not the ones you'd expect. From unit economics-driven ratio models to agentic SEs joining live customer calls, this is where the real conversation is happening.In this episode, David Maloof sits down with Leah McTiernan, GVP of Solutions Consulting at DocuSign, and Alok Agrawal, Chief Solutions Officer at Rubrik, to unpack what scale actually looks like at two very different stages of org development and why the principles often converge.In this episode:→ Why "no disco, no demo" is old school thinking and what's replacing it→ How to model SE ratios using unit economics, not just capacity→ The rise of Forward Deployed Engineers and specialization as a scaling lever→ DocuSign's pilot of an agentic SE joining live SMB calls in real time→ Why Solutions leaders must use data to position their orgs as a growth engine, not a support function---This episode is brought to you by Storylane, the #1 rated demo automation platform for marketing, sales, and SEs. Trusted by 5,000+ teams. Start for free: https://bit.ly/3POPKx5---About SolutionExecSolutionExec is a private network built exclusively for Solutions leaders in B2B SaaS. We connect, enable, and empower the executives who guide teams, influence deals, and shape the future of go-to-market.🔗 Join the network: https://solutionexec.com/📬 Reach out: [email protected]📰 Subscribe to the Newsletter🎙️ Watch more episodes from the podcast