Latest / The High-Performing Technical Leader / Ep. 34- Before You Buy AI for Pre-Sales, Hear From the Ex-CEO of a 7,000-Person SI. Michael Chanter, Founder & CEO of 1KE

Transcript

Ep. 34- Before You Buy AI for Pre-Sales, Hear From the Ex-CEO of a 7,000-Person SI. Michael Chanter, Founder & CEO of 1KE · The High-Performing Technical Leader

• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, welcome back everybody to the High Performing Technical Leader podcast.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Arvi Karkanji.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And as a reminder, we're intentionally live and unedited with all of our guests.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm super excited to dig in today.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually joined by Michael Chanter, and he is the founder and CEO of 1KE.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super excited to dive in today of our topic and what we have, you know, for you guys.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome so much, Michael.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining me today.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, Avi.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, Michael, honestly, I just want us to introduce yourself to the guests a little bit.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to know a little bit more about how you even got into this wonderful world of pre-sales.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, sure.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, look, I've spent much of my career building and running tech businesses.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I've I've started a few startups, um a little bit longer career, like I've been around for longer than you, RV in the space, I think, unfortunately.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, I have I I I was I've been through a few iterations of dot-com and everything.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, but fundamentally, my my background has been particularly over the last 10 or 15 years, running large system integration, consulting, and uh resell businesses around technology.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my sort of background.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and that sort of led me to to a lot of the conclusions around the pre-sales piece as well.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you said you're in system integrations for, I believe, around 7,000 people across 20 countries.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: What would tell us a little bit more about what that was?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um about five years ago, I was global COO for Logicalis.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Logicalis is a um a$2 billion system integration business in actually 26 countries.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So every time zone, which meant uh as a as a CEO, a CIO or a CEO in that type of business, you're you're up at all hours.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um so pretty uh accomplished at getting up at 4 a.m.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: for calls.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: But that that was uh that was an interesting role because we had obviously many different cultural aspects, different language things.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um every market is certainly different.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that that the real learning there is there are some commonalities, but there's a lot of differences in the way the business operates at different places.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fair.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh speaking of time zones, we're clearly in different time zones right now because you're on Tuesday morning and a Monday night.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um from the future and I'm from the past.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I was up at 4 a.m., Arvi, so I'm I'm I'm used to the the grind.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Global business grind.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Michael, tell us a little bit, what does 1KE do, you know, and who is it built for?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So 1KE takes the sort of information around technical technical sales opportunity like documents and meeting discussions and things like that, and turns it into requirements and a proposed solution.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a pre we call it a pre-sales autopilot because it absolutely doesn't replace pre-sales, but it really does enhance your capabilities and magnify the capabilities in the pre-sales function, which is something that no one else is really doing at the moment in terms of applying AI in a structured way across pre-sales.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the real core of it, which makes it, I think, different to many other toolings, is it it its solutions.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually helps the the sellers and the pre-sales people to actually build this the end state solution for the okay, very cool.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what you talked about is that you really describe pre-sales as like the bottleneck in complex technical sales.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Why why do you think that is so?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And why is it that so many either CROs or leaders are missing that?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this has been a common sort of challenge that I've seen many, many times.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're running a large organization, or in fact, it's possibly even worse in a smaller organization, but you will see there's a common pattern is that in a typical sales process that everyone understands, you're doing all those sort of typical sales things along the top of the process, you know, establishing relationships, understanding who your stakeholders are, all those, you know, really good, um, really good sales disciplines that everyone understands.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: What happens though, that there is a sub process that sort of sits below the sales process, which which I call the pre-sales process, and that's all about understanding in technical sales, understanding the deeply what the customer problem, the end user problem is, and coming up with the right solution.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's essentially that's the core of it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you look at a typical technical sales team, you'll have many E's or S E sorry, many AEs or account managers out in the field selling, but there's usually only a small number of SEs or pre-sales people that have to ride along with them.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And often those people are really saturated, trying to deal with a lot of opportunities, a lot of complexity and context across many deals.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens is um oftentimes they are the bottleneck in the process, not intentionally, there's just a lack of resources, and um they have to deal with a lot of context across a lot of deals.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So these these poor um SEs or pre-sales people are just getting absolutely smashed all the time.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a really common.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what it what it means for them is stress and you know, late nights and 3 a.m.