About this episode

Rob Fallon discusses the strategic importance of presales academies and shares insights from his experience at Nutanix and Dell EMC.

Rob Fallon , Director, Americas SE Strategy & Associate Program at Nutanix, has built presales academy programs at both Dell EMC and Nutanix, joins the show to discuss the strategic importance of creating structured training programs for presales professionals. Rob shares his experience transforming Dell's 12-week boot camp into a comprehensive academy and building Nutanix's current 18-month-old program from the ground up. The conversation tackles the "inverted pyramid" problem that plagues many SE organizations—being too heavy with expensive senior talent and lacking junior pipeline—and why most companies struggle to fix it. The discussion covers the business case for academies, how to secure executive sponsorship and funding, the structure of successful two-year programs, and why hiring for technical curiosity and grit matters more than existing technical knowledge. Follow Us Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/ Connect with Rob Fallon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robfallon/ Links and Resources Mentioned Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack Sol/Con 2026 (Chicago, August 2026)…

People in this episode

Host: Jack Cochran

Guest: Rob Fallon

Topics covered

• presales academy
• training programs
• senior talent
• executive sponsorship
• technical curiosity
• SE organizations

Keywords

• presales
• training
• boot camp
• academy program
• technical knowledge
• hiring
• executive funding

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Nutanix, Dell EMC, Presales Collective, Slack

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