400 Licenses Is Not a Number [55]
Solution engineers often cannot articulate the dollar value of their deals, which undermines revenue-focused incentive plans and leads to accidental time allocation decisions. The episode argues that making deal value visible and mandatory in CRM systems, combined with explicit planning conversations about priority, is essential before modifying compensation structures.
Summary
Tim introduces Leading Pre-Sales, a show for SE leaders, and frames the core problem through a real coaching situation: an SE two days before a major demo could only say his deal was worth "400 licenses"—a unit count, not a dollar value. Tim reflects that this revealed a critical gap: he pays variable compensation (20%) to incentivize deal size awareness, yet his team cannot see deal size.
Nate and Ava explore whether SEs should rely on account executives for deal value, concluding that while Enterprise CRM values are often fictional placeholders, any number is better than none—order of magnitude matters more than precision. A $2 million deal versus a $20K deal changes how an SE allocates their limited hours (8-10 per day across 8-12 open opportunities).
However, Ava raises a critical counterpoint: pure value weighting can eliminate strategic small deals within key accounts that serve as beachheads for larger rollouts. The solution is a flagging system where the AE and SE jointly document strategic rationale in writing, scaling from Monday pipeline reviews (for small teams) to mandatory CRM fields (for larger organizations).
The hosts identify this as both a CRM problem and a habit problem. On the CRM side, making ARR and TCV mandatory, visible fields on opportunity records drives visibility where informal access does not. On the habit side, reframing the weekly planning question from "What's on your plate?" to "What are your top three by value, and what are you saying no to?" creates peer accountability and cultural change around prioritization.
Tim concludes with a critical warning: leaders often redesign compensation plans when the real problem is lack of visibility into what they're compensating for. The recommended move is to first validate the problem (asking SEs to list top-5 deal values from memory), then implement visible mandatory fields, then establish the planning ritual—only after that should compensation be touched.
About this episode
Ava asked one of her SEs how big his upcoming deal was and got "400 licenses" back — a unit count, not a number. She and Nate unpack why deal-value visibility is the precondition for both your incentive plan and your team's week planning.
Key Insights
- Tim discovered that paying variable compensation tied to deal size while SEs cannot articulate deal value is a fundamental misalignment—the incentive exists but the visibility does not.
- The speakers argue that order-of-magnitude accuracy (distinguishing $2M from $20K deals) is sufficient to drive behavior change, and that fictional CRM numbers are still more useful for prioritization than no number at all.
- Ava and Nate claim that many leaders attempt to redesign compensation plans when the actual root cause is invisible information, making the comp redesign ineffective until underlying visibility problems are solved.
Topics
Transcript
Hey there and welcome to Leading Pre-Sales, the show for solution engineering leaders who want to build teams that drive revenue and not just demos. My name is Tim and I'm the co-founder of SE Rockstars and together with Jan, we've coached over 350 solution engineers and their leaders across several dozens of companies. Every conversation you hear on this show is based on real coaching situations, real challenges, real problems that SE leaders like you are dealing with right now. None of this is made up. We use AI to bring these stories to life through our two hosts, Nate and Ava, but the insights come straight from the trenches. Each episode gives you one actionable takeaway you can…
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