About this episode

Jack Cochran and Matthew James discuss building a demo engineering team with Micah Joel, exploring its importance and structure in presales.

In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James sit down with Micah Joel, GTM leader and demo engineering pioneer, to explore what it means to build a dedicated demo engineering function from scratch. Micah shares his journey from theater kid to SE to leading Salesforce's legendary Q Branch, and unpacks why demo engineering might be the most underutilized lever in presales today. They cover the difference between deal-focused and infrastructure-focused demo engineers, how to structure the team, why blended teams fail, and how a mature demo engineering org can swim upstream into product strategy to reduce time-to-revenue. This is part one of two. Part two will focus on measuring and proving the value of a demo engineering team. Follow Us Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/ Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/ Connect with Micah Joel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micahjoel/ Links and Resources Mentioned Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack SoulCon 2026 (Chicago, August 2026): https://www.presalescollective.com/solcon-2026 Presales Collective Podcast…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jack Cochran, Matthew James

Guest: Micah Joel

Topics covered

• Demo Engineering
• Presales
• Team Structure
• Salesforce
• Product Strategy
• Deal Support
• Infrastructure

Keywords

• Demo Engineering
• Presales
• Salesforce
• Team Structure
• Time-to-Revenue
• Deal Support
• Infrastructure

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Salesforce, Presales Collective

Places: Chicago

More episodes of Presales Podcast by Presales Collective

• Debunking the Traditional Path to Presales with Adam Bauman · July 20, 2026 · 29 min
• Becoming Sales Leadership's Trusted Advisor with Lisa Jameson · July 6, 2026 · 27 min
• The Value of a Presales Academy with Rob Fallon · June 22, 2026 · 31 min
• Using AI as your Voice Assistant with Yasmeen Hyder · June 8, 2026 · 32 min
• Product-Trained Agents, and the New SE Workflow with Kintan Brahmbhatt · May 11, 2026 · 33 min
• The Convergence of Presales and Post-Sales: A New Career Path with Shamil Turner · April 28, 2026 · 32 min

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