What is it like to work in pre-sales at Cadmatic? Insights from Kristjan Müül and Bartek Wasiek
When you try to explain pre-sales to someone outside the field, the conversation often stays vague. The role sits somewhere between sales and engineering, yet neither description really captures what the work feels like in practice.
To make it more concrete, we spoke with Kristjan Müül, VP, Solution Consulting & Pre-sales, and Bartek Wasiek, Application Consultant at Cadmatic. Both work closely with customers across industries and regions, and both come from engineering backgrounds. What they describe is a role that stays close to real customer problems, requires constant learning, and has a very visible impact on business.
Starting from understanding
When Kristjan is asked to describe pre-sales in simple terms, his answer is very direct: “Our role is to help customers understand, from a technical perspective, why Cadmatic is the right solution for them.”
This means working with potential customers across different engineering fields and helping them understand how Cadmatic fits into both their engineering and information management processes and supports their day-to-day work.
This is the point in the sales process where pre-sales operates. At that stage, interest already exists, but the decision still depends on whether the customer understands the solution well enough to trust it.
Bartek describes their role as connecting the two sides of the process. “We help sales to address clients’ needs and convince them that Cadmatic is the way to go. We are like a connection between sales and the customer.”
“We help sales to address clients’ needs and convince them that Cadmatic is the way to go. We are like a connection between sales and the customer.”
Sales leads the commercial discussion, but pre-sales brings in the technical depth that helps the customer see how the solution fits into their own way of working. That requires starting from the customer’s reality rather than from the product itself.
“We need to understand the customer or prospect’s requirements and translate them in a way that they see and understand the value,” Kristjan explains.
That translation is where most of the work happens. It often means learning how the customer’s current tools and processes work, and then figuring out how Cadmatic can meaningfully integrate into that environment.
Work that keeps changing
When the conversation turns to daily work, both Kristjan and Bartek arrive at the same conclusion without hesitation.
“There is no such thing as a typical day,” Bartek says.
The role moves continuously between different customers, industries, and technical questions. One day might focus on ship design, while the next brings you into a completely different environment, such as plant engineering, with its own logic and requirements.
Kristjan describes it in a single word: “It’s a very dynamic environment.”
That dynamic nature shows up in the variety of tasks. You move between customer discussions, internal brainstorming, and the development of solutions tailored to each case. Sometimes you need to understand a completely new tool or ecosystem because the customer wants to keep part of their existing setup and expects it to work together with Cadmatic.
In those situations, the work starts from discovery and continues through collaboration, testing ideas, and gradually building a shared understanding.
Why speaking the language of engineers matters in pre-sales
Most people in pre-sales at Cadmatic come from engineering backgrounds, and that is not accidental.
“We have mechanical, electrical, and IT engineers. Engineer is the common denominator,” Kristjan says.
That background allows them to step into customer conversations with a shared understanding from the start. Customers expect you to follow their terminology, understand their processes, and recognize their challenges without needing everything explained first.
“When we speak with engineers, you need to speak the engineering language,” Kristjan continues.
That shared understanding builds trust early in the process, but it is only the starting point. Pre-sales also requires the ability to make complex topics clear for different audiences, because the same solution needs to make sense to engineers, managers, and business stakeholders at the same time.
Kristjan describes this as a core part of the role.
“Our core task is to make others understand and value what we have.”
That means adjusting how you explain things depending on who is listening, while still keeping the technical depth intact.
Bartek brings the same idea back to the human level.
“Interpersonal skills are important. First, we have to sell ourselves. Then it’s easier to convince them that our software is also a good thing.”
Understanding the customer also goes beyond what is initially visible. In some situations, customers have worked in the same way for years without questioning it, and part of the role is to help them see where their current approach could be improved.
Turning uncertainty into trust and business impact
One reason people enjoy pre-sales is that the impact of the work is clearly visible.
“For me, what drives me forward is the sense of importance,” Bartek says.
“If we succeed in convincing the prospect, then they become our clients. Everything that follows starts from our work.”
Kristjan describes the moment when a customer relationship starts to take shape. For him, the goal is always the same: helping the customer move forward with clarity and confidence.
Through discussions and demonstrations, the focus stays on making complex topics easier to understand and showing how the solution works in practice within the customer’s own environment.
“They start to understand, they start to trust, and they are ready to invest their time.”
That shared understanding creates a foundation for collaboration, where both sides work towards the same outcome.
Working across cultures
Pre-sales at Cadmatic is inherently global, and that shapes everyday work in subtle but important ways. “It’s different when you meet people from Japan compared to meeting someone from America or Europe,” Kristjan says
Cultural differences influence how people communicate and how discussions unfold. Bartek gives a simple example from presentations in which the level of interaction varies depending on the audience. At the same time, the role offers opportunities to travel and experience diverse working environments and cultures, adding another dimension to the work.
A role that keeps you moving and close to real decisions
One of the defining characteristics of pre-sales at Cadmatic is how closely learning, customer interaction, and business impact are connected in everyday work.
Each new case starts from a point where not everything is known yet. You step into a new situation, learn how the customer works, understand their tools and processes, and gradually build a solution together through discussion and collaboration. Over time, this creates a broader understanding of different industries and ways of working that goes beyond a single discipline.
“You keep learning all the time. Every case adds something, whether it’s about the industry, the software, or how customers work,” Bartek reflects.
Kristjan sees this continuous learning as a natural part of the role.
“We meet a lot of different companies from all over the world doing different things. We need to learn continuously.”
At the same time, this means that you rarely stay in familiar territory for long.
“When you join pre-sales, you are almost continuously not in your comfort zone,” Kristjan says.
That constant movement between new topics, industries, and customer situations shapes how the role feels in practice. It requires curiosity, adaptability, and the ability to stay comfortable in situations where the full picture is still forming.
What makes this especially meaningful is how closely the work connects to real business outcomes. You are part of the conversations where decisions take shape, and you can see how your work influences those decisions and leads to new customer relationships.
Over time, this combination develops a set of capabilities that are difficult to build in more static roles:
- the ability to connect technical understanding with business value
- confidence in working with different stakeholders, from engineers to decision-makers
- strong communication skills in complex and often unfamiliar situations
- a consultative approach to problem-solving, where solutions are built together with the customer
For people who enjoy learning, working with others, and solving problems in different contexts, this creates a role that feels both demanding and meaningful over time
