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Homerun Presales Platform

Score9.5 out of 10

13 Reviews and Ratings

What is Homerun Presales Platform?

Homerun is a presales workspace that offers one place to track, manage, organize and inform the user's presales efforts. The solution boasts users among presales teams such as AppViewX, Ciena, Starburst, Graylog, JupiterOne, and others use Homerun to increase win rates, decrease sales cycles, save time, and reduce onboarding time for new hires. Homerun is SOC2 Type2 certified and GDPR compliant.

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Origin Story: The first version of Homerun was an internal tool that organized the work of sales engineers. According to the vendor, the problem was that they were managing multiple deals at any given time, jumping from customer calls to demos to POCs and back using multiple tools: a CRM, notepad, docs, spreadsheets, etc. So Homerun is built for both presales leadership and individual sales engineers, presales teams of all sizes use Homerun to achieve exceptional presales results.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of A presales workspace and one place to track, manage, organize and inform  presales efforts.

Screenshot of A presales workspace and one place to track, manage, organize and inform presales efforts.

Homerun Presales Platform Easy Effective and Built for Presales

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At our company we use Homerun Presales Platform for managing presales efforts across different teams and regions. Previously we struggled with a lack of structure tracking presales activities and didn't have a clear picture of our presales pipeline (including relevant metrics and reporting tailored to our needs). All of this has finally been addressed with Homerun Presales Platform.
One of the biggest improvements has been how we manage RFI/RFP responses and POCs: the "Evaluation Plans" features allows us to track these activities in a consistent and organized way.
Another game-changer is the ability to monitor feature gaps and quantify the revenue at risk due to missing functionality. This has completely changed how we handle conversations with the product team and how we can influence the roadmap based on actual data. We now use Homerun Presales Platform daily, logging meeting notes, tracking RFI/RFP responses, POC progress, etc.

Pros

  • POC Management: The Evaluation Plans feautre ensures that we follow a clear and consistent process, so that we can track progress across each opportunity.
  • Feature Gaps: This is one of the most valuable aspects of Homerun Presales Platform. Having the ability to identify missing product features and more importantly quantify the potential revenue at risk because of them has transformed the way we interact with the product team. We can now bring data-driven insights to discussions instead of just regular feedback.
  • CRM Integration: Homerun Presales Platform can be syncrhonized with Salesforce, which allows us to grab the information we need from the CRM without the need to duplicate it and push anything that might be beneficial to the broader team back to the CRM.

Cons

  • More flexibility in external reporting: Homerun Presales Platform provides solid internal reporting, however, creating external reports can be a bit cumbersome. Right now it takes extra effort to export data to third party reporting tools (e.g., PowerBI), however I got exceptional support from the team to be able to accomplish this task.

Return on Investment

  • Gaining a presales-focused view of the sales cycle, allowing us to track our team's contributions in a structured and measurable way.
  • Improving our collaboration with the product team by giving us actual data on feature gaps and potential revenue at risk due to missing functionality. This will help drive more strategic roadmap decisions.
  • CRM integration (Salesforce) has reduced manual admin work, saving our team valuable time.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Vivun

Other Software Used

Consensus

Fantastic presales tool built by presales professionals

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Homerun to organize our presales process and provide feedback to other teams around the organization about client needs. We also use it for project tracking for our services delivery team, it is an essential tool for coordination, tracking, and learning about effective sales cycles. The activity tracking tool gives an easy snapshot of how our team members spend their time and we're able to connect activities to client success. It's turned into an essential daily tool for the technical sales team.

Pros

  • We're able to add custom discovery, ROI, delivery, and business questions to evaluation plans without adjusting a ton of forms, moreover we can easily share our notes with the clients.
  • Easy integration with Salesforce to push and pull recorded data into fields the Homerun team helped us set-up.
  • The presales sentiment field allows the team to quickly communicate concern or encouraged deals.
  • Integration with Jira and Github allows us to communicate directly with product teams without managing different systems.
  • The Homerun team absolutely crushes it in the customer service department. Sameer and Brian are the absolute best. Our questions get answered quickly and they're willing to hop on calls to troubleshoot.

Cons

  • I'd love to see more learning articles around building charts and dashboards. There's a lot of analytics built into the tool, I'm sure there's some examples of effective reporting, I'm not sure my team is taking advantage of that feature.

Return on Investment

  • The tool allows us to see how different activities relate to closed won deals, giving us the insight needed to pivot staff towards effective presales strategies.

Usability

Ease of use with powerful capabilities

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Homerun Presales Platform primarily within the pre-sales team to manage and track our technical engagements throughout the sales cycle. It helps us centralize all ongoing opportunities, align with cross-functional teams like engineering through integrations with tools like Jira, and provide clear visibility into pre-sales status and progress — something that was really hard to manage with traditional CRMs.

Pros

  • Removes the noise from other information related to the whole sales cycle
  • Allows to connect to Jira to keep overview of all related information
  • Great at a glance and progress overview

Cons

  • Connecting with calendars / call management tools
  • Better synch with Salesforce
  • Possibility to see quotes from salesforce

Return on Investment

  • Better overview of blockers in product functionality
  • Transparency at team level
  • Easy and fast to use

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Microsoft Excel

Other Software Used

Phrase Localization Platform, Clari Copilot

Homerun Presales Platform allows me to hit homeruns!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Homerun Presales Platform for all Sales Engineers (SE) at my organization. Since switching from our previous CRM platform, I've experienced a huge increase in clarity on opportunities, and staying organized. Homerun Presales Platform was built from the ground up with Sales Engineering at the centerpiece. Homerun Presales Platform has become my go-to platform for notes, meetings, proof of concepts, and all other details. I like how the Kanban style allows me to quickly see the stages each opportunity is in, and track those independently from account executives and sales leadership.

Pros

  • Clarity on stages of all deals at a glance
  • Tracking and reporting progress of Proof-of-Concepts
  • Capturing technical details of opportunities
  • Capturing the Sales Engineer's sentiment on opportunities

Cons

  • More detailed "scoping" section to annotate technical details that differ between all opportunities
  • Proof of concept templates could use greater functionality
  • Adding activities directly from an opportunity should link to meetings on my calendar

Return on Investment

  • Better qualified opportunities
  • Easier tracking of opportunities by leadership
  • Consolidation of multiple CRM and note-taking platforms

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce CMS

Other Software Used

Workday Payroll and Workforce Management, Salesforce CMS, Litmos

My 2nd Brain for Presales

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Homerun Presales Platform as an SE (sales engineer) on a daily basis. Homerun Presales Platform reduces my friction and admin work in SalesForce. Homerun Presales Platform is my “post it note” for each deal to remind me of the key risks and communicate to the rest of my team and stakeholders.

Homerun Presales Platform helps me prioritize my time and proactively communicate what needs help and what I’m spending my time on.

Pros

  • Calendar sync to track time spent on opportunities
  • Kanban view to see all my opportunities at a glance and where they’re at
  • Salesforce integration so I can stay out of CRM and only see what’s relevant to me.

Cons

  • Mobile App
  • Charts and reporting are powerful but clunky
  • Custom Kanban views so that I can prioritize my deals and get the info I need at a glance

Return on Investment

  • Reduce time spent doing admin
  • Prioritize my time to generate revenue
  • Identify key risks in my revenue pipeline
  • Visibility over trends to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and what needs help

Other Software Used

Salesforce Sales Cloud