From Pre-Sales to Product Management
From Pre-Sales to Product Management
Before I moved into product management, I spent several years in business analysis and business development at Cognizant. A lot of that work was responding to RFPs and RFIs, understanding client situations, and building proofs of concept to back up a pitch. People sometimes see sales and product as separate worlds. For me, the pre-sales years were good training for product work.
Start with the client's situation
Consultative selling means understanding the client's problem before proposing a solution. That is also the first job of a product manager. Learning to ask good questions about a client's business, and to listen to the answers, carried straight over into product discovery.
Use cases make ideas concrete
In pre-sales I spent time analysing and shortlisting use cases for specific industries. A use case forces you to describe who does what and why, in plain terms. That same discipline helps when writing a product backlog. A vague idea becomes a clear story about a real user.
Research backs the pitch
Pitching a digital solution to a client without market and user research rarely works. The same is true for pitching a feature to your own team. Evidence moves a discussion away from opinions and toward what users actually need.
Ideas travel across industries
Working across verticals showed me that a solution from one industry can often solve a problem in another. Cross-pollinating ideas is still one of the most useful habits I have as a product manager.
Proof of concept before full build
Building a quick proof of concept to show a client what was possible taught me the value of testing before committing. In product work, that becomes prototypes and MVPs: small, honest experiments that tell you whether an idea is worth the full investment.
Sidhartha skipped presentations and built real AI products.
Sidhartha Pooboni was part of the August 2026 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 24 other talented participants.