Why AI’s Real Power Lives in Pre-Sales and Not Prospecting

Most AI in sales content is stuck at the top of funnel: prompts, prospecting, and research.

This episode is different.

Jake Dunlap sits down with David Maloof, Founder and Managing Partner of Pre-Sales Advisory Group and longtime pre-sales leader across high-growth SaaS and enterprise orgs, to unpack a truth most teams miss:

AI’s real power shows up in pre-sales, where discovery, storytelling, and demos decide whether you win or lose.

David breaks down how the best SEs and revenue teams are using AI to:

• show up to discovery with a point of view
• move from cookie-cutter questions to validation-style discovery
• create stronger, faster, more tailored demos using transcripts and structured feedback
• build a tighter AE and SE operating rhythm because AI gives teams back time
• use frameworks like MEDDIC and MEDPIC with better pattern recognition, without outsourcing human judgment

They also tackle what modern buyers expect now that they can research everything themselves, and why the demo jockey era is dead.

Key takeaways

• AI-assisted discovery starts before the call, not during it
• If you are not putting in at least as much effort as the buyer did to meet you, you are already behind
• Top SEs in 2026 and beyond will be defined by curiosity and consistency, not perfect tooling
• AI is not replacing great sellers or SEs, it is replacing the ones who will not adapt

Learn more about Skaled: https://www.skaled.com

Jake's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmaloof/

Check out Journey AI: http://meetjourney.ai/

AI Certification for Reps:  https://bit.ly/ai-sales-certification...

AI Certification for Managers: ​​https://bit.ly/ai-sales-certification... 

Want Jake’s AI Playbook? Go to one of Jake’s LinkedIn posts and comment or DM the word “prompt”

New episodes weekly. Follow and subscribe so you do not miss what’s next.

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Why Presales

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the AI Powered Seller. Today's episode Why AI's Real Power Lives in Presales. Usually, when you think about AI, you think prospecting, you think research, maybe some deal review, et cetera. But I think really great organizations know that discovery, connecting the demo to what they care about, value, storytelling, those are the things that really make or break a deal. So if you've ever wondered why some teams close 10, 20, 30% more, Day's guests is going to help open your eyes. And I'm I've got to tell you, a lot of my sellers might be ready to convert. I think some SDRs, some salespeople after today's episode are going to say, you know, I think I want that job. So, you know, David Maloof, David is the founder and managing partner of pre-sales advisory group. I've known David for a long time. Uh, he's worked at Fortune 500's PE-backed SaaS companies, Oracle, Salesforce, RI Software. Uh, he led a global organization of 75 individuals across sales engineering, enablement, and value consulting, you know, a company that was, you know, really close to a billion dollars in ARR at Salesforce. He led teams of 160 plus. And this guy's managed a lot of people, right? And not only that, in my opinion, he's one of the leaders in modern sales processes and how you put together a modern sales team. You know, he's drove AI-enabled demo creation, competitive insights automations. So, why I'm excited to talk to David today is not only does this guy understand the value of how to build a modern GTM org, this guy is deep in the AI game. So, ladies and gentlemen, join me in welcoming Mr. David Maloof.

Meet David Maloof And His Journey

SPEAKER_00 1:45

AI-powered seller.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Looking forward to the conversation, David. Welcome to the show, man. Hey, Jake, thanks for having me. Yeah, it should be it should be a good one. I think a lot of a lot of people are like pre-sales. Even you and I remember we had a conversation like three or four weeks ago about this. So tell me first, like, how did how did you get into this? You know, you you'd been in sales, sales leadership. We worked together. I don't want to tell people how long ago. Dave and I have, you know, we've been in the game for a little bit, uh, you know, 15, 20 years ago. But you know, how did you get into this idea of pre-sales? And then maybe just, you know, kind of cat just roll that straight into what's exciting for you today. And as you think about, you know, our listeners are reps and leaders, you know, where you see pre-sales going and how you see it impacting sales.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Sure. So I always joke that the pre-sales is the best job that no one's ever heard of. And so when people think about go-to market motions, they think about the business development side of things, they think about the AEs, they think about RevOps, they think about all those different things. But before I got into pre-sales, I had no idea what this thing was. So I started my career off in sales, like most people. No one goes to school for pre-sales, no one goes and says, hey, I want to really want to be a sales engineer, you know, when I grow up. Right. So, you know, I was going through this motion, I was going through sales, and then I actually had a you know kind of an interesting career path. I took some time off and went back to school and actually joined some competitions and we do some things. And a uh Oracle at the time had sponsored a sales competition at my school. And we were going through and I got pulled aside by one of the leaders at Oracle and they said, Hey, have you heard about this thing called pre-sales? And I said, You know, what is that? And he said, You know, what if I told you that there was a role in sales where you didn't have to go out and do prospecting and cold calling and you didn't have to go through and and talk about numbers and pricing at the end. Your job was to solve problems for customers. And immediately I was, if that's a real job, because I don't think it is, sign me up. Right. So that that was my foray into into pre-sales, and I never looked back. You know, fast forward, you know, 15, 20 years later, and I've been in pre-sales leadership at Oracle, at Salesforce, at MRI Software, and I really enjoy building out pre-sales organizations and helping people understand what the function really is, what it does, how it can help their companies out. And so, you know, over the past six months or so, I've made the transition from being an in-house practitioner to doing consulting full time.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Honestly, I think kind of sometimes working at a company can be the dark side of times.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