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Often what it means for the business or the sales organization is that deals get held up and and frankly, they often get lost as a consequence.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it just it it's a it's a real challenge.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, for anyone who's in business and you would understand this yourself, finding pipeline is just super, super difficult, right?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, very hard to find deals.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you find a deal, you want to maximize your close opportunity.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is you know, this is a challenge because when those deals are not being serviced properly, typically you'll you'll you'll not it really reduces your opportunity to close.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that is very true.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it especially in this day and age, I feel like the with the way everything is and the competition being at an all-time high when you do have a deal in front of you, you want to make sure that you're 100% prepared to handle it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say you, I mean the team itself, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like pre-sales or sales in general.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have really good synergy and be able to really make that work because, like you said, it is really hard getting pipeline right now.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one thing that I think is interesting, especially in teams, is you you'll probably never have like 100% of the right people or the same people, if not the right ones.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll always have like a superstar, a couple of strong performers, and then maybe a few of what we call like journeymans.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you feel like a leader should think about getting more out of each of those groups?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's very true.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the bell curve is consistent.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and when I speak to, I mean, I have my own lived experience, I guess, but when I speak to leaders, what you just described is very consistent.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think part of the way that we were thinking about this was how do we um really magnify the capabilities of the high performers?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: But also how do we you know allow the team to cover more ground, perhaps do things that typically might not be within their reach.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, give give you know, give them a little bit of superpower.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, every everyone obviously understands well how I can play in that in that in that in that type of scenario.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not a new sort of concept, but but so that that's a really important element of it, but it's also about consistency and quality and making sure that for the organization, the outputs are always the same.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So so if I think about your your description of the team, what it means is how do we get those really, really high performers to cover more ground in front of more customers?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because you want those people absolutely on all your deals.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that in most organizations, deals come in waves, they never just turn up evenly.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: They you get six at once or and suddenly there's not much going on, all that type of stuff.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you how do you deal with that sort of the jagged nature of pipeline, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And get your high performers not in front of computers writing documents, but in front of customers having conversations.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is how do you allow people who perhaps, you know, we might call them say journeymen, but but they might not so much be, it might not be a talent thing, it just might be an experience thing.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: They just haven't done as much stuff.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you help those guys to do more?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that is do you give them more cognitive capability, in other words, covering more technology domains that maybe they they just haven't had the exposure to.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that that was our thinking is we could, and and sort of the name came out of that RV.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were like, could we do 10 1 KE means 1,000 experts?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we were like, if we could get a thousand experts in any given deal, because you can cover like 10 times as much across 10 times the domains, 10 times the speed, really is a reply.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think especially right now with AI, I think some a lot of companies went through a phase where they're like, well, we're gonna automate as much as possible.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think now they've scaled that back a little bit and say, and I feel like now they're saying more like, when do we apply AI so that it makes the most sense?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: From what you've seen so far, what are some of the biggest mistakes that leaders have made when they bring AI into like their pre-sales organization?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um the biggest the biggest consistent mistake is well, there's actually two.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's two.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is the that you when you look at uh initial experimentation, uh, and we've done obviously we've been working in this space for two or three years now.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Initial experimentation, you'll get to 70% in an hour.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you're like, oh wow, we're like, we're you know, in two hours, we're gonna be done.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly you find like to get to sort of 80% is two weeks and get and get get to 95% is like is gonna be months or years, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that that challenge is is sort of do how much are you gonna sink into a given problem and what's it worth to you?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh often what happens is they get so enmeshed in the mud of trying to make that work that they're like they're like six months in and they've invested a lot of time and they're not really able to produce what I would call you know price grade results.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing is don't underestimate the last 10%.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so that it's fine, like you should be using AI everywhere for everything, as much as you can, right?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have no, you know, sort of concerns about that.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: What you just need to be careful about is if this is uh something where quality and detail to the nth degree is really important, then just be prepared to that's a long journey to get to that.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's one thing.