Fetch: Why Your Most Responsive SA Is Your Biggest Pipeline Risk
The behaviors presales culture rewards most are the ones most linked to lost deals.
This post is part of the Architecting Presales series on SA organizational design. Earlier this week on LinkedIn, I introduced the concept of the Fido SA — the solutions engineer who fetches every ball the customer throws without understanding what winning looks like. Three breeds: the Labrador who cannot say no, the Afghan Hound who performs for the room rather than serves the evaluation, and the Border Collie who reads the customer brilliantly but ignores the sales process. The original LinkedIn post is available here for context. What follows is the research layer behind that framework, why people-pleasing behavior in the SA role is not just a personality observation but a measurable and compounding pipeline problem.
Solutions Architect organizations face a recurring challenge: the emergence of the Fido SA, a solutions engineer who reacts to every customer request without considering what defines success. There are three types: the Labrador, who cannot say no; the Afghan Hound, who performs for the audience rather than focusing on the evaluation; and the Border Collie, who understands the customer well but disregards the sales process. What follows presents the research underpinning this framework, explaining why people-pleasing behavior in the SA role is not merely a personality trait but a measurable, compounding issue affecting the sales pipeline. In addition to analysis, this article previews actionable steps leaders can take to leverage the framework, such as rethinking assessment criteria, coaching practices, and team design to address and correct the Fido SA pattern.
This pattern, often overlooked in standard win and loss analyses, does not present as obvious product deficiencies, pricing issues, or competitive losses. Instead, it manifests subtly through prolonged deal cycles, proof of concepts that extend beyond their initial scope, and technical evaluations that end inconclusively. At the core, people-pleasing behavior within the SA role drives these issues. The resulting pipeline cost is quantifiable, accumulative, and largely preventable.
To better address the challenge, it is important to understand how seller behavior influences deal outcomes in complex B2B environments. Applying these research insights specifically to the presales function reveals unique incentive structures, setting this behavior apart from what is seen in pure sales roles. In complex B2B sales, presales often owns the most technical and credible voice in the room. When that voice defaults to pleasing rather than challenging, the negative performance patterns identified in quota-carrying roles are magnified rather than reduced.
The Research Foundation: Insights into Relationship-Driven Performance
In one of the most rigorous studies of B2B sales performance to date, researchers at CEB (now Gartner) surveyed over 6,000 sales professionals from more than 90 companies to identify factors that distinguish high performers from average and low performers. The data revealed five distinct profiles, with the most common being the Relationship Builder, a representative who aims to satisfy customer demands, resolve conflicts, and maintain harmony.
This finding goes against conventional wisdom. The Relationship Builder profile, though common, was rarely associated with high performance. Only about 7 percent of high performers matched this approach, while approximately 54 percent of top performers identified as Challengers.
Challengers make up nearly 40 percent of all high performers, which makes them more than twice as likely to be top performers compared to any other profile. Relationship Builders rank lowest.
Challenger representatives leverage their understanding of customers’ businesses to provide new insights and influence customer thinking. They introduce ideas such as cost savings or risk mitigation that were not previously considered by the customer. Unlike Relationship Builders, Challengers are effective because they create constructive tension.
The implications for presales leadership are substantial. While the original research focused on quota-carrying sellers, presales teams operate in the same complex, customer-facing environment and exert outsized influence during evaluation and solution design. Behaviors associated with the Relationship Builder profile, including availability, responsiveness, and eagerness to meet every demand, have long been favored in presales. Evidence from complex sales shows that these behaviors are consistently linked with weaker deal outcomes.
This connection between the Fido SA phenomenon and outcome data shows that people-pleasing behaviors are not just undesirable. They are linked to measurable and negative impacts on sales pipelines, which emphasizes an urgent need for leaders to reassess criteria for recruitment, coaching, and rewards. As a first step, leaders should conduct an immediate review of their team’s coaching practices and reward structures to ensure these systems prioritize behaviors that are commercially impactful rather than reactive availability or activity volume. For example, implementing deal review sessions focused on how SAs advance commercial outcomes, or introducing recognition programs that reward effective scope control and definition of success criteria, will drive meaningful change.
Three Types of People-Pleasing Behavior
People-pleasing behavior among Fido SAs can be grouped into three distinct profiles. Each profile arises from different root causes and calls for tailored coaching and assessment responses.
The first profile is the accommodator. This SA is unable to decline customer requests because doing so is perceived as conflict, which is equated with failure. Consequently, every scope expansion is accepted, every competitive diversion pursued, and every feature inquiry met with an immediate demonstration. Accommodators often receive high ratings in customer satisfaction surveys because of perceived responsiveness. However, these surveys do not assess whether the deal advanced or whether the evaluation concluded with clear criteria.
