Career CompassIan Rendall · Executive portfolio

STAR Stories

Interview-ready structured stories.

Each entry is a self-contained Situation / Task / Action / Result narrative used to prepare for interviews and briefings.

  1. Unifying a fragmented global solution engineering organisation

    Transformation
    Global leadership
    Situation
    A global solution engineering function had grown up around individual products and regions, producing inconsistent customer experiences and duplicated effort.
    Task
    Design and lead a coordinated global operating model that raised the professional standard without stalling active customer engagements.
    Action
    Set a shared definition of the role and expected standards, aligned regional leadership on a common cadence, introduced governance rhythms and coached leaders on running the model in practice.
    Result
    A more coherent global function with a shared standard for discovery, demonstration and executive engagement, and clearer routes for progression and coaching.

  2. Raising demonstration quality through governance and peer review

    Standards
    Coaching
    Situation
    Demonstration quality varied significantly and there was no forum to hold practitioners to a shared standard.
    Task
    Introduce a mechanism that would raise the professional standard of demonstrations without becoming bureaucratic.
    Action
    Established the PreSales Excellence Council, defined what good looked like, introduced structured peer review of live and recorded engagements and ran a rolling programme of craft topics.
    Result
    A visible lift in demonstration quality, a shared vocabulary for critique and a stronger sense of profession across the team.

  3. Improving RFP response quality through a Pursuit Desk

    Governance
    Operations
    Situation
    RFP and RFI response quality depended on ad hoc effort from senior contributors, with reusable content scattered across shared drives.
    Task
    Build a repeatable way to respond consistently, at speed, without permanently burning out the most experienced people.
    Action
    Established a Pursuit Desk with a reusable content library in Loopio, named response owners, defined review checkpoints and aligned intake with sales.
    Result
    More consistent, higher-quality responses with clearer ownership and less reliance on individual heroics.

  4. Moving customer conversations from features to business value

    Value engineering
    Executive engagement
    Situation
    Default engagement patterns favoured feature-led demonstrations, which limited executive relevance and decision impact.
    Task
    Shift the default conversation towards business value and outcomes without diluting the technical credibility of the team.
    Action
    Built a Solution Consultancy capability, introduced storytelling and Challenger-style methods, made rehearsal a routine expectation and reinforced habits through peer review.
    Result
    Sharper commercial narrative in senior conversations, clearer alignment on outcomes and improved credibility with executive buyers.

  5. Creating a repeatable operating model for discovery, rehearsal and handover

    Method
    Enablement
    Situation
    Practitioners relied on personal habits rather than a shared method, making coaching, onboarding and consistent quality harder.
    Task
    Codify a repeatable method that could be taught, coached against and evolved.
    Action
    Authored a PreSales Playbook covering discovery, rehearsal, storytelling, reverse demonstrations, proof-of-concept planning and sales-to-delivery handover, and embedded it into the operating cadence.
    Result
    A method newer engineers can learn quickly and senior practitioners can coach against, with consistent standards across regions.