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think everyone probably has experienced a bit of that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing, and this is probably more salient from my perspective, is that like all new tech, you it's very easy for you to end up with everyone having their own version.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up with a thousand prompt frameworks.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Every engineer has their own thing, they're doing it differently.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like at a at an organizational level, and I and I sort of think about this as a CEO or a sales leader or someone who really is concerned with the the overarching organizational view, not the necessarily the individual operator, you need to have a really high-quality, consistent, significantly well-managed organizational output.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um so when when we were thinking about the problem, we were like, how do we define really clearly what are the services and capabilities and constraints at the organizational level?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So so that the the outputs are scalable.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because having if, Arvi, if you have your own prompt framework, that's great.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when the next person joins?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like it just isn't.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And even if even if it does work, you know, are you really a prompt engineer?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is that really your job, or should you maybe be doing your core job?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a sort of a mix of of those things.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think people are now starting to realize that just like all tech, um some experimentation is worthwhile, but you don't want to fall down the hole of building everything yourself and having enterprise grade outcomes is non-trivial.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's it.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's very true.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the things that I've noticed lately as well is like a lot of tools promise, you know, certain things.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, though, like once you start looking at them, it's more like collaboration tools versus like an at one that actually does work.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: What's the difference between a tool that helps you know pre-sales maybe talk more or one that actually does the work?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, at the moment, I believe there's no one else doing what we're doing.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that that's the real differentiation for us.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So and by the way, I think collaboration tools is super helpful, right?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's fine.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, but there's a lot of tools that are, you know, they'll join a call, give you sentiment, and do a sentiment analysis, grab your transcript, and you can share share things, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: What the difference is for us is at the heart of what I said at the outset, at the heart of pre-sales is is two things, understanding the problem really well and getting the true context of the customer challenges and what they're trying to achieve.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean the technical problem, not sort of necessarily, you know, understanding the sales sponsors, but really understanding the technical problem.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first piece.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second piece is generating the appropriate solution for that based on what the organization's able to do.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that solutioning piece uh is super, super complex.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in some cases, we have you know deals where almost every when you go into a customer environment, almost every customer has a brownfield environment.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not you might be selling them some, you know, some AWS.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably not just an AWS shop, you know, they'll have Azure, they'll have some Cisco, they'll have some NetApp, all these things, right?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: That complexity is very, very difficult to solve for.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's where most of our have been in.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: How does how do we allow the the pre-sales team to essentially have an autopilot sitting next to them that does a lot of that work for them and and solves that?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's super complicated.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so, of course, joining meetings and understanding transcripts and and and ingesting documents and all those things, they're all things that we have to do.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're all the collaboration things.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have to do that, and we do do that, but that's not the heart and soul of it.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: The real heart of it is building the solution.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's very true.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as we talked a little bit about this as well, but a lot of people honestly are also scared that AI is coming for their job.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes they might be a bit resistant to bringing also on tools that are not just collaboration tools but help them do the work.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: How would you say, like, you could position this or an AI tool to a pre-sales team that's like worried about it coming for their jobs?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe as a leader, is there anything that I should say or do to get the buying for the team to really be able to utilize the assets to their full potential?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um we spent a lot of time talking about I or I spent a lot of time talking to business operators about the impact of AI in their business.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not just what we do specifically at 1KE, but more generally because I have a lot of networking and channel.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And my my thesis will apply just as much here, which is this AI will be will allow you to reduce effort.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the way I think about it is if you're uh if you're digging a ditch, sorry, if you need to lay something in the road, you have to dig a ditch.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's effort.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not high value, it's not that's not the thing you want to do.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: You want to plan what you're doing, where it's going, supervise it, make sure it's right.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if you could say, look, just remove all the effort, that's almost sort of instantaneously done.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then what you're left with is experience and judgment.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I say to pre-sales teams when I'm talking to them is look, your experience and judgment is your value.