This is we, the Sales Engineers podcast show 3 27.
Welcome to We the SES podcast, the show for sales engineers by sales
engineers with your host Ramsey maba.
What's up, fascinat Nation?
Welcome back to another episode.
Today we're talking AI because it is the thing to talk about these days, and it
seems to be taking a lot of people, a lot of, uh, arguments, a lot of discussion.
Is it gonna replace, is it gonna augment?
Is it gonna help?
But my guest today is, his name is Philip Swan, and it seems that he's
interested in AI and how to use AI within companies, not just for sales engineering,
but in general to help companies.
Advance and push forward in what it is that they do.
And we kind of discuss his history about how he got into entrepreneurship because
he's a co-founder and chief, uh, and, uh, go-to market product director or
product owner, head product man, and how he's, uh, building AI solutions for his
customers and how he thinks about it.
So, without further ado, let's jump into the show.
Hello, Philip.
How are you doing?
I'm great.
How are you?
I am doing well.
I want you to introduce yourself, but you just said you're so
into pre-sales right now.
I wanna know what that means.
So.
Let's introduce yourself and then what that means.
Sure.
So, um, my name is Philip Wan.
I am chief Product Officer and go to market for a company called
the AI Solution Group, and we help companies reimagine their
business with responsible ai.
And so it's about architecting solutions.
You, you, for these large enterprises We've.
Focus on, um, um, there are companies who are really struggling how to
bring AI into their organization.
Okay, so my, my focus has always been on sales and in pre-sales.
I started off life as an engineer.
And so architecting solutions for customers is something that
I've done my entire career.
And it's about delivering those out successful outcomes
to, uh, to the customers.
Okay.
How like.
You've been in sales for a long time now.
Long, how long have you been doing it?
Oh my gosh.
I don't wanna, I don't wanna date you.
Well, my first sales job, I was eight years old.
How's that for Ja?
Um, and, uh, I firmly believe that everybody in the company is a salesperson.
So you're always selling.
Um, and whether it's internal or external, and.
The, you know, I've always had the customer, uh, in the center
of every equation that I work on.
So it's always about the customer.
It's not that you let the customer bully you and tell you what to
do or do anything like that.
It's about delivering great outcomes to your customer.
And I started off at eight.
It started off with a paper route at fir.
I did my first distribution strategy at nine, where I hired four of my friends.
To expand my paper routes out.
I sold up those five paper routes that when I was 14 to buy baby
clothes to do at a flea market.
And as I sold for, to earn money, I at 14 years old, and by the age of 16, I
was going to Hong Kong to buy container loads of baby clothes for my flea market.
I was up to 20 stalls in 14 different markets.
And then when I was 20 and I graduated from university, I sold, I sold
those off and I had enough money to buy my first, at the age of 21.
Uh, from.
Selling that.
So why did you even go to university?
You're already a successful business person beforehand.
My
passion has always been in technology.
My passion has always been about being an engineer right.
And building stuff, right.
I I love to, yeah.
Fundamentally I love breaking stuff, right?
So it is just like, in order to construct something new, you
gotta break something first.
So I love.
I love breaking problems and so, and then solving those problems and building
those up, that's fundamentally who I'm, so, think of me kind of like a hacker in,
in any days just liking to break shit.
Excuse my French.
Uh, I think that was Scottish.
Uh, that's right.
It was Scottish.
Right.
I, I did see your, your, your LinkedIn, you went to the
University of Glasgow, so Yes.
I I'm assuming you're Scottish.
I am Scottish.
The accent is a little, is a little weird these days, but Yes.
Yeah.
Well, I couldn't place it, that's why I started doing some research right now.
Uh, okay.
So you studied engineering and you've been, I tell people that
the best skill that people, anybody should learn is sales.
Because they're like, they're gonna use it throughout their lives.
And you kinda correct.
Touched on that.
That's exactly right.
And it's hard for me to admit it because I went into engineering 'cause
I didn't want to talk to people.
And now
I'm, I'm, you know, it's funny.
It's funny 'cause I'm the same way and I still don't like talking to
people, but I do it because when I get into it, I actually enjoy it.
So it's, uh, yeah, I'm delivering value.
That's funny.
I feel like I'm talking to myself.
All right.
Cool.
That's try.
There you go.
