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OpenAI's Oliver Hedborg: Take on post-sales without doing it all · Pre-Sales Pathways

• Chris: Is there still a future for a purely pre-sales solutions engineering role? Oliver: There's no extinction event for pre-sales. There's definitely some shifts that are happening. It's just a question of how much. Chris: A lot of people will make the assumption, I'm necessarily gonna need to be more technical. Oliver: It's not simply the case of becoming more technical. Just taking a step back, asking yourself the question, am I the best person to do that? Will that bring the customer closer to the end goal that we set out in our success plan? Chris: How you actually show up as a company and help define which problems they want to solve is almost more important than just the models. Oliver: In this market, things are happening so incredibly quickly. I might talk to a customer one day about one of our models, and, within a few hours, we have released a completely new one. Chris: There's so much out there around how people need to develop AI fluency. Your point is you need to get some experience doing some of this post sales work. Oliver: Thinking about the skills that will become useful and starting to just like operationalize them wherever you are right now. Starting to take more ownership. Starting to be more proactive. Chris: Hi, Ollie, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today. Oliver: Thanks Chris, it's great to be here. I'm super excited. Chris: Yeah, likewise. I actually short saw your post on on Friday on LinkedIn about how you customized your T V user interface to make use of an L L Thought that was very cool and also just loved that idea of using your personal life as an opportunity to to experiment with AI. Oliver: Yeah, it's that one is quite funny. It's been getting quite a lot of attention internally as well. that was kind of surprising. but now I have a lot of people who are coming to me saying that they're gonna hack me. So hopefully that isn't the case. but yeah, it's just fun to experiment. I love tinkering around with these type of things. So that was just one of my typical little side projects that I got. Chris: Amazing. Cool. Well the the topic of today's conversation is all around how solutions engineers or pre-sales professionals are increasingly getting involved with post-sales work, what that means for the role and the profession. But may maybe a helpful starting point would be if you could just help the audience understand what does the applied AI architect role look like at OpenAI in terms of scope and day-to-day activities. Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. so the role itself, it sits somewhere between, I guess, a traditional solution engineer and a customer success architect. but you can also kind of bolt on the technical lead for an account, if you will. so what that means is I kind of work alongside the account director across a focused set of customers. and my lens there is more the technical outcome. So, you know. Things like are we solving the right problem? Have we designed the right approach? And maybe the most important is like, is the customer actually getting the value that we discussed? So that would be in a nutshell. but then of course, there's a little bit more to it, if you will. I think maybe biggest difference is obviously as pre-sales, we tend to sort of almost like finish our work when The deal is signed. And as sort of the applied AI architect, you know, I would kind of stay on the account, if you will, right? So I still do a lot of the typical pre-sales activities. So the discovery, solution design, workshop. We do a lot of pilots. And and then afterwards, what it tends to manifest itself is like a success plan with the customer. We might talk a little bit about how they're gonna go ahead and implement it. and then I look at things like adoption usage signal to help me also figure out where that might come. So Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. And so just the audience understand in terms of terminology, an account director would effectively be like an account executive role. People will be familiar with that they own the commercial side of things. but it really sounds like this role incorporates aspects of what would traditionally be solutions engineering with more customer success. And you mentioned doing the pre-sales, discovering those use cases, but then actually being responsible for coming up with a success plan and making sure the customer's implementing that once they've made the purchase. Oliver: Exactly, exactly. and I think maybe for listeners that come in and you know they might be doing more of the pre-sales role. I think biggest difference is maybe like proactivity. that's something that I talk a lot about. so like I kinda said earlier, I think in pre-sales role we're often asked to, you know, respond to the next deal request. We're almost like drop in. We try to figure out what's going on and then we we tackle it headfirst. and hopefully if we do a good job, we might have you know, a success, a deal might be signed with the customer. whereas like in this kind of more blended role, I need to instead almost like take a step back and think of a engagement more holistically. so like several steps ahead, you know, what could block their adoption. Are there new capabilities that is relevant for the customer that I might need to make them aware of? and almost be there before they ask for my help. so pre-sales, we tend