The second profile is the performer. This SA impresses the customer by excelling in evaluations, delivering polished demonstrations, and demonstrating strong product expertise, often eliciting positive in-room reactions. However, the performer prioritizes obtaining approval over fulfilling the evaluation’s actual objectives. The issue lies not in technical knowledge but in failing to subordinate performance to the evaluation goals.
The third profile is the technically competent but commercially absent SA. This individual establishes strong technical rapport but lacks mechanisms to convert this into commercial outcomes. They fulfill requests without focusing on shaping evaluations toward success and remain process-blind despite customer sophistication.
Despite differences in origin, all three profiles create comparable pipeline challenges: longer sales cycles, scope creep, and evaluations that lack defined success criteria.
Pipeline Data Analysis
Though measuring individual SA behavior is challenging, the downstream effects of people-pleasing are evident in aggregate deal data.
One large SaaS pipeline analysis found that roughly 22 percent of closed-lost deals failed in the needs assessment and solution design stages, which are the parts of the cycle where SAs typically have the greatest influence. In this context, Challenger SAs reframe customer problems and establish success criteria early, while accommodating SAs defer to customer assumptions and often leave evaluations open-ended.
Similarly, an analysis of over 4.2 million opportunities reported that about 61 percent of lost deals were attributed to buyer indecision rather than direct competitive loss. Buyer indecision is heavily influenced by shortfalls in the sales process such as unclear value, unaddressed risk, or lack of urgency, rather than by buyer intent alone. When customers lack compelling business reasons to choose, indecision stalls progress. Relationship Builder SAs may spend months ensuring satisfaction but rarely create a sense of urgency around a defined problem and outcome. Challenger-style SAs use their technical authority to highlight the cost of inaction and the risks of poor design decisions, turning evaluation time into commercial momentum.
Gartner research shows that sales representatives who challenge customer thinking with commercial insight during the solution exploration stage are significantly more likely to secure high-quality deals. The solution exploration stage is primarily managed by the SA. This finding should be integral to all SA performance evaluations.
The Coaching Case: Outcomes of Challenger Development
People-pleasing behavior in SAs is not an inherent trait but a behavioral disposition influenced by organizational culture, incentives, and management. Research on Challenger development is directly applicable in this context.
In documented Challenger programs, teams that receive structured Challenger-style coaching have reported 16.7 percent higher annual revenue growth and a 28 percent increase in win rates relative to peers. In one large rollout at SAP, nearly 4,300 sellers and 1,400 managers attributed approximately 51 million dollars in closed business and 198.2 million dollars in anticipated business to the methodology, closing 26 percent more deals, generating 27 percent more sales revenue, and reducing sales cycles by more than a month on average compared to untrained teams. These improvements point to a structural shift in revenue generation driven primarily by changes in seller-customer interactions rather than product, pricing, or market conditions.
For presales leaders, the implication is clear. Developing Challenger behaviors among SAs drives improved performance, not only at the individual level but also in maximizing overall win rates across deals. Importantly, Challenger competencies can be developed rather than being innate. SA leaders should tailor coaching, training, and talent development strategies to foster Challenger traits and unlock greater organizational success.
A practical approach leaders can adopt is the Challenger Coaching Cadence. This method integrates structured, recurring deal reviews that focus specifically on uncovering customer business drivers and surfacing where SAs have created or missed opportunities to challenge customer assumptions. Typically, managers meet weekly or bi-weekly with each SA to review active deals, beginning with an analysis of how the customer’s needs were reframed, the definition of clear evaluation success criteria, and whether constructive tension was introduced. Coaching feedback is centered around concrete examples from live opportunities, modeling effective questioning and decision frameworks rather than generic guidance. Over time, additional sessions can focus on role play, objection handling, and sharing Challenger best practices from the team. By institutionalizing these elements into a regular coaching rhythm, leaders provide SAs with ongoing, actionable development that translates theory into changed behavior within real opportunities.
The Fido SA Within a Consumption-Based Revenue Model
This magnification is especially apparent in consumption-based revenue models, where people-pleasing behavior has amplified consequences. In these models, the use case that an SA helps define directly determines the account’s future growth potential.
In a perpetual license model, a Fido SA that closes an inappropriate deal incurs the loss of a single transaction. In a consumption model, the same SA influences the entire Net Annual Recurring Revenue trajectory of an account over multiple years, with the initial use case serving as the baseline for all future expansion. An SA who unconditionally agrees to initial requests establishes the account’s growth ceiling.
This dynamic often remains undetected in quarterly reviews and emerges 12 to 18 months later when expansion stagnates without a clear explanation. The customer is neither dissatisfied nor churning. Rather, they consume at the level that was initially architected by the SA. This use case was selected because it appeared manageable, familiar, and low-risk during evaluation. Growth remains unowned because no definition of growth was established before the evaluation concluded.