I think it's a fantastic side. I mean, it it's it's really the way I look at it, it's it's a force multiplier. I can take what I was doing for one company and I can do it for multiple companies across the board. Right. When I when I take a look at pre-sales organizations, especially some of these smaller companies, they don't have budget to go out and hire a global head of pre-sales. They don't have the ability to go out and you know build an infrastructure from scratch, but they need that skill set. So to be able to take what I've done at these other companies and bring that to companies that are looking to build out pre-sales, really understand what it is, how it can help their business. That's why I've decided to join to kind of start this new venture here at the pre-sales advisory group and really start helping people make that transition into solid pre-sales organizations.

The Evolution Of Presales

SPEAKER_01 4:38

And what and where do you feel this is headed? You know, when you think about pre-sales, right? Uh this ability and because I I it's really interesting. I'd like the concept of pre not the concept, the role of pre-sales, where, you know, I hear they're like, well, why don't the salespeople know how to talk about this? And shouldn't that be this? Or, you know, shouldn't the salespeople know how to do ABC or whatnot? You know, like in you know, where do you see the role of pre-sales in kind of this new, you know, customer journey, what they're expecting, etc.?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Yeah. So pre-sales has gone through a few different evolutions, right? You know, it started off because they were the demo jockeys, they were the guys that came in and didn't know. Yeah, exactly. When software was more complex. And we moved into SaaS and that changed a little bit. And the role started to evolve a little bit more into talking about the business value and what that can deliver and telling a story to the customer and kind of filling that business gap. Now, what's happening as we move forward is all of that's starting to become a little bit automated, a little more accessible. But where pre-sales really starts to play a role is when complexity starts to grow. So if you're a company and you've got one product, you've got two products, the reps are out there, they're doing the demos, they're having the conversations, that's all well and good. If that's the case, you don't really necessarily need a pre-sales organization. Once you start taking a look and saying, okay, I want to bring my business international, right? I want to enter into new markets. I've just done acquisitions, and now all of a sudden my sellers have to sell five, six, seven, eight different products where they only really know how to sell two of them. Right. That's where a pre-sales organization can come in and help you put together that story. How do all the pieces really fit? What's the underlying architecture look like? What's the story that tells the end-to-end customer experience to all the different products, not just the one or two the rep might be familiar with? So that's where things are evolving and AI is really accelerating the ability of a pre-sales organization to do that by doing a lot of the research and background and stuff and kind of pulling that in and making it more accessible. So it's it's a really exciting time to kind of go through this next evolution where we've gone from demo jockeys to business consultants to this new kind of tech forward part of the organization that kind of bridges that gap between the product, the sales team, the customer.

AI As A Force Multiplier

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, I think that that's I think that's such a good call out. And I we work with a lot of companies that are kind of in that world right now where they're their teams and also the teams are becoming leaner too, right? Where maybe you're on a team and they, you know, each team used to have a product, you know, was more product focused, and now you're bringing that all that together. And it's a struggle point, right? For these reps in particular to be able to, you know, keep up and also be able to quickly identify opportunities. And so maybe let's let's dive in. You talked about the AI piece in particular. So I'm a rep where you feel like pre-sales is gonna head is this this person's kind of this connector and kind of supporting the salesperson. So how does AI fit into this person's world? How does AI, if I'm a pre-sales, and then I also want to maybe get a sense from you as well on how does this, like, how does this evolve the role of the seller? So maybe let's let's talk first about kind of the AI piece, and then let's talk about you know how this is impacting the life of the seller with, you know, both as pre-sales evolves and AI evolves.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

So the the biggest piece where this makes a difference is as all of these things become more complex, as more products get added, a lot of time is taken away from the pre-sales teams to where they're doing more behind the scenes. They're spending more time doing research, they're doing more time doing demo builds. All of that time is time away from the customer. They're spending less and less time actually speaking with customers, doing demos, going on site, doing the things that that you know an AI or something can't do. They're spending all that time on the background doing stuff that now can be automated. So when we talk about doing smart discovery and things like that, you can use AI tools to augment all of that work that a pre-sales person would normally be doing. And going into instead of going into a discovery cold, you basically go in with a point of view, right? You're able to go in and do all this research ahead of time and say, hey, customer, you know, I've learned a lot about you. I know you've done a lot of research about us. We've done the same. I now have a pretty good understanding of the space that you're in. This becomes more of a validation session than a discovery session. You've just saved hours of time of you and the customer, and you're able to go in and make that impact more quickly. And then there's other administrative things like creating data sets for demo environments and doing customizations and things like that. Even some of the integrations now are being done by AI. It's taking all that time away from what a pre-sales person would typically have to do and getting them to be able to spend more time face-to-face with the customer where that value really comes through.