to like obviously ask for customers for their investment. That's kind of the idea, I think of it. Whereas in this more like post-sales world or in my role, we're almost more often asking for their time. and yeah, they're kind of they require trust, so there's a lot of similarities in there. But just in a few different ways, if you will. Chris: people will maybe make the assumption if they haven't done a role where they're taking on post sales, that if you are post sales, you're then on the hook to deliver everything yourself. But as I understand it, I've seen on the job descriptions this sort of term you're almost thought of as the the CTO of your book of business or the the CTO of your particular account. But am I right in understanding you're not necessarily the one having to deliver everything that you can make judgment calls about when to bring in say specialists within the organisation. Oliver: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think one of the things that you really have to think a little bit about is as you're sort of fleshing out an opportunity and maybe also supporting a customer, being able to have a little bit of humility and think about, you know, am I the right person to help customers with these things? ultimately we're we're trying to get the customer to a particular outcome, right? And what you find out very quickly is that there are a number of ways that customers might ask your support. for me specifically, I work in our segment which we have coined digital natives. So these are customers that are like almost at the like bleeding edge of our technology. Many of them will know almost more than I do in many cases. And this is really where you know using that judgment of thinking, could I pull someone else in to help me do this? Am I able to use some of those internal resources? And we focus a lot on that in in terms of being able to, you know, get the customer where they want to go, but asking ourselves who is the best person to do that internally. And oftentimes that will mean that I will pull in, you know, potentially one of our AI engineers. they will kind of come in and work with the customer on maybe a particular set of use cases. And while they may not actually hands-on, you know, go into production or write code for them. They will do everything next into that. So really trying to help them. but that can also mean enablement, right? So we have enablement leads that are incredible. They might come in and and support the customer in terms of like how do we enable the wider organization? So things like change management and things like that. so we're certainly thinking a lot about these things and where we can get the right person for the right task. Chris: Yep. Yeah, interesting. And so you mentioned proactivity is one of the big sort of changes in terms of what people might be used to from a a pre sales only solutions engineering role. You know, A lot of people will make the assumption, or if I'm gonna be post sales or at least dabble in post sales, I'm necessarily gonna need to be more technical. Do Oliver: Mm. Chris: you think that that's fair to say? Or like by the sounds of things, it's not necessarily about being the most technical person in the room. You do still have other people that you can Pull in and it's more about judging that. Oliver: Yeah, I I think it it's definitely the ladder there. So I think It's not really just simply the case of becoming more technical. I think technical is really important because, you know, as with any customer, there needs to be that credibility. And I think every eng engagement builds on a lot of trust. and particularly as you're going in, you know, for me, I would talk to anything from, you know, a CTO level to folks who are maybe more in the weeds, that could be particular delivery leads or developers. and being able to understand their language, understand what they're talking about, potentially giving them advice along those ways is super important. So, in order for me to do that, there needs to be a you know a minimum level, I would say, of technical understanding. and I I personally always try to like continuously hone that. But I I definitely agree that it's not necessarily the most important part. I think, as I mentioned, being able to, you know, again have a little bit of humility of Just taking a step back, asking yourself the question, you know, a c customer might come and say, Hey, can you do this for me? That could be giving a training, right? And I why well I could probably do that training. am I the best person to do that? And you know. Will that bring the customer closer to the end goal that we set out in maybe our success plan? and I think that's where, you know, you almost have to like train yourself a little bit to also be okay to bring in other people and pull on those resources as you will. And that will be a little bit different from what we as pre sales are often used to. We we tend to be the people who do everything in a way, right? so Chris: Yeah, absolutely. One thing I definitely have struggled with in the past with those types of specialists and pulling them in. As an example, when I was at Glean, something that was quite new to me was customers could choose to self-host the solution on on infrastructur their own infrastructure, not necessarily on-prem, but say like an AWS or a G C P environment they have. And so certainly we could get into quite detailed conversations around sort of networking that was something totally new to me. And so we had some great