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your ability to write Word documents or whiteboard something is not really your value, but you still need to be able to apply your experience and judgment to a solution produced by 1 KE and say, is this what I want to do?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do I want to edit it?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, what we're saying is get out from behind the screen writing documents, get in front of customers, really building uh the relationships and the credibility that you have as a as an experienced professional in this, that's where your real value is.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, of course, I think there'll be people who always feel a bit threatened by this, Arby.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly, I think if you have confidence in your capabilities and experience, your relationships with customers, I just can't, that's that's never going to be replaced.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is allowing you to, I guess, do the higher value, more fun work.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: What um if I'm a sales engineer right now and you know, I see all the tools and obviously tools like 1KE and other ones that do help me do my job better, but I'm also understanding that my position is probably gonna change because of it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: In your just everything that you've seen so far in your experience, how do you feel like the pre-sales role is gonna change for companies and for individuals?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that pre-sales has always been, and and actually this is relevant to every role, Arvi, but very much in pre-sales has been people who are curious and want to keep educating themselves and learn and understand what's happening are always going to be the most successful.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So pre-sales has absolutely always had that element.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But when I say learn, I don't mean about necessarily just technology.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean learn about how to sell, how to build relationships to customers, how to present for yourself, and how to how to how you show up in meetings, all those types of things.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that mean?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: In this context, I think if you are attaching your value to doing effort, you're making an error.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like effort is not where you should be attaching your value.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your value, and I mean internally to yourself.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where you need to attach your value is in how am I continuing to evolve my knowledge?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: How am I continuing to evolve my capabilities to be in front of customers, build relationships, and also be the arbiter of judgment across what the tools are producing.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So and realistically, if I were, you know, if I could transport myself back 20 years and be in pre-sales, I would say this is the greatest opportunity.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can learn more.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not reduced, it's improved.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you would agree that there is no sudden lack of interest in pre-sales.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like people are I think the requirement for pre-sales is greater than ever.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's more and more things that need to be that need that expertise.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I just think that the shift is a little bit, just think of about as a shifting upstream from effort to judgment and knowledge and and and the the real core sales and interpersonal relationship skills.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree actually, because I I just had this conversation with somebody the other day where I felt like as a pre-sales community, we were very much like asking for more value than just demo and doing work in the technical aspect.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: We were asking for like, okay, we are valuable in the valuable position of the business and the sale in general.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have it because obviously there's a lot of tools out there that help you automate some of the effort or really help you, you know, kind of like you be in the driver's seat and you have like a permanent assistant that you kind of pay for it and it's really cheap because of AI.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and now we have that value as pre-sales.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So now it's time to actually hone in on all the skill set that we've been saying we want all along.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree with you.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think, especially right now, business acumen communication skills are more important than ever.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, the that should definitely be the focus of where I feel like pre-sales is also gonna go more and more.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally agree.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think technical people are now if your role is entirely technical, then you are you are like you're at risk.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to think about the broader.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: But having said that, technical skill is more valuable than ever.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a bit of a sounds a little bit confusing, but as a CEO, when we had deal important deals on on in play, we always used to say if we have an A salesperson and an A pre-sales person, we'll win.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: If we have an A and B B an A and B of either, we'll probably win.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: But when we talked about those A's and B's, we were talking about what are the skills that each bring to the table.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in the pre-sales piece, that was the an A was not just the most technical person or the most competent engineering mind.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was more often than not that combination of skills.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of what we will be looking for as an A.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I totally agree.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Michael, we've actually arrived to our uh rapid fire question.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: This has gone by way faster than I thought, to be honest with you, in a good way.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh means the conversation flu.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so this section right here is fast questions on my end, but you do not need to answer them fast.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: So number one is what is one tool that you can live without right now?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for me, it's probably codex.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've spent a lot of time with various agentic tools trying to build my business mind and get it to do things when I'm asleep.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for those of you who've had any time playing with uh real agentic tooling, like you know, Urmes or any of those agent things, like OpenClaw is the big thing.