Sales And Presales: New Partnership

SPEAKER_01 8:53

If you are getting value, my friends, this is the time. Make sure if you're watching the video, hit like, maybe copy and paste, share it in your Slack channel. Uh, if you are listening to the podcast, make sure you sign up to get the downloads every single week. We are dropping new episodes with revenue leaders, executives, venture PE funds talking about the future of AI in sales. So if you know, if pre-sales is doing this, and I think probably some people even listen, right? And they go, you know, okay, this is this is isn't this my job, right? Like how, like, where do you how is this kind of coming together, right? Because a lot of what you're talking about is, you know, what a good, you know, mid-market enterprise seller does, right? A good mid mid-market seller says, I need to under understand, you know, come in with a point of view. How do you how do you see the evolution of these two groups working together? You know, it to to coexist slash co-create without redundancy. As they're kind of it sounds like, you know, as customers are demanding more, that's a worse thing, right? A customer, if you're on this call, I want you to add value. And if the salesperson's sitting there and they can't talk about these things or they can't do this, so how do you think about this interplay in like the world of AI?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

The two rules need to become a lot closer. They they always should have been, but there just wasn't enough time. These people always joke that the, you know, they would they want to do it right, but they don't have enough time to do it. Everyone talks about all these processes and how you know pre-sales and sales should be joined at the hip and they should be doing white spacing together and they should be going to customer sites together and doing all this. There's just no time to do that. So, what this is allowing them to do is free up time to have those conversations and plan together. But if you look at the reps responsibility, they can have a huge book of business. They can be working depending on the business segment, anywhere from a couple of accounts on a large enterprise side or hundreds of accounts if you're talking about mid-size or SB, depending on how the business scales, the SC is not going to be involved in every single one of those deals, but they're gonna be able to do the account research and start putting together those POVs and those stories for the ones that really matter. And that allows the rep to pre-up time to go explore and spend more time in the rest of their account base that normally would have gotten neglected because they were really trying to focus in on just these couple of different things. So it's sort of a separation of duties, but it really creates a tighter trust between the two. And it really becomes more of the more one cohesive go-to-market motion where it's a team. And we're we've kind of come full circle on this. When it started off when SEs first came around, they were basically paired, you know, one to one with the sales rep, one to two with the sales repes, and there were these teams, but then that got diluted because business just got so busy, right? And I've seen companies that are having 10 to 1, 5 to 1, 12 to 1, just kind of depends on where things are at. What AI will allow us to do is to take away a lot of that administrative work on the background and get that relationship back with the reps, right? It's no longer a, hey, do you have to come next Tuesday to do this demo for this person you've never talked to? We got to move, we got to move. It becomes a, hey, here's take a look at the calendar for the next month and let's plot out how we're gonna attack this together. And it brings that relationship back.

The Modern SE Skill Set

SPEAKER_01 11:43

All right. So the rep is is going out and spending more time. Where do you see AI disrupting some of the I don't know, like the customer experience? You know, I what I what we're seeing a lot of David is you know, customers are also coming in more prepared, right? Customers are saying, hey, I know this, I know this, I know this, et cetera. And you've got this C. And I think with a lot of companies, and when I mean, I don't know, tell me if you agree with this. I feel like with a lot of companies, they still are like they treat them like the product guy, you know, or woman, right? With a lot of companies. And as people are not, you know, I can find this out. I got a chat GPT. I said, okay, you're at MRI software, you're already, you know, blah, blah, blah, break it down. Here's my property, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You tell me what the features are I should look at. And they're coming so prepared. How do you see, you know, what are the skill sets? You talked about research, et cetera. What are the skill sets of this modern SE? Like what are the skill sets? And and and obviously we talked about research and value engineering, et cetera. So, what do you feel like it's going to take for them to be successful in, you know, 2026 and beyond?