specialists we could pull in. And sometimes I would pull them in and I was really relieved I did because the conversation went, really, really deep. But other times I'd pull them in maybe just based on the titles I saw coming to a particular meeting and I would try and get some context around what would be discussed. But sometimes they were really looking for just an overview of the the product or a logical architecture, something I could easily have covered. That's something I struggled with a bit pulling in those specialists. Have you got any thoughts there in terms of how you approach that qualifying when to bring in these specialists or not? Oliver: Yeah, it it is a really tricky one. And I think we have all been there. I think at one point where we might be that resource that you're referring to, where we've also been pulling maybe from someone that we're collaborating closely with, and it was just you know a very commercial discussion where we may not be able to add as much value, right? So I think I certainly recognize that, and and you know, it's something that I work a lot with as well to try to figure out how do I best do this. The best advice I have is just asking the hard questions. I think oftentimes when when that has been the situation, it's the fact that we just haven't taken enough time to ask those questions to the customer of saying, you know, what is it that they require from us or what what is it that they're hoping that, you know, we can help them to take the them to the next step? Is that actually having, you know, someone who comes in and has that to your point earlier, like deep discussion with them on let's say networking or what that could be. or is it actually like, hey, we just need a little bit of architecture. And depending on, you know, how responsive the the customer is, in the sense of like they might be very open to sharing that. that might be easier. And other instances it's not hard. And we have to just use our best judgment of saying, look, I think that it might go down this rabbit hole. And sometimes while ideally we want to be mindful and and saving those resources. I do think it's kind of okay as well to like say, look, there is a high probability that we're gonna go into a very, very deep technical. And at least then you have that additional resource, right, to to sort of help you with that. and the more I think also the more you learn to kind of work with your customers. And this is a really big benefit of kind of being, you know, at least for my role, kind of Also there for the post-sale activities, I get to know my customers really well. So I build up relationships. so I can actually start asking them whether that's a very simple DM in Slack or you know, maybe I'll just set up a five-minute meeting. And I think that that definitely helps me do that as well, where I have a little bit more rapport with with them as well to be able to ask these things. Chris: Yeah, it's i it's interesting how that dynamic, the relationship with the customer changes between pre-sales and post-sales. I actually just had on the show a guest. She's a forward deployed engineer, but she's recently moved into that role from a traditional pre-sales solutions engineering role. And she says, the she feels like she has more credibility with the customer now because, if she's estimating something as an example, they know, well, it's her time, she's on the hook if she has to deliver it. And so Yeah, that I I guess how the customer perceives you is probably slightly different in that post sales setup. Oliver: Absolutely. And and I think you kinda you touched upon something earlier as well. You mentioned that one of the things we we view ourselves is a little bit like CTO of a particular account. Although Chris: Yeah. Oliver: I I I'm not necessarily using that as a way to introduce myself. I think it's a good mindset of, you know, there's an ownership that comes with that type of like responsibility. So I I definitely see myself much more as like a co-owner of both how we progress the account but also the r relationships. that are within that account. So, you know, I would certainly also do a fair amount of work trying to build up regular cadence with people or kind of make sure that we're pulling in the right people from the customer and and reaching out to them as well. so that certainly helps a little bit also to kind of you don't have to maybe go through your account director as much to ask if we can get this information. So but Yeah, it it certainly is something that, it's it's not easy, but it becomes a little bit easier with time, I think, the more you work with a customer. Chris: Yeah, yeah. And whilst we're on the topic of how the skills change, we sort of covered the technical side of things and and whether you need to be more technical. I guess related to the point you made earlier on around proactivity, something that might be new to SEs is this idea of sort of consumption based pricing, but also working with usage or telemetry data. I have you got any thoughts to share there in terms of like what that skill looks like and how you've learned to incorporate that that type of data into the way you work. Oliver: Yeah. truthfully is also something that I'm becoming a lot more kind of capable in. I think we're very lucky that the way our team structure looks like right now is we have a number of people that have come from a background where they have had to do that quite frequently. So, you know, I've definitely leaned into their expertise of like what