A Zero‑to‑Hero Curriculum

Pre‑Sales as a Function, a Craft, and a Career

Everything from "what does a pre‑sales person actually do all day" through to running the technical strategy on seven‑figure enterprise deals — then a direct bridge from a long enterprise architecture career into the Pre‑Sales Architect seat.

LevelsFoundation → Practitioner → Architect

Contents22 modules · 13 craft sheets · 8 on MSP practice · AU and US regional tabs · 10 templates · a worked deal · 32 drill cards

FormatRead in order, or jump to what you need today

StatusLiving document — grows as the job search does

START HERE

How This Manual Works

This is built like a set of technical drawings, not a textbook: each module is a numbered sheet, grouped into three levels. Level 0 — Foundation is the "Zero": what the job is, who does it, and why buyers behave the way they do. Level 1 — Practitioner is the working craft: the pipeline, the qualification frameworks, discovery, demos, POCs, RFPs, and the templates you'd actually use on a live deal tomorrow. Level 2 — Architect is the "Hero" tier: what changes when you're the senior technical voice on the biggest, most political deals in the portfolio.

Two modules are built specifically for you: Module 21 translates your enterprise/solution architecture background directly into Pre‑Sales Architect language — resume, interview prep, and a 30‑60‑90 plan — and Module 22 is a self‑certification checklist so you can point at exactly what you can already do versus what to practice before interviews.

Tick a module off in the sidebar as you finish it — that's stored in your browser only, so it stays private to you and persists if you come back later. The supplementary sheets — the + entries, the MSP block and the drill deck — aren't counted, since they're reference rather than curriculum. The Template Library collects all ten working templates in one place for quick copy‑paste use.

Three ways to use it

Most of what follows is written to be read once and consulted often. The three uses are different, and it's worth knowing which one you're doing:

The three modesHow to use this manual

1 — The crossing If you are moving into pre‑sales from engineering, delivery or architecture, read Level 0 in order (Mod 03+ sits inside it, straight after Module 03), then Module 21 and Module 22 to see what you already have and what you don't. Coming from HR, teaching, customer support, recruiting or project management instead? Mod 21+ runs the same exercise for you. Then work forward through Level 1 as the situations arrive. Don't try to hold Level 2 in your head before you've been in the room. 2 — Before a specific meeting Go straight to the sheet for the thing you're about to do: discovery, the demo, the POC, the RFP, the objection you know is coming, the business case. Take the matching template from the library and fill it in rather than starting from a blank page. The cheat sheet prints on one page for the meeting itself. 2b — If you work in managed services or the channel Read the MSP block — seven sheets plus a job description — early rather than last. It re‑frames Levels 1 and 2 around recurring revenue, a broad vendor stack, the distributor layer, and a scope you own the margin on. The worked deal is an MSP deal, so it makes far more sense after those sheets than before them. 3 — Lookup The glossary is searchable and covers the vocabulary you'll hear in the first fortnight; the worked deal shows every artefact from first call to signature on one fictional but internally consistent MSP opportunity, including the arithmetic; the drill deck is for interview preparation and, later, for interviewing other people.

On sources and being checkableWhere a claim comes from published research, it says so and names it — the reading list sits in External Courses & Certs. Where a number is invented for teaching, it says that too. Where this manual takes a position that not everyone in the profession shares, it says that as well, because a reference with no author is just an encyclopaedia, and an encyclopaedia won't tell you what to do on Thursday. If a later sheet corrects an earlier one — Mod 03+ corrects Module 03 — the correction stays visible rather than being quietly edited in.