SPEAKER_00 12:44

So SEs are really, I'd say, positioned well for uptake of all these new AI technologies, right? So when you take a look at an SE or technical seller, so to speak, they're naturally curious about technology. They have an elevated technical aptitude over what the general, a general seller would, would have, right? So a seller's, you know, main core skill set is to be able to go out there and and sell and and talk value and do those things. But wherever they bridge the where uh presales are able to bridge the gap is that additional layer of technical understanding. And some of these AI tools, they're they're pretty surface level, right? You can go in the chat GPT, you can you know ask it a couple of questions, you can get a decent output. Sure, yeah. And that's e though, because of the way that they're kind of trained in the way that they think about things, they're able to take that to another level of depth. Right. So when we talk about customizing, you know, ChatGPT and making custom GPTs and doing integrations and using things like Zapier and things like that to kind of put together these workflows that are gonna help them go out there and put together these stellar demos. That's not something a rep should be wasting their time doing, right? This is something that the FC can put together and you know, create these customized demos and these workflows and things that are gonna help bring that story that they've done. And again, they've done this account research, they understand the industry, they put together these value pieces, AI helps them craft the story, and then you can output that into one of these demo automation systems. It's gonna help you craft the tailored demo to what that looks like, go out there and deliver that to the customer. Meanwhile, the rep is kind of being the MC for all of this and carrying through the relationship with the customer, all that back end now, you just save the SE, you know, tons and tons of time to go in and do that. So I think that the skill set doesn't necessarily need to evolve that much. It's just being able to be consistent with it. If I if I could say what's gonna make the most SDs successful moving forward over the next year, it's curiosity and consistency. And so a lot of people, just like any other sales training you get, you you hear, oh, this is the training on the new AI stuff, and everyone goes to the course and they sit there for an hour and they're like, this is so cool, and they go back to their desk and they they use it once or twice and they go back to doing it the way they were doing it before. Those are the SCs that aren't gonna make it in the new world. It's the ones that are curious that take what they learned in the course, they apply it, they make it part of their everyday. That's what's gonna make the difference. And then the ones that can't make that shift, and unfortunately, you are gonna get phased out over time because that's the new skill set that's gonna be needed. It's it's learning these tools, being able to use them, incorporate them into your day-to-day work, and that's what's gonna make the difference.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

I asked somebody this. I'm gonna digress for a second. I asked, I was we were the Los Angeles Angels are a client of ours. Shout out to the Angels. Uh, I was on site with them last week and we did a session with their leaders. And you talked about one of the skills being curious. And I flat out asked the leaders, can you teach curiosity? Like, is that something? Is it possible to teach someone to be curious? I want your take. I'll I'll give mine too.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

So I don't know that you can necessarily teach someone to be curious, but you can reward curiosity. And I think that's a big differentiator. A lot of times, especially in a corporate setting, you're either penalized or not given the space or the time to be curious. And that prevents progress. Companies that reward creativity, and I've seen companies go through and have like AI Fridays or whatever, where they give you a few hours to go in and experiment with something and present it back to the group. And if it's something that catches on, you know, you get a spiff or whatever the case is for doing whatever that thing was. That can cultivate more curiosity in somebody. But to teach someone to be curious, I think there's something innate that that has to be there for them to want that.

Redefining Discovery With AI

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I think so. I think what you can do is teach people the questions of curiosity. How you know, I think there's some techniques you could teach where, you know, hey, make sure you're always asking two follow-up questions. And, you know, you're not just moving on, you're, you know, you're not listening to speak. We talk to teams about, you know, there's like three levels of listening of most people are at one, which is, you know, waiting to speak. I hear something, I'm like, oh, I already know what he's talking about. Let me jump in. So I do think I can train someone to uncover things to a certain level, maybe like to be like a B player in curiosity, if they can just like get the right question. So all right. Um, their their take was somewhere in between ours, I think. They were like, yes, it can be taught. Here's why, but here's what can't be taught. So don't worry, if you're not curious, you can I think you can still fake it a little bit. Just ask just ask two follow-up questions, right? If you do that, people are gonna think you're curious. So I want to break down the role of like let's let's walk through the sales process a little bit, right? Of where this fits in. So, what is an AI assisted discovery look like when it's done right? And where do you think most teams struggle?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

So, if you take a look at the typical part of the sales cycle that the pre-sales is involved with, you know, discovery is usually chapter one. I would say that an AI assisted discovery is kind of the prologue. So that's where you've gone through and you're able to go in and come in with that point of view before you get even get the customer on the on the phone. You know, if someone told me a quote the other day, and then and it's really stuck with me when we talk about AI. You can't automate something you haven't done manually. And unfortunately, because everyone's so busy, you know, the SCEs have gotten away from doing the research before the discovery call. Right? It used to be you'd go online, you'd research the people that are going to be in the room, you'd look up their social profiles, you'd look up the company, you understand what their values were, you'd download their financial statements, you'd put in some effort and understanding. Okay, here's some possible angles on why they're talking to us, here's what their point of view might be, here's what's important to you know, specifically Bob. And you know, he posted on on Twitter that this is happening and he's you know got this other thing and he needs to free up time, whatever. You understand this on a personal level before you go in. All of that's gone out the window. Now it's, oh, I had just I have a discovery call at 2 p.m. I gotta jump on that real quick after the demo I just wrapped up at one o'clock. And there's there's no time that people have to go and do that. What AI will do for us and is doing for us now is allowing you to come in and do all of that research that was a very manual process that's kind of gone away over the past few years and brought that back. So you can go through and you can you know set up either custom GPT or just a certain set of prompts and instructions that will go out and you just fill in the blanks basically for whatever customer you're going to, and it'll basically pre-fill this document out for you. And you can go on to the call and say, hey, I'm willing to bet these are the three things we're going to talk about today. And like I said, that becomes that validation session versus pure discovery. And that does several different things. It makes the couple your customer happier because they're not being interrogated, interrogated. It makes your life easier as an SC because you haven't spent hours doing this research and it makes things flow a little bit better because the customer knows that you understand what's going on here.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, and I think a lot of reps are scared to do that. And and I think there's a difference between saying, I know this about you, as opposed to look, based on folks I've talked to looking at your business, here are, you know, I'm looking forward to the conversation, David. You have to think about if I'm a rep, you know, what I'm doing with this. I'm like, you know, looking forward to the conversation, David. You know, um, I had a chance to, you know, deep dive into ABC.com. We've worked with several other, you know, in industrial manufacturing companies, and I've definitely put together some ideas of what I think will be applicable to you. You know, I want to spend a few minutes, you know, talking through potential areas of opportunity, but you know, first, you know, each client's a little different. So let's let's you know have a little five, you know, five to ten minute conversation. And then let's talk about you know some areas of opportunity where you know we might be able to support where I think you want to have a POV, you want to leave room for the discovery. But I think if you don't add that credibility up front, David, you know, to say, look, this is what I've done. I just I feel like you're just gonna get out competed. You know, like I the bar is is so low right now to do really good discovery, right? And maybe that's you know, like that if you can't do that, you're gonna lose to reps who can too, you know, in that first call where they go, this guy didn't do anything. Like he just showed up, he asked me the cookie cutter questions. Like I'm not I'm not moving forward with this guy.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