are the signals that we want to look at? are there certain things that are more interesting or less interesting and and know, what can help us kind of drive us forward to, you know, again, wherever that outcome with the customer is. so I guess it it's a bit of a learning on my end. I think having those type of data points though, and being able to, you know, for example, sometimes we might see in a consumption-based why is there a dip in in, you know, that consumption? It could be as simple as actually If you cover the Nordics, or if anyone has covered the Nordics, we're very famous of taking a big chunk of time out during during summer. and that can actually simply be the reason why you see a little bit of reduction there. or in other situations, that might mean that actually, you know, there might be you know customers exploring other alternatives out there, particularly in you know the AI business, there are Tons and tons of different competitors out there, anything from open weight models to other labs. so I think there could be a lot of different explanations. But I think being able to regularly go to those data points and not just kind of look at or take the conversations, but also combine that with the data that you're seeing really helps drive the conversation for the next type of call. So I might say, okay, well. We can see that there's been a reduction despite us kind of kicking this or kicking off a new project. Is it because they're being blocked? And maybe I can use that as a way to ease into that type of conversation or figure out if there's something that unlocks us there. that would probably be my sort of like current usage of it. but I think as I'm also getting more into it, my answer might be a little bit different in a year from now, as I'm hopefully getting even better at understanding those data points. Chris: Yeah, yeah. And it's something that our our colleagues in customer success have probably been living and breathing for for Oliver: Certainly. Chris: a long time, right? But it's a lot newer to people who are have been doing a traditional solutions engineering role. You you made the point also around sort of the that that there's a number of different options out there, right, for customers in terms of models, open weight models or proprietary models and also just the speed of this technology. It's moving so quickly, right? That's a recurring theme I hear from anyone working with it. It could be really difficult to to keep up. one of the comments that you had made when we caught up last time was around, How you actually show up as a company and help that company define which problems they want to solve and how they solve them is almost more important than just the models. themselves. I'd love if there are any thoughts you have to share around that. Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. I think honestly, you you encapsulated that perfectly. In this market, things are happening so incredibly quickly. you know, I might talk to a customer one day about one of our models, and, within a few hours, we have released a completely new one. that has upended, you know, where we might fall on a particular benchmark that the customer cares about. So to your point, it's much more interesting in terms of how we partner. With customers and how we show up for them. and that definitely takes a little bit more of a strategic approach. So I'm almost less interested in coming into a customer and and saying, you know, we can do all these amazing things, or this is what our technology can do. That's certainly one part of it. But how they can potentially leverage that and the the resources. So to the point we made earlier, can we bring in maybe, you know, one of our AI engineers to come in and help with them or Can we even bring in a forward-deployed engineer to come and work, particularly on a production workload? All of these things I think is much more important for how we show up for our customers because it really truly shows how much we value their business and also this partnership. so a big part of my role is making sure that for our customers, they feel like we're showing up in these ways. And I I'm constantly thinking about this as well: of like, how can I really show this customer that we really care and and we want to be this long term partner. and that, you know, we are aware that there are other models there. There are certainly strengths and benefits with all of them. so what where can we kind of separate ourselves and show up in a unique way and and for us that's truly partnerships. and being able to show up as a really strong partner to them kind of separates us. Chris: Yeah. Yeah, and you just see the massive amounts of investment going into these deployment companies by OpenAI, but obviously Anthropic and others is just a sign of quite how important that helping the customer get it deployed in reality is. Oliver: Absolutely. I I think on that as well. It's it's not easy, right? We're all or many of us we're figuring out and again with that change, that change it it can be tricky to navigate. so we wanna make sure that we help customers as much as possible to navigate that change and make that easy for them. Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So on the topic of change, we've already talked about the changing SE role and SE is potentially needing to take on more post sales. Have you got any thoughts on you know Is there still a future for a purely pre-sales solutions engineering role? Because I guess the the simplified narrative is everything's moving to consumption-based pricing. That means it's in the vendor's interest to get the the customer actually using the technology, and then as a result you want people accountable. And so you just have these roles where They're doing everything, the SC does everything, but is that a an oversimplified narrative? Or yeah, what what what's your take on it? Oliver: Yeah, I I think the short answer is I think there's absolutely a future for more like pre-sales only SC type of work. But to your point, and this is maybe the longer answer, we are certainly seeing more and more organizations on the market moving towards like more post-sales accountability. and Truthfully, I don't think every single company and particularly every product is gonna land in the same place. I almost see it a little bit as a kind of spectrum of like where they're gonna fall. if we kind of look at, you know, certain types of models. so I think a good example is when I was working at Figma, it was somewhat challenging to be able to, you know, charge a customer on. A consumption-based model, right? We we used seat-based, and designers would come in, they would leverage that software quite significantly. but when AI was being introduced more and more into the product, there definitely started becoming more and more interested in also having more of a consumer consumption-based model as part of the seat-based as well. And this is really where I mean with the the spectrum, there is that you know. Some solutions there that are there right now is just gonna lend itself much better to to SeatBase and it just makes it easier for customers. and with those situations, then you're likely going to see more roles for pre-sales specific or like more pre sales activity. But given that AI is in most types of products these days, and it's not just AI, by the way, but obviously that's maybe the most recent example. I think we definitely will start seeing a little bit more of certain post-sales activities creeping in there as well because there will probably be an aspect of consumption that they're going to care about, right? making sure that, you know, they are retaining you know, whatever consumption they get from that commitment or making sure the customers are utilizing the solutions in one way or another. I still think that's important for seat based just as much, but you see a little bit more that clearly maybe in consumption-based pricing, if you will. so I don't think it's like a There's no extinction event for pre-sales. I just think There's definitely some shifts that are happening. And I think we're seeing, you know, a little bit more maybe though of that post sales coming in. It's just a question of how much. Chris: Yeah, yeah. I definitely agree with that point around it, sitting on a spectrum. And I know, personally, something I've talked about before was in my time at Glean, we were responsible for running pilots and they were effectively production pilots, right? We were connecting into production systems with real data. And I found it quite difficult to balance the pre-sales activities of being available at the drop of a hat to talk to a prospect and travel and meet customers with the actual implementation work, particularly if you're integrating something and you've run into an issue and you need to do debugging, you need a long amount of focus time in your calendar to get into that sort of work. And so those two different working styles are really different. I don't want to say necessarily incompatible, but certainly I struggled with the with the two of them. But I think the fact that OpenAI you guys are seen as the the CTO of the account and you do still have other people you can pull in is a good illustration of the fact that it's not necessarily binary, right? Even if you are involved in post sales, that doesn't necessarily mean you're you're the one having to to deliver everything. Oliver: Exactly. And I I think that's that's really important. We we can't always be responsible for every single part of it. And to the point we made earlier, you know, you're gonna have to pull in resources at times and and lean on other people. And I think developing this skill is even if it's a more pre-sales kind of role or you're doing more of the pre-sales in your current role, I think it's still a really valuable thing to be able to do. because sometimes giving the customer visibility into you know whether that's someone in product or could be one of your colleagues that are incredibly strong in a particular area can also go a long way to just create more credibility and just give more value to the customer. So I definitely think that that that is something that's useful either way. And I appreciate you know, we do have quite a lot of resources here at OpenAI, but It's also okay to ask. The worst thing that can happen is that you get a no. So I would certainly challenge anyone who's listening to like start asking for these things as well. See what you know comes out of it. You'll be surprised. A lot of people, particularly I've found in product, can oftentimes be quite happy to come on with you and help. but it's just we sometimes don't ask because we're so used to having to do everything ourselves. Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And that was always advice I gave to anyone when they were joining an organization is don't be shy, particularly if it's someone working remotely and they haven't built those relationships with people and they don't have that social capital. It's like just j just ask and I always said to people, I'll tell you if I'm getting too many questions, but I prefer people to do that than the opposite. Oliver: Hundred percent. I I fully agree with that. So I'm I'm subscribed to that idea. Chris: Awesome. I'm gonna move on to the quick fire questions in a minute, but was there anything else you wanted to share just in terms of, SEs or pre sales professionals taking on post sales before we get into those? Oliver: I think maybe the only thing that I would like underscore, and I I think I touched upon it a little bit, but just being open to having a little bit more ownership. And I think this is something where i it can be either really scary, particularly I think if we're very used to doing more heavy pre-sales activity. as I mentioned, it can oftentimes when I've done very focused pre-sales roles, it does sometimes just feel transactional. And you know, you come in. You do your thing and then you go out and you do that loads and loads of times over. but I can really see, particularly in this new role, that as you're kind of taking more ownership, it gives you a kind of a new set of opportunities I've found of just being able to, as I mentioned, either pull in the right people, but also create a bit more engagement with the customer directly. And I know and I There's many thoughts about this, but we tend to like to use this word trusted advisor. But I I certainly will say that, you know, doing this type of role and and where it's a bit of a mix of both pre and post sales, this is where I really feel like I'm starting to become more of a trusted advisor to my customer. And we are, you know, certainly having more of like an ongoing collaboration. It is not just me introducing myself and and you know leaving. So I think That would probably be one thing that again, I would certainly advise people to be open to. it it might be a bit scary, but it does open up a lot of opportunity and and doors for you, I think. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Interestingly, back in my time at Slack, one of the things I found really valuable for my pre-sales conversations was we had a channel where we would get piped in from the customer success organization use cases or we called them value stories from our customers. And I made a habit of every Friday going through that channel, looking at any new use cases coming in. A lot of them were repetitive, but every now and then you would get this golden nugget. And I felt like bringing those to my pre-sales conversations was one of the most valuable things I could do. Customers really appreciated that detail that you only get post signature during the implementation. But actually being involved in those deals yourself directly, seeing some of that work through, doing some of it yourself must be another level, right? Oliver: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think yeah, I can only echo what you just said there. It it definitely makes things kinda I don't know, i it's hard to put into like phrase it in the right way, but I I think it certainly helps in terms of just like the engagement with the customer, building that relationship and building the trust ultimately. And I think I that's what I I said in the beginning, you know. you're asking whether it's pre-sales, post sales, you're gonna be asking for the the the trust of a customer, albeit in different ways. and I think, you know, the only way to be able to do that is to earn it. And you can only do that by having a conversation and being able showing up for the customer, right? And and being that part of that. So Chris: Absolutely. Okay, so on to our quick fire questions. The first one I had for you, Ollie, is is there a particular move that you've had within your career that stands out as the most meaningful to you? Oliver: Yeah, it this is this is always like one of the hard ones. I think when I was trying to think about what that could be, every single part of my journey, and you know, I'm someone anyone who jumps into my LinkedIn, you'll see I've jumped around quite a few times. And I will say that every like jump that I have made has really taught me something. I've gained a lot of Competency and a lot of lessons. so there's definitely something to say about that in terms of, you know, you'll you'll learn something different from each experience. For me, though, if I had to single out the one thing which has served me really well, is actually almost prior to my career starting, actually deciding as a Swedish person myself to dare to kind of venture outside of. the Nordic region and just pursue a career initially in in Ireland and then London and then back in Ireland. that has given me so many opportunities because I've been able to lean into being, you know, Nordic and having that as an asset. so for me, it's really just like taking the leap of like it doesn't have to be, you know, necessarily just in the in my country. You can certainly do that. And but I think. Thinking inwards, and this was a little bit unbeknownst to me when I did that. Being able to lean on what are the competencies and the the sort of things that I can bring with me to the table to an organization is really what's kind of valuable. And and I think for me it's just actually one of them have been being able to be Nordic, jump into like Nordic customers, creating that business report that I have with them. so yeah. Ironically though, I haven't always worked in the Nordic market, but but I certainly think it's benefited me throughout