Uh, this is gonna be easy though.
You mentioned you're, you're deep into presales.
Yes.
What does that mean?
The problem that we're solving right now is that there's a lot of hype and
a lot of doom talk around artificial intelligence and companies are just
struggling of all sizes, you know, whether you're small or large.
And the real, the real thing for um, for AI is.
How can you introduce it responsibly into your organization?
Right.
And what that means is that it's good, it's safe and it's ethical.
So you really have to dig into the customer to understand what
future they're solving for.
So I literally ask the question of every customer I talk to,
what future are you solving for?
And they stop for a second 'cause they haven't thought about it.
'cause they're all typically thinking of, I've gotta do this next and this next
and this next, as opposed to going to.
This is what Nirvana looks like for me.
Now let's work back and Rever, and I call it reverse engineering it.
Back to all the steps that need to do to get you to your dream, your
vision, your objective, your goal.
And so in pre-sales is about listening to customers using these two things
stuck at this side of your head.
You know the ones that you've got that those beautiful headphones o
over your ears right now, Ramsay?
Yeah.
Is you gotta listen.
You gotta talk, you, you gotta ask provocative questions,
open-ended questions.
And I'm a big subscriber to, um, Hathaway's Spin Selling, which
is where you really focus in on understanding the problem and
uh, and really the pain points.
And I don't even talk in pain points anymore.
'cause everybody solves a pain point.
I talk in terms of what's the migraine that you're trying to solve?
Because if you're not solving a migraine, it's just noise.
And so what does that mean?
Well, a migraine can mean anything.
Everybody who's listening to, who's listening to this has probably
suffered a really bad headache or a migraine at some point in their life.
We all have, right?
It lasts for days and is brutal.
You will do anything to get a cure for it.
Almost anything you will try weird concoctions that your grandma told you
to use or, or, or some new fancy drug that your doctor's telling you to use.
Well, it's the same thing here, right?
The migraine level problem is different for every company.
It could be a revenue gap, it could be a, a safety issue.
It could be an efficient, an operational efficiency issue.
Any number of use cases that can have in there, but really identifying
what the problem is you're trying to solve, and then bringing.
A small pod of experts to, you know, to really understand the customer problem.
And I'm talking two, three, maximum four people to really dig deep in with the
customer, to draw them out of all the pain banks, because they'll not that
they're lying to you, they'll never tell you the truth straight off because it
comes back to building trust, right?
Yeah.
So hearing you asking the right questions, listening to their answers.
Re repeating back to them, going back to the, you know, the basics of truly getting
to the bare metal or fundamental truth of what the problem is you're solving.
Yeah.
I mean, they might not even know the real problem, which is why they're not
telling.
That's exactly right.
And nine times outta 10 they don't.
Yeah.
I finally spoke to somebody yesterday for the first time in months, who
actually understood what the problem was that they were trying to solve,
and they're all smart people.
It's not like it because they think.
They're confusing symptoms with problems is the part of the issue.
Yeah.
Well, uh, everyone is tied to their own, like their own view.
Right?
When, when I worked in the support, my focus was a specific product
and everything was around that, but then I worked in network design.
Now we had more products.
Doesn't mean that I didn't know my problem when it came to that, I just had.
The symptom that affected me.
And I thought that was the problem, but is that was not the problem.
It was just the symptom.
So,
uh, another thing that we fi that we see is, is that there's a huge
disconnect across the board between the CIO's office and the business, right?
So the CIO is not doing what the business actually needs 'em to do.
So there's that missing link.
Even though they claim to have it connected, we see it.
Almost a hundred percent of the time, this complete disconnect
between the CIO and the business.
Uh, just to clarify some terms, when you say the business, are
we talking about like the CEO?
Are we talking about the sales team or everything?
Sales, uh, marketing, uh, the tools that people need to come
out of the CIO's office Right.
Are not getting done because the CIO's office doesn't think in terms of business.
They, they think of other things.
So if I were to rephrase it in my own words, like the CI doesn't
think about the business outcomes.
These just about correct.
The information that
he or she needs to work on.
Correct.
Or in, in a way, and solving it in a way that's customer friendly and it's
an internal customer for them, right?
So right where it's, it's something they can actually use, right?
They may solve a problem, but they may introduce infinite, you know, complexity
to the solution when it should have just been the click of a button.