If you're not putting in at least the same amount of effort that the customers already put into researching you, like that's you're starting off on uneven ground and that's not going to go well.

Better Demos Through Data And Feedback

SPEAKER_01 20:18

I'm gonna steal that. Yeah. If you're not putting in as much effort as the customer's putting in to meet with you, you're not gonna win. Yes. Absolutely. I love that. That's such a good it's such a good mindset, I think, for really anybody in sales to be in is this it is work and the work pays off. It doesn't pay off a hundred percent of the time, but it's you know I I use the baseball analogy a lot, right? Where, you know, if you're if you're batting 300, which means you know you you don't get a hit 70% of the time, you know, you're most likely you know an all-star, right? And and I think too often, and those guys prep and watch game film and watch their swing and watch the opposing pitcher and still they go one for three or two for four sometimes in a game. And I think salespeople that hopefully are listening, you've got to treat this like a profession now more than ever, that if you're not really thinking about from that first interaction, people are just going to be like, why am I talking to you? You know, like what what's the point?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

And to your point earlier, there there's no excuse not to now. You could make the case before it was like I don't have three hours to sit down and do all of this because I'm back to back and so busy, but you can take three minutes. There's no excuse not to do that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Okay, so let's move to the middle part of the funnel. Right? Let's talk about AI powered demos or tailoring. You know, so if if pre-sales is doing a great job of that, you know, what is either you know AI enabled storytelling or demos like what are some of the ways that you see you know AI and in and in this role but in sales in general helping them to you know do a better job of those those those post first conversations. And to me that's everything from the demo to you know if they if they use medpic, I know you've obviously rolled out medpic you know multiple times. How do you see AI supporting those subsequent conversations? I've built the trust they want to move forward and now we're trying to talk about the middle to late stages.

Frameworks Like MEDDICC In An AI World

SPEAKER_00 22:08

So I'll kind of jump straight to the the demo piece because that's probably the part that people think most of when they when they think about pre-sales and sales engineering kind of what's going on there. But I what I'll say is where this comes in handy is the ability to train the models just like anything else, right? Garbage in, garbage out, whatever the case is but when you talk about demos specifically what we've done at the last company that I was with is we took all of our demo transcripts and and we loaded these things up and we started training models based on the demos that we'd done. And then we would say okay this one went really well this one didn't go well you know we could search between the different transcripts and say okay find me all the transcripts where we talked about this particular product and we can go through and say okay this was presented well this wasn't presented well and we can kind of fine-tune what that messaging looks like. So that was one quick win. Another thing is you know I'll give you one specific example we got some really detailed feedback from one of our partners that was a list of all the things that they really liked about our demos and all the things where they thought that we were just completely missing the mark or falling flat or the story wasn't cohesive. And so what we were able to do is take the transcript from the demo, upload that into ChatGPT, take all the feedback from the document they gave us and said, okay, let's marry these two up and if we had another chance to do this again, help me write a script that hits all of the points that they told us we needed to work on. And we did that. And it gave us an output of a new story we went through and we created the the screens to go with it and we presented it back to that partner and they said we had no idea you could do this. This is absolutely fantastic. Right is their own feedback. So to be able to adjust on the fly like that and make changes based on um you know feedback you get from a customer or partner, whoever the case is, that saves so much time going trying nitpick every little thing and figure out okay we need to change this, we need to change that. The other thing it allows you to do is to future proof that so the next step in that process was to say, okay, now in order to make sure we don't fall back into this habit, help me create a scoring rubric based on the feedback that will help us prepare demos better in the future. Right. And now you've got a set of okay every time you need to do a demo, here's 10 things you should probably include. And you know another thing is you know internally and with customers everybody wants something slightly different. It's really hard to triangulate all the different feedback from let's say the the leadership internally at your company, the leadership at the company that you're selling to at the customer everyone's got their own ideas. The sales rep might have ideas on what they want to have incorporated and trying to put all that together even just sifting through all that feedback can take a lot a long time to be able to grab all that feedback, toss it in and say, okay, here's my script where it is today. How can I hit the 80% that's most important to every single person that's given feedback here and then start working with the script from there. So instead of going through pages of transcripts watching recordings over and over again and spending all these manual hours, you're now in a place where you can create a great solid standardized demo. And when you're going talk to a customer say hey I want to do exactly what we did here but this customer's in this industry help me change the story help me change the data to reflect what this customer needs versus what we did last time while maintaining all those bits and pieces that made us really successful. And that that's a huge win right there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