my whole career and and still is. Chris: Yeah, interesting. A lot of people when we talk about domain expertise, particularly in my coaching work, people assume it's either in a particular technology or particular industry, but the same is true for a particular market, right? Knowing how a particular market operates. And like you said, in the Nordics very common for people to go away on holidays. I know decision making is quite different there compared to some other countries. So it's really interesting point. Oliver: Absolutely. And and I appreciate that it's not as easy as saying, you know, upend your life and go and move country, because I, you know, we all have responsibilities and it's not that easy. but what I will say is, particularly if you're starting out or these type of things, it can be a great stepping stone. You know, you might come in, you might work a role abroad, but I've seen so many of my colleagues who who did that and then they were able to continue with that organization, or maybe they took another opportunity and moved back home as well. Right. So there's many opportunities, but that can be a really valuable thing to do as well. Chris: Yeah. And speaking of opportunities, people will look over your LinkedIn and see the work that you've done at companies like Slack and Figma and now OpenAI and they'll think, wow, it's all success. Ollie's absolutely crushing it. But I would love if there was something you could share about, maybe something that challenged you or a failure within your career and what you learned from that. Oliver: Yes, there there's certainly been plenty of failures. I think it's a bit cliche, but we we certainly learn a lot from these type of failures. one that I will often actually bring up is very early in my career. this is a failure where I was working with a customer. this is back in Oracle, and I was in a particular domain a domain expert. Oracle is such a, they have such a wide set of products. So I was specialized in this area. And the customer was asking for things. We were doing a pilot that was a little bit outside of this area. And this kind of at the time I thought, well, you know, I'm the pre-sales person. I need to do this anyways. I'll just figure it out. So I sort of let the customer add in maybe what we would call a little bit of scope creep and these type of things. and ultimately what happened was that we had loads of setbacks in terms of the implementation. We weren't able to actually deliver the the experience we wanted very quickly. And I had many of my colleagues come in later and help out. And obviously, this is something that I that was a tough learning for me because you know I I had every intention of helping this customer deliver this great opportunity, and we were all really excited, but In the end, it just soured the relationship a little bit. And I think the lesson that I learned there, and ironically, is kind of what we spoke about, is you do not have to be expert in every single thing, right? I think it's almost more valuable to understand where your limitations are and bring being able to bring in the right people for those. hopefully you don't have to learn it the hard way that I did. now I think in the end, I believe the customer was okay, but It was certainly not the experience I would have ever wanted to give that customer. And and I'm glad that I had that lesson early because since then I've always kept that at the back of my mind. and it's really trained this skill of like thinking, Am I the right person to deliver this? Who could be the better one to do that? so that's probably one of the things that has always stuck with me, to be honest. Chris: Interesting. Yeah, very relevant for the conversation today, right? Taking on more post sales work and also that idea of scope creep, I think, is something that our our friends, people with maybe more of a customer success background, are far more familiar with than than we are if we if you come from pre-sales. So we've covered a lot of ground on this topic already, so feel free to pass, but was there anything that you wanted to share around how you see AI sort of reshaping Pre sales or solutions engineering or applied AI architecture. Oliver: yeah, I think there will be a shift. And I think the biggest shift that I anticipate is where, you know, SC or Architect or you know, we have many names, where we create value, right? and I think AI specifically, you know, it's making things like research, demo preparation, follow-up documentation. Building, presentations, all of these things dramatically faster. we're already seeing this, particularly working at OpenAI. We use it obviously very, very heavily. but it also kind of means that even though you can show up for a customer with a really polished presentation, it becomes a little bit less differentiating at times because everyone else is doing this as well. So I think ultimately what we'll what we're gonna see is, and I think what we're already seeing is customers' expectations are probably increasing because everyone else is being able to use AI as a technology to just really fast track these type of activities. so I think where I'll likely imagine that like our role or the more like pre-sales role will kind of move is more in terms of like the human part. So like bringing out curiosity. Innovation, how we can build communication and trust. So I think there's some other skills there that's going to become even more valuable, as opposed to being the best one in the world to build you know demos. being