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: For me, uh Codex is is where I'm having a lot of fun at the moment.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I use it to do a lot of research tonight to come back to me with all sorts of uh insights about what's happening in the industry and that type of thing.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: We use it for a lot of content production.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's the that's a tool for me.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, like I I've got a coding background, Ivy, so it allows me to just spend a little bit of fun playing playing around a bit with um one thing that's been like pretty famous, at least through my Facebook ads right now, or I don't know if I clicked on the wrong attribution link or something, but uh grok bot has been everywhere.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Have you tried that before?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's next on my it's my next play.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, codex is very similar, right?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: You got it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think no, no, no, I don't think you did.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed they did a massive saturation because I was seeing the groc bot everywhere for about two weeks.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think they've uh I think Elon might have spent a bit of money in uh in digital episode.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's definitely next on my list.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh I guess asking to see if you've had it and if you had any feedback, but I guess we'll have to chat after the podcast.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my here's my little hint to you the difference between say Grockbot Codex and the other agent stuff is that they have the computer control.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is a that is a superpower because it allows you to do a lot of things that you can't do the other ways.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that is true.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: I actually tried Muse recently.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've tried that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's from Meta and it does have like its computer power, so that's been pretty cool to see.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Different from Claude in a way.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So uh very interesting.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: But okay, next on the question list is what is your biggest growth lever for SaaS companies in 2026?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Content.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Content being being being the re the digital reach is everything.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: So for a SaaS company, obviously it's all about distribution.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have a pretty you know reasonable network on LinkedIn, as do you, obviously.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've worked this out, so I'm just telling you what you already know.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I think content is everything.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be understood to be uh be a have have a real credential.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh obviously, you need to actually know what you're talking about, or content's not going to work, but yeah, I think that's the the key.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great, I mean, all social media right now, it's basically a distribution channel that you would pay for, like if you were on TV.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, not everybody had access to that.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that when social media came along, you know, it was a distribution channel for a lot of people.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it can absolutely uh definitely be a growth of or for sure, especially nowadays.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot about trust and marketing as well.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: So buyers can find you because competition is at a all-time high, as we've talked about.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, on the other hand, okay.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: What is one belief that you have that most people would disagree with?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um I believe that I don't know if most most people would disagree with this, but uh maybe a bit counterintuitive, even in the last couple of years that I've learned that by far in-person conversations are still the most powerful.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, um, and what I mean by in-person is, I mean, this is powerful, but being in the room, like yeah, you it's it's it's probably a little bit maybe unfashionable in some ways.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like COVID sort of damaged some capabilities and people lost confidence around that.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: But all of my most successful business interactions are all of them.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: If I look back over the last even five years, I would say all those all of the most significant moments came from face-to-face interactions.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Avi, we met face to face is a perfect example, right?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were in a I was like 12,000 kilometers from home, but you know, I wouldn't have it wouldn't have happened, we wouldn't be here if I didn't, if we weren't at the same event together.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that that type of thing is, I think, super powerful.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: I will say I'm definitely very grateful that events are back in-person events, because I think from COVID, everybody got used to Zooms and we kind of forgot some interpersonal skills.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: And everything is very much AI unified right now, and we're close this and the gent exists and I don't even have to be in front of my computer.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, especially I would say for the new generation that had never kind of had that interpersonal interaction or as they're growing within their career, I mean, it's huge.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, like we talked about, communication skills are super important because all your busy work can be automated, so you won't be needed for that as much, but your communication skills.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm very grateful that that's back.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And one other little point on that is that I feel that people have a sort of misunderstanding about the experience that they're gonna have.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, um, being in the office, what I see is we work in tech, right?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: In tech, there's a lot of what I would call inverted commas, introverted personalities, right?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but and my experience is they're they're like really reluctant to be in person, but the when they get there, you can see the energy and the spark in their eyes.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: But so I used to sort of say to my teams, yeah, I know you said you didn't want to be here, but look how much fun you had today.