I agree. So you're talking about it's not only just the call but also the process improvement right it's like also being able to understand kind of what's working what's not working and kind of this consistent optimization, which is what people should be doing anyway. I feel like in the sales process in particular, I talk one of the four C's in the book, you know, innovative seller I talk about is consistent process optimization. And I feel like in 2026 and beyond that you know everyone's in full 2026 plan now, if you aren't building in a consistent optimization mindset like into your organization where you know it doesn't matter what the role is and for you as a rep, if you know if you're somebody who's listening or a leader, if you're not thinking this way, you know, um I really feel like you're just going to get outpaced. You know, there's just a pace that the world's moving at and and it's and you can catch up. You know, I know a lot of people too it's like oh my gosh like I I don't know about all this stuff. I don't know you know everything but it's like that's okay. You don't have to a lot of this is just about implementing one thing then another thing and that's you know hopefully when you listen to the podcast everybody, you know, every episode you're gonna pick up maybe one thing or two things that you go, okay, I can do that. And as you you think about those things and you kind of have this mindset, you're just gonna be able to outpace your peers too who are just kind of stuck in robot mode. They're just going through the motions over and over. And I feel like right in today's day and age, I feel like demos just keep getting worse. I I really feel like companies are doing a worse job of demoing. You know it does feel like the a lot of reps being trained to just go through the the thing hit one, two, three, four show them what you showed them last time, right? That's right. You know everybody has the same problem. How does this apply to medpic right? How do you think about medpic in particular right? I know you've led that enablement you know as a pro as a part of this process right reps are being told I gotta find this person and I got to do this and check this box. Like, you know, how do traditional kind of deal frameworks, right? So I'm working through the deal, how do you think they fit in this AI world?

Speed And Quality As The Edge

SPEAKER_00 27:03

So I I mean we we've talked about medpic and things like this before, right? Maybe not the they're a little too stringent in some regards for the for the new world that we live in. But what I think AI can help us do is to kind of identify where we should be heading next. So if you take a look at the end of the medic process, what it can do is identify red flags and identify things that are that are missing, suggest next steps. But what it's not going to help with is making judgment calls.

unknown 27:25

Right?

SPEAKER_00 27:25

It's never going to understand if this really is the the right person, if this really is the the champion, if the the paper process is really feasible based on the way the company's set up and the politics like it's never going to know those intricacies, but it can identify patterns over time. And this is another one of those things where unfortunately it it requires a lot of data integrity to do properly and using your your CRM whether it's sales for subspot whatever the case is and providing all of the notes and the stage progressions and moving everything linear if you if you have to get that stuff right then you can run analysis through AI that's going to help you understand whether you're on the right path or not. Now that's that's you know mindset and process change and that's that's a bigger conversation to have but if you get those blocking and tackling pieces right, there's a layer that it can add that that makes things a lot easier and very insightful.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Yeah I yeah I I agree and and I think for a lot of people out there as long as you can make it connect to the customer experience right it's not all about you. It's about hey I'm trying to understand this so I can help to you know shepherd you through this and it's important if I understand the paper process for example you know that I'm able to make sure I'm meeting you and getting you the information that you need. And I think you know customers today are you know requiring that. And and so as we look to the future here and we talk about next steps, next steps, what do you think it's gonna take to be a top performer, a top SE in the next six to 12 months? What do you think that the trends and even if you think about you know 24 you know 24 months out what do you think it's gonna take to truly be at the pinnacle of the game?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Honestly it's it's it's really simple stuff. And then the first thing I'd say is it's just getting started. So many people get overwhelmed when they hear about AI as a topic and it's like oh you know should I use Copilot or ChatGPT or Gemini? Just pick one. Yeah. Right? The the the first step's always the hardest you know it's kind of a cliche thing to say but most people are just spinning their wheels trying to digest all of this stuff and they're you know going online subscribing to all the newsletters and trying to keep up with every little trend that's happening in AI and they that's impossible to do. You know, pick a horse start doing it start iterating and we talked about this earlier but but curiosity and consistency. Pick a tool try it out start going through changing your process around it. If it doesn't work scrap it move on to something else but be consistent. It's it's a mindset shift that's going to make people successful over the next 12 to 24 months and if you don't make that shift it's going to be detrimental unfortunately to continued existence in the in the profession. You can't continue to expect to take three to four hours to do something that people are out there doing in minutes now. That's just not the the the rate that people are moving at anymore.

