Closing business is a team sport that involves sales engineers and presales professionals as well as marketing and sales development reps (SDRs) as needed. However, sales reps get all the glory, while presales’ revenue contribution often goes unrecognized, even through presales plays one of the most critical roles in closing sales. Although the contribution from presales varies by company, product and industry, here are three scenarios that illustrate the value presales can contribute to your top line.

In the table above, you see three transaction scenarios of large, medium, and small that correspond with ACVs of $100K, $50K, and $25K. As the table illustrates, presales’ revenue contribution could easily range from 55% for large ACVs to 45% for small ACVs. Of course, real-world ranges can easily vary, but the point to convey here is that sales, no matter the size of ACV, don’t happen without presales’ involvement. Let’s explore how each of these scenarios may play out.

Large – $100,000 ACV

  • Marketing: $2,000 (2%), account-based marketing
  • SDR: $3,000 (3%), targeted prospecting
  • Sales: $40,000 (40%), enterprise sales-led growth tactics, complex selling, and managing the purchasing process
  • Presales: $55,000 (55%), tech discovery and evaluation management across various stakeholders

Medium – $50,000 ACV

  • Marketing: $1,500 (3%), account-based and inbound marketing
  • SDR: $1,000 (2%), targeted prospecting, inbound response
  • Sales: $22,500 (45%), inside sales, commercial led-growth activities
  • Presales: $25,000 (50%), activities like demos and SaaS evaluations

Small – $25,000 ACV

  • Marketing: $1,000 (4%), inbound marketing and freemium offering
  • SDR: $250 (1%), inbound response
  • Sales: $12,500 (50%), inside transactional and high-velocity selling
  • Presales: $11,250 (45%), activities like demos and guided trials

To sum up, technical selling only occurs with presales’ revenue contribution. And, depending on the ACV, target market, product packaging, and market dynamics, presales contribute a significant dollar amount to revenue and growth.

To learn more about the presales leverage on growth, feel free to reference this Harvard Business Review paper, “Presales Can Unleash More Revenue Growth For The C-Suite.” To calculate your own potential presales impact on your revenue, check out this value calculator.