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then they they would over time they would recognize that even the most introverted of us like gets a lot of energy from being in a room with other people.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a little joke on that.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was telling my husband on every time I come off from an event, I have such like high adrenaline that like when I come home, it like all goes out of my system.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just kind of totally yeah, and low too.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, What's going on?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I don't know, it was so much fun, and now I'm like home.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So totally I get it.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Totally get the energy aspect.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, cool.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Last rapid fire question is what is your biggest hiring mistake and what did it teach you?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: My biggest hiring mistake is was allowing time to be more important than the than the person, the quality of the person.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Rushing, sort of picking, picking because I was under time pressure.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: The the the result was the person didn't work out, we had to go back, we did, we did the work anyway, right?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think uh I've done that, and you know what, Arby, I've done it multiple times, right?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like sometimes it's a bit like having a hangover.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you just need to get a hangover again to remember that just don't don't do that, right?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh yeah, I've I've a couple of times I mean I remember recruiting someone who was actually gonna replace me in a role, and um I was under pressure to leave for the other role, and the result was I ended up doing both roles because so yeah, no, I just think really, really, if it doesn't feel right, if you're not convinced, if you're not absolutely certain, then just defer.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes even if it frustrates Arby, who's doing your recruiting for you, I think it's more important to get the right person than than to just fill a hot fill a slot.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I totally agree because, like you said, you get into this turnover kind of cycle.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And first of all, you get tired of training somebody that didn't work out too.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: You lose time, you lose money, the company loses money.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not fun for anybody to go through a whole hiring interview process again.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I agree.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's like you said, I think it's like a hangover where you have to like remember what it is in order to try not do it again, like so often, ideally, or at all.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, hopefully at some point you learn.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, a lot of companies do hire like last minute.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, hey, I needed somebody yesterday.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: And even if you did need somebody like yesterday when you're starting to hire, having like a structured interview process is extremely, extremely important and still put everybody through themselves.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing that.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then kind of like our last section, Michael, is really around like hiring as we're talking about it.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of pre-sales or maybe like technical go-to-market roles, have you noticed or seen any other companies right now with like common red flags?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what should leaders be looking for when it comes to hiring right now in 2026?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: You mean what what is what does the organization need to be looking out for?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or like common red flags for individuals, you know, as they're as leaders are hiring, what should they watch out for?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um I've had actually had a few, I've actually had a few experiences recently in recruitment which a little bit shocked me, um which was we were looking it's customer success roles, but still sort of similar in many ways.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and the what the one the couple of things that I I look for is um particularly in pre-sales, I think this is critical, is how structured are they able to represent their thinking?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: So do they come sort of waffling around like you know?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: So and and I think I read an article the other day where um it was from the the CEO of of recall.ai, which is a which is a call recording and sort of like software platform, and she said we allow all of our new hires to use AI.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine because it's part of the role, right?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the point, but my point is this if you come to an interview, you should be, you should have done some research, understand where you're going, recognize what the challenges are in that organization, what's likely to be the KPIs of the people recruiting you, like what's their success look like, um, and then come with a really clear and structured set of ideas about how you're going to help them be successful.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: What I've seen, to my sort of surprise and real shock, is people come to the interview, they don't know, understand the value proposition of the organization, and not they haven't clearly even used AI.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like what how can you come to an interview and not so so for me it's it's preparation and clarity of thought.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um if and and and frankly, if someone comes to a meeting unprepared and they and they just don't have a clarity of thought, I I will end the interview very quickly because I just like look, you either you're kicking tires or you're not my person.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I feel as though everyone's very, very busy.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as a CEO and executive, I don't have time to be sort of coaching basic stuff, right?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I want you to come and and in a sales organization, Avi, like which is where pre-sales resides, it's fast-paced, right?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to be all over it.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you I would think you need to be able to represent, you understand the problem quickly, you you're clear in your communication because that's what what you're gonna be living every day at the Kofi.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, that that's the key things.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: The real red flag for me is preparation and lack of context about the business and the people that you're gonna work with.