Will Buyers Prefer SEs Over Reps

SPEAKER_01 29:58

I yeah I think that that's I think that's a good way to put it is I I think for a lot of people um that I think that's gonna be the the great equalizer you know where people are going to start to you're just gonna start to see a speed and and I think the big difference for anybody who's in this world whether you're on the SC side or you know any of the sales roles that you have to start to think about this is the first speed slash extremely high quality right like it's not that you know if you think about historically with technology as we tried to do more as we tried to do more more more more more et cetera the quality gets bad bad bad bad bad bad and that's where Gen AI is the first tool where it's I can actually do more more and it gets better and I and the the conversation is better et cetera and I think this is where I see a lot of people struggling is they feel like by using AI it's gonna inauthentic make it inauthentic or no well I'm I yeah I can do more of this stuff but is it going to be good? Like I'll I'll give you an example David like yeah we'll talk to a lot of marketing departments and I think marketing departments in particular yeah well I know we can do more you know ABM or support or blogs but you know it's not gonna be the same. It's like it's better. And and I think the key is like it doesn't matter. Let's say you are a marketer, a salesperson, whatever, and you are like an A. You're just an A. You're really really good. Johnny who's a B, right, is just going to be able to outwork you and not outwork you because he's more talented. He's just leveraging AI. He's showing up smart he's showing up in form his people skills are good enough whereas you're only able capacity wise to do a few things. And so to me the future is like you have to be able to understand that this there we're gonna enter a world I I genuinely believe David of like have and have nots in the next few years where you're gonna see a stark difference in people that were making a lot of money and are used to making a lot of money and being a top performer and they go to interview and someone's like yeah but dude everything you're saying is slow. Like what do you mean you do this, this, and this like nobody's doing that. And Johnny's 10 years younger than you and look at the quality of his output. And so that that's what I think is that you know more and more people are going to really need to understand that this is something we are changing the way that people work. This isn't a new tech. And that's maybe you know that's I say that to leaders every single day that we've got to change our mindset and stop thinking of this as a tech deployment as much as a change the way we work deployment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

And I don't remember the details of it I need to go back and look it up but I I read something the other day that was talking about the difference in like people's IQs. Right there there's a few points that make a huge difference right now because everyone's kind of so close together if you look at it.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

What is the threshold? Like what makes some what okay I'll go I'll go find the article and put it in the show notes of like what makes what's the IQ and then everyone go take an IQ test and you'll be like I'm screwed.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

But the the comment was the way that AI is advancing exponential difference between those the the baseline is going to be recreated right the the three or four ten points of difference in IQ is going to be irrelevant when you have the you know combined knowledge of the of the world coming through AI and that's hundred points difference in a different direction. So when you talk about you know the the the new equalizer it it's about recreating the baseline of of what it is and then and how to use it. And you know you you mentioned the in all in inauthenticity is that word yeah inauthenticity I think it's it like people understand. Yeah is you know it's all in how you use it.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yeah if you're going through and saying hey write this article for me or hey write a demo script for me that does this and that's what you run with that's not going to fly right because people are going to see through that if you got to you got to turn the human on baby that's what I say it's like look a what AI allows us to do is it allows me to get to V1 in minutes and then take 20, making it a V4. You know?

Final Playbook: Curiosity And Consistency

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Yeah. I mean I I don't know about you but I I have full on you know brainstorming sessions with with ChatGPT I put it on in on voice and we'll I'll throw say hey I wrote this you know what do you what do you think about this? And we'll go line by line and kind of kick ideas back and forth and you know we'll we'll spend 20 minutes to an hour going through and then like you know crafting something together. It's not a hey go create this for me then I'm gonna go you know show it to a customer. It's a back and forth it's iterative if you think about it as a creative partner or you know a coach as you're going through it, that's a completely different mindset and something that I don't think a lot of people have really made that transition yet. They're still viewing it very tactically of oh I need to put together a demo here's the requirements go make this for me.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

If that's the end of the process right and I'm gonna open up a doc or I'm gonna open up a tool and then do to do I like take my time and as opposed to Ryan who you know hasn't been at the company but understands how to use you know rip transcripts and do other things and leverage it is you know putting together something that would have taken Susan three hours you know or three and a half hours. So all right man look as as we start to wrap up we're about at time we talked a little bit about where this is going what other trends are you seeing in sales in general right so we've talked a lot about the SE role I think what you probably inspired a lot of people David to go, wait, what I can go do this? This sounds awesome. And so a couple of parting questions here the first question will buyers want to talk more and I'm gonna put you on the spot will buyers really want to talk to the traditional salesperson if the solutions engineer, the the SE or solutions and you know whatever you call it there's a million titles for this will will buyers won't they really just want to talk to that person if that person understands what the product can do, understands how things fit together, don't you feel like that's the person they want to talk to versus the SC versus no I think it depends on on where in the cycle they are.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