able to tell a good story is still incredibly important, and and I will always talk about storytelling. But I do think that these things and as these models are becoming more and more capable. they're also getting pretty good at doing these type of things. So it's just more about where can we move to to bring other types of values to our customers. so I think those are the ones that I I will likely see more of and that I feel like I'm bringing more to the table in my role as well. Chris: Yeah. Which is a nice segue into you know, the changing skill set of people within our profession. Is there any advice that you would share for SEs or pre sales professionals, particularly those that are maybe eyeing up a move to a role like yours or taking on more post sales work? Oliver: very good question. I think in terms of advice, Hmm, I would likely probably start implementing it in wherever I am currently. So, you know, if I'm someone who's maybe kind of done more of the pre-sales bit, Starting to take more ownership. like I mentioned before, Starting to be more proactive. thinking about like how can I leverage, for example, data points that are available to me. And I appreciate this might vary very much where you are. But I think just Thinking about the skills that will come or become useful and starting to just like operationalize them wherever you are right now. is a good way to to start training them because ultimately I I think it it is, you know, a a few new skills and the only way we get better at those skills is actually to put them into practice. So I'm I'm very much always like, you know, start using it, start trying it out. Because that's also going to lead to opportunities where you're able to showcase, you know, how got involved with a customer, you know, and maybe you had a pre sales activity, you saw that solution, but then you also were part of, you know, helping them out, implementing it. And that can sh can show up in small things. I'm not saying that, you know, to the point you made earlier, you're not gonna necessarily have the bandwidth to do that to every customer. But even just doing it to a few and then being able to show that and and lift that in, you know, your interview process will, you know, really I think enable you to to bring a lot of value and the pre-sales skills are still incredibly important, right? They're so, so important. And I put them into practice every single day. so also, you know, do definitely show off them and then talk about them as well. Cause they still play a huge role in in, you know, what I do and anyone else who works more post sales. we're just bolting on maybe a little bit more. on top of those as well. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. It's a really good advice 'cause There's so much out there around how people need to develop AI fluency. and get experience working with the technology. But actually Your point is you need to get some experience doing some of this post sales work. and these different ways of working when applying to an organization as well, which I think is spot on. Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. AI fluency is obviously something I I think about a lot. Maybe not the topic for today, but yeah, I I certainly think that we we should try to just adopt and practice and and truthfully as well. I don't see where, you know, if you start taking a little bit more ownership and being proactive, that can come off very well received by, you know, your account executives or whoever you might working with as well. they tend to like to see that as well because it makes their life also easier. so, you know, I wouldn't shy away from these things. I I think it's just testing them out and and yeah, developing these skills. Chris: Absolutely. So last question from me, Ollie, you're already in what would be the dream role for most people, for yourself included, I'm sure, but is there another role that you would have loved to do in an alternative universe? And it doesn't have to be within pre sales Oliver: Yeah. Chris: or solutions engineering, but take take that however way you like. Oliver: yeah, do you know I I had a deep think about this. I would just love to basically working a bookshop. It's the truth of it. I I there's something to bookshops. I love bookshops. this is where you realize how nerdy I am. most people will probably already have come across this if. To to Chris's point earlier, if you've seen any of my videos on LinkedIn, I'm pretty nerdy of what I put up. But yeah, I I really like bookshops. So I would love to like own a bookshop. That would be one thing that I think would be like just I'm romanticizing about the idea. because I just really like books and I really like just being in that environment for some reason. So Chris: Yeah, I love it. And a lot a lot of people sort of what's the word? Predicted the death of the bookshop and a lot of the ones that I know are are still going strong. They've evolved and now they're such broader spaces for different cultural activities and that sort of thing. So I think it would be a very cool job. Oliver: Yeah, yeah, no, I I I'm for one someone who really hopes that they they persist and I'm also a someone who will come in quite frequently. If I see a good bookshop, I can't resist going in. So yeah, I I really enjoy them. Chris: Amazing. Well, Olli, it's been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for for joining me today and and taking the time. Oliver: Of course, it was my pleasure. Cheers. Chris: Okay. Cheers. Bye