Presales support VS Postsales Support

Let me briefly describe the nature of job and the teams that I worked with and am working with at the moment.

At my previous job i worked as a part of strong 10-12 member team operating from India, with the specialists operating from the US. The support we did was completely post sales and were not involved in any interaction with the customers before purchase. Also we had to follow fairly strict SLA's.

At my present job, i work with a small team of 4 people with one guy working from the US and the rest from India. The job does give you opportunity to get actively involved in presales demo's and helping out customers in the initial configuration of the tools. And again get involved in post sales support requirements.

The difference is the 2 jobs is a result of being in different industries , different domains and dealing with different volumes of customers.

So why is that people prefer doing presales support over postsales support. I pondered over this and could come up with the following reasons:

1. Being in presales means you are among the first to be in touch with customers, following the sales guys. More customer interaction more experience.
2. It also gives you a opportunity to directly contribute to the revenue in the way of converting deals.
3. It helps you become a domain / product expert . As a Presales engineer you are always looking for innovating and are staying up to date with industry trends.
4. It also gives you a glance in the world of sales.

Now what might be the drawbacks:

1. You dont really care about technology as long as you can demo/ configure the product for your customer.
2. You lose out on understanding customer issues and usage pattern, which being in post-sales support is a routine.
3. Lastly, the most fun thing of being in support, you miss troubleshooting issues.

Having discussed both the pros and cons, I still favor being in post-sales. Solving problems and not selling is my strength.