In a consumption model, the accommodating SA represents not only deal risk but also compound revenue risk that escalates with each account closed.
When Fido SAs Are Promoted: The Leadership Multiplication Problem
The most costly manifestation of the Fido SA pattern is not the individual contributor who responds excessively to requests, but the Fido SA who is promoted into leadership and constructs a team that mirrors their own behavioral model.
The presales industry shows a well-recognized tendency to promote top individual contributors into management roles without sufficiently evaluating their leadership capabilities. An all-star SA who excelled in customer engagements, conducted numerous demonstrations, and was favored by the account executive team is often promoted to manager, then director, and eventually vice president. This occurs because organizations conflate technical excellence with leadership potential.
The Fido executive vice president of presales demonstrates a recognizable and costly pattern. Lacking a clear definition of team success, they default to quantifiable metrics such as demonstrations conducted, POCs initiated, and hours logged. When win rates decline, they request additional headcount and rely on increasing the number of SAs performing the same activities as their corrective measure. As a result, the SA to AE ratio inflates, sales costs rise, and win rates remain stagnant.
Ratio data provides valuable insight. Research by the Alexander Group, which analyzed 100 sales forces across industries, found that teams with a 1 to 5 SE to AE ratio averaged 2 million dollars in revenue per representative, while those with a 1 to 1 ratio averaged 3.2 million dollars per representative. This 60 percent increase in revenue productivity per representative is not solely due to the ratio itself. It also reflects how effectively presales capacity is deployed. Smaller SA teams doing deeper, more meaningful technical work on a focused set of deals tend to achieve materially better outcomes than larger teams spread thin across numerous superficial engagements.
The Fido VP fails to recognize this distinction, perceives only a utilization issue, and consequently requests additional headcount. This results in an SA organization that is overstaffed according to ratio metrics but underperforming in outcomes, a costly and largely unrecognized problem attributable primarily to leadership behavior.
Industry observations suggest many SaaS companies underinvest in presales during high-growth phases and then overstaff at maturity, failing to reassess team responsibilities as the go-to-market model evolves. The Fido leader exacerbates both issues by underinvesting in coaching and process during growth, and overstaffing during maturity, relying solely on headcount as a corrective measure. Eventually, the CFO observes increasing sales costs without corresponding improvements in win rates or deal velocity. By this stage, the team has been shaped by the leader’s behavioral model for years.
A detailed discussion of Challenger SA leadership practices, including how to conduct deal reviews, foster an environment where SAs openly surface risks, and recognize when the team ceases to provide candid feedback, is provided in a dedicated post within this series.
The Fido-to-Challenger Spectrum: Distinguishing Coachable and Non-Coachable Behaviors
Not all SAs who exhibit people-pleasing behavior are permanently stuck in that pattern. However, the spectrum from Fido to Challenger is not a linear continuum but consists of distinct behavioral positions. The gap between these positions determines the potential and limits of coaching interventions.
At one end lies the fully coachable middle. These SAs exhibit Fido behaviors because of hiring, management, and reward structures rather than inherent incapacity. When managers identify specific gaps during deal reviews, such as loss of scope control, failure to apply a business value framework, or inappropriate acquiescence, these SAs recognize the issues, articulate alternative approaches, and incorporate feedback in subsequent evaluations. The discrepancy between their current and Challenger behaviors represents a coaching gap rather than a capability gap.
The partially coachable SA occupies the middle of the spectrum. This individual can demonstrate Challenger behaviors in certain contexts but reverts to people-pleasing under pressure, such as during high-stakes deals, competitive scenarios, or customer dissatisfaction. Coaching for this group demands intensive, consistent reinforcement through deal reviews, managerial modeling, and explicit accountability mechanisms. Progress is achievable but tends to be slower, with frequent regression under stress when sustained support is absent.
At the opposite extreme is the uncoachable Fido. This SA rationalizes people-pleasing behavior instead of acknowledging it. During deal reviews, they attribute losses to product deficiencies, pricing, or competitive factors rather than their own approach. They are unable to adopt a business value framework because they do not consider it their responsibility. When questioned about expanding the POC scope beyond evaluation requirements, they justify it solely by customer requests. This gap is not a skill deficiency but a belief issue, which coaching cannot resolve.
A simple and revealing test distinguishes the coachable middle from the uncoachable extreme. In a structured deal review, managers demonstrate precisely where the SA’s behavior deviated from evaluation requirements. SAs who recognize and accept this gap are coachable. Those who fail to see it or defend their behavior are not.
Uncoachable Fidos retain value in roles such as developer relations and technical advocacy, which demand the warmth, availability, and product expertise that characterize the Fido SA but lack the commercial accountability that reveals behavioral gaps. However, in post-sales roles, a people-pleaser who lacks business acumen becomes a product expert focused on training delivery rather than a trusted advisor. Post-sales functions require business knowledge to develop best practices and guide customers through change, not solely product expertise. Assigning an uncoachable Fido to post-sales does not resolve the issue but instead relocates it.