So if you're in the meat of it and you're going through technical capabilities and all of that, chances are they don't really want to talk to the rep at that point, right? They want to talk to the SC, they want to get the answers, they want to go through it. But when it comes to the the negotiation and the understanding the relationship and how is this going to work over time and and all of that, that's where the the value of the sales rep comes in, right? They're they're gonna be that that relationship with the customer and that's not something that the SE is going to replace any anytime soon.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Yeah I I can get down with that. I think that that's right. I do think that for my sales reps if you look at how you're interacting with buyers and you're not adding value though, that's where I go you know if I was sitting in your world, you know if I'm if I if and I you know we buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of software you know every year at our company um I I literally will just be like look that's all I want to talk to I want to talk to the customer like the question I ask every like I'll ask a rep and sorry for people like you know for for for people like me but I'll say are you going to hand me off after you close the deal it's one of the first questions I ask now and they'll go if they say yes I say awesome dude I totally get it. On the next call I want to know the customer success person I'm gonna be interacting with. I want the S E who's going to be responsible for helping us be successful up front and I want them on the next call because that's you know those are the people I care about. Like those are the people that are going to do it. So I just think that the moral of the story here is there's plenty of room the salesperson I think is actually going to be is going to be a differentiator. If you are a good or great salesperson you are going to make a ton of dough and but the skill set is going to have to be you got to be good if that makes like you got to be good. You can't just like mail it in and you know or be it like open AI or something. You know like go go like be it like the hottest company as a part of it. So so that's my thought David take us home final thoughts where we're headed with this world and you know where you see you know the biggest area of opportunity for for people in in sales in general and the SE role specifically.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

And and you know I'll throw this out there the biggest fear right now from from sales and SEs is that OAA is going to come in and replace our jobs and you always hear the you know oh it's it's not going to replace your jobs it's gonna replace the people that don't adapt and move into a new mindset. I mean and that's the reality right for for for both sides of this thing. You know for the for the SCs out there my my advice is the same thread that I'll pull on through this whole thing it's it's be curious and be consistent. Get out there start trying this stuff stop listening to you know just listening to the podcast and reading the newsletters like do something with it. A lot of these tools and things that are out there they're free to get started at least try them all out find the one that works with you and your way of doing business other caveat author out there is check with your company also and make sure that they're on board with whatever you're feeding into these systems because there are different privacy things that get involved. Some red tape to work through we've learned that the the hard way in some of these instances but try new things. Don't be afraid to fail fast and and that's what's going to make you successful as you move into the next year or so as an SC you already have that technical aptitude you you've got the skill set you you're gonna be successful in this world if you just latch on and you move quickly.

Closing Notes And Resources

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Love it man all right well look man I think you've opened some eyes today. I think like I said I think people are going to go hey hey David will you help me to do this thing like I'm into this this SE role this sounds like the best part of sales you know that I think a lot of top performers enjoy doing I mean for me it certainly is the part that I enjoy the most you know is really sitting down understanding putting together a tailored solution to where the person feels like you know wow like this guy you know really gets me. Really appreciate you joining. It was even you know it's enlightening for me. I was taking some notes there of like, oh yeah like that's a good point. Like I like that you know around again just like the different use cases for app for tactical AI and that's what we try to do on the show is get super tactical with with that caveat and I agree with what David said as you all listen to one of these episodes what I would rather you do is at the end or maybe halfway through the episode, hit pause and go do something because that's how we learn as people. I have a lot of consultants David and they do the same things like could I see another training and another it's like you know enough. Go forth and mess it up. We as humans learn through failure well now we learn through brainstorming with AI too and you have to just go and do it. So I like the message wrapping up with you know just go do it. So appreciate you David thanks for joining the show and thank you everyone uh for tuning in to another episode of AI Powered Seller and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for having me. All right my friend so that's a wrap on another great episode I think we learned a lot from David learned a lot from his experience and where the the ball is going which is what I want to do every single episode. So as usual make sure if you got some value out of it. Make sure to like the video. Make sure to share this with your team. Maybe, maybe send your application to David as well too, if you got a lot of uh value out of that. We're going to put in a couple of links as well for everybody. So there's some additional resources you'll have access to. We also have a couple of other kind of giveaways here. I post daily on LinkedIn. So do me a favor, if you go to one of my posts, you write the word prompt or DM me. We've got a new kind of AI playbook we've been working on. So make sure go to one of my posts, you write prompt, we'll get you the new AI playbook. Also we have a new AI certification program that is kicking off in January. So we've got the dates ready for that as well. So make sure to go check that out if you're somebody who's ready to get serious about it.