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't haven't come to interview with that, then it's uh it's you know, I it's kind of funny you say that because I feel like to me, that's like interview 101.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that has not changed for since we've hired like how many centuries at this point, right?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's really funny to me that the basics are still what companies are requiring.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that a lot of candidates that I speak to is they're thinking that you they need to do all these like jump through hoops and like make these ninja effect type interview.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's not even about that.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's show up to the interview prepared, maybe not with your hair looking all messy if you're a woman and like you know, looking like someone presents a full, maybe you don't have to wear a full suit, but wear business casual, show up, you know, yeah, like people turn up late in a t-shirt, and I'm like, what like yeah, this is not a hangout.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Again, even though like you know, I'm wearing a polo shirt for this, but if I'm sitting if I'm going for an interview, don't you can't really be overdressed, you know what I mean?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like just make an effort, right?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: But but I do think um there's no excuse with AI for not coming understanding things and having a really clear, even if it's wrong, even if you're wrong, even if you didn't understand it properly, if you can articulate your rationale and what how you thought about it and what people are gonna be, that's that's fine.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll do you one better of something to watch out for nowadays with AI, is we were going through an interview process, and uh, whenever we screen candidates, we go through you know certain questions depending on the job that we're hiring for.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the questions, you know, was how would you handle this sort of situation?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer was, well, I'll I'll chat with Claude and you know, she'll or you know, the chat bot will help me get the answer.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, great, what if that wasn't there?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: And they just couldn't answer it.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the other thing to start watching out for nowadays, too, is also can you do the job without AI?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you really are a technical or not just technical expert, but an expert in your job, in your role without AI being there?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: You still need to be the driver of whatever it is that's happening in your job.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: And AI is kind of like your assistant, you know, backseat driver or side seat driver, whatever the side of it.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be one little comment on that.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm sort of late stage career, right?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: I through the ranks and senior exec or whatever.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: What I see is a challenge with AI in the workplace is that how do the how do the graduate and more junior people build experience, right?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because um the the most valuable people, honestly, with AI, experienced people, because they are able to apply the judgment that I was talking about earlier.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I think for more for some of your audience who are maybe more junior, I think what you need to be doing is taking every interaction that you have with AI and thinking about what did you learn?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can learn from AI.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can learn, and you can learn from every interaction, but you've got to be building experience.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to get better and better and better at managing the those outputs.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just the way I think.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I totally agree with you.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think more experienced, the most experienced people are definitely better with AI and can apply it better to their use cases, uh, which is honestly where I feel like we're seeing a really big gap in the market with top talent, you know, versus the ones that are not there yet.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's becoming more like top versus junior, and the middle gap is becoming very big.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Michael, thank you so much for joining me.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, any last thoughts before we kind of head out?
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I think um just generally my view is um two things.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, keep learning.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've just got to be.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the success is all about willingness to learn and just embrace what's going on and have a really positive mindset.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's and then the and then the other thing is it surprises me to hear that there is some sort of negative sentiment in the states about AM, obviously, where it's sort of most prevalent.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And but but my feeling is whilst there's reason to be cautious, I think there's just unbelievably more reason to feel that this is a massive opportunity.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Never felt more empowered to do more things.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think um in in our marketplace, in tech particularly, this is just a massive opportunity, right?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Which I wish it had existed when I was you know earlier in my career.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I guess that that'd be my two things.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Be open-minded and keep learning and um and embrace it optimistically because it's just a huge, huge opportunity.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't agree more.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you so much for joining us today, sharing all your value, all all the technical, tactical um steps that we talked about around AI building teams, especially in pre-sales.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Michael, where should people follow up with you?
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where should they find you and connect with you?
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm on obviously LinkedIn, but but if you go to 1ke.ai, you can find us there.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can see what we're doing.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it'd be great to to connect with anyone who's who's interested.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for the time today, Arvi.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was brilliant.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Really enjoyed it.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was great having you on.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: And see you on the next episode, everybody.