The Four Dimensions of SA Assessment
Identifying Fido behavior before it damages the pipeline and distinguishing between coachable and uncoachable manifestations requires a structured assessment framework beyond observation alone. Managers who rely only on deal participation or customer feedback to evaluate SA performance often receive misleading signals and frequently misdiagnose the issue.
To operationalize the four-dimensional framework, leaders should incorporate targeted assessment questions into their evaluations:
For sales acumen and deal ownership: “Can the SA describe a recent evaluation where they set the success criteria with the customer before any demonstration took place? What steps did they use to maintain control of scope throughout the deal?”
For business acumen: “How does the SA connect solution capabilities to the customer’s business objectives? Can they articulate the broader business impact of technical decisions made during an evaluation?”
For leadership and management: “In what ways has the SA influenced peers or account executives to adopt more commercially effective behaviors? What evidence is there of developing team members or challenging ineffective norms?”
Using specific, behavior-based questions like these enables leaders to identify gaps, provide actionable feedback, and ensure each assessment dimension is addressed in practice.
A comprehensive SA assessment evaluates performance across four key dimensions.
Technical capability is the baseline dimension. It includes depth of knowledge, architectural credibility, and understanding of technology beyond the product user interface. Fido SAs typically meet technical capability requirements, which often explains their hiring. However, conflating technical competence with readiness to lead complex evaluations is a fundamental error in most SA organizations.
Sales acumen and deal ownership represent the dimension where the Fido pattern most prominently appears. This dimension assesses whether the SA controls the evaluation, establishes success criteria before the customer, enforces scope discipline, and understands what is required for a technical win. SAs who score low in this area lack sufficient understanding of the buying process to lead it effectively. They respond reactively instead of proactively architecting the evaluation.
Business acumen distinguishes transactional SAs from trusted advisors. This dimension evaluates the SA’s ability to link solution capabilities to business outcomes and, at senior levels, to understand the customer’s business model, competitive landscape, and industry vertical well enough to lead strategic discussions. Business acumen develops with seniority and industry exposure. Although it is coachable over time, its development requires extended timelines and access to deal contexts that build instinct through experience.
Leadership and management capabilities vary across SA organizational levels. At the individual contributor level, this dimension assesses self-direction, sound independent judgment, and the ability to influence peers and account executives without formal authority. At the managerial level, it evaluates the ability to develop others, conduct deal reviews that reveal substantive information rather than status updates, establish accountability structures, and build teams that consistently exhibit Challenger behaviors instead of relying on isolated individual performance. Promoting all-star SAs without evaluating this dimension is the most frequent and costly talent error in presales.
The Fido SA typically meets the first dimension but fails the second and third. The accommodator fails the second dimension. The performer fails the second and often the third. The commercially absent SA fails the third dimension. A Fido manager who reaches vice president level without developing the fourth dimension compromises the entire organization, because the team lacks a leadership model that exemplifies Challenger behavior.
Implications for SA Leadership
The pattern in the data is hard to ignore. Over half of all-star performers in complex sales align with the Challenger profile, while only about 7 percent of high performers adopt the Relationship Builder approach, the lowest-performing profile among the five. Presales organizations that continue to hire, reward, and promote based on availability and responsiveness are cultivating teams that are optimized for suboptimal outcomes in critical environments.
The Challenger SA is not a personality type. They are the product of an intentional system: hiring processes that assess the right dimensions, managers who run deal reviews that surface real information, leadership that defines what a technical win requires, and organizational structures that hold SAs accountable for outcomes rather than activity.
The most perilous manifestation of the Fido problem is not the SA who responds to every request. It is the vice president of presales who lacks alternative competencies and has the authority to build an organization that reflects their own behavioral model.
Building a different system is the work. While the full SA Archetype Assessment will soon be available to Architecting Presales subscribers, leaders can take immediate action by conducting a simple self-assessment using the four key dimensions outlined in this article. Start by selecting a recent deal and, for each dimension, ask: Did the SA demonstrate technical capability beyond the user interface? Did they set clear evaluation success criteria before conducting any demonstration? Did they connect solution features to the customer’s business objectives? Did they influence peers or account executives to adopt more commercially effective behaviors? Taking one deal through these questions will help reveal where Fido behaviors might be surfacing, highlight areas for coaching, and begin moving the team toward Challenger without waiting for a formal tool.
The SA Archetype Assessment scores your team across all four dimensions, identifies where Fido behaviors are coachable, where they are structural, and what it will take to build toward Challenger at every level of the organization. Coming soon to Architecting Presales subscribers.
Which specific behavior within your team most clearly indicates Fido SA thinking, and is it being inadvertently rewarded?