Right, and just let it run.
Well, if, if it's not complicated, it's not a real solution, you know,
that's how we engineers think.
Well, you're talking about pet peeve mine product, man.
Are we talking about like, because when I asked you the question, uh,
like you're getting into pre-sales, are these companies that you're, that are
trying to implement pre-sales or are we talking about enterprise, for example,
that are trying to solve a problem?
They're trying to solve a problem.
It's the latter is definitely, is definitely on the latter.
So this is a typical presales engineering type solution.
Solutioning, presales discussion.
Yeah.
So you're, you're being the presales in that
situation?
I'm okay.
Uh,
I'm the se So you're, you're the.
Well, you're the SE and it seems like you're the sales and you seems like
to be having a lot of hats there.
Um, yep.
But you're, you're trying to solve a problem for a customer.
Correct.
Using a ai
using responsible ai.
Yes.
So, uh, this might be a stupid question, but hopefully you'll humor me with that.
Do we need, does every company need AI to solve a problem?
So,
um.
The short answer is yes, and I'll tell you why.
Okay?
AI is not a new solution, okay?
AI has been around conceptually since 1936.
Um, the term artificial intelligence was first used in 1954.
Um, there was a simple test created by, um, Alan Turing, who was of
imitation fame of he correct the Enigma Code in, in the World War ii that.
Effectively helps, um, the allies win World War ii.
He wrote a paper in 1950 that was effectively the fat
father of modern computing.
He came in, he invented the concept of a microprocessor, and he had this
thing called a Turing test, which is where there's a human in the middle.
Can the human determine whether they're speaking to a machine or another
human, and if they can't tell the difference, the machine is intelligent.
That's the simplicity of the test.
The term artificial intelligence was first introduced in 1954 at a Dartmouth
conference, and you know, it was.
In 1960, we had symbolic artificial intelligence.
In 1990s, we had machine learning if anybody's ever driven an early BMW had
one of the earliest cases of machine learning put into auto, into automobiles.
Um, um, and then we hit.
You know, 2010 where we get into the modern era of, uh, ai and then we got
generative AI in 2019, which is when we all started to using it, right?
So GPTs and various other tools out there.
Anthropic, open ai, uh, Google's Gemini, the list, you know, the list goes on and.
Now where we're at is that, um, we are about to get to a GI, which is artificial
general intelligence is where the computer is acting and behaving as good
as if not better, than a human being on their own without any management.
So, short answer to your question, everybody needs it.
Why?
People are not gonna get replaced by artificial intelligence.
That's, that's number one.
What you are gonna get replaced with is somebody who's using is augmenting
themselves with artificial intelligence.
And so companies, why does this flow up to the companies?
Because.
Their competition will be using AI to figure out their next moves, and there
will be within five years or less.
The first one person company that is entirely run by artificial intelligence.
That will be a billion dollars or more in, in annual revenue.
Think about that for a second.
That will be a thing within two to five years.
Okay.
What does this mean for companies like Microsoft, for
Google, for Dell, for Amazon?
The list goes on.
You're going, they're going to be disrupted like crazy with these companies
because you can now use artificial intelligence to do all your pre-sales.
Find a, find a migraine level problem.
Build the code for that product, run the code, test the code, put the code
into production, and collect the cash.
So we're not, uh, talking about someone going into chat,
GPT and asking it a question.
We're talking about something much more advanced.
Oh yeah.
This is a GI.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it's gonna completely change the landscape for, uh, for people.
So why is this important for companies?
'cause if they don't get ahead of the curve now, they're going to be
forever behind their competition and their stock prices will diminish.
Their company values will diminish, their brand value will diminish.
And more importantly, their customers will no longer be loyal to them.
They'll be going to another brand that is meeting their needs.
Sometimes it's hard to get customers to change.
Like they have a fleet of cars for their salespeople.
Mm-hmm.
You ask them to change from a Ford to Chevy and they have a hard time with it.
But now, like how do you get people to see the value of changing their
current way of, it's a lot of
education.
It's a lot of education.
Um, and, and it's showing them a pathway to which to do it.
So how we, how we do it is like.
We show them how to build, how to build value with ai, right?
So we actually teach our customers to do that.
We then teach them to effectively build a factory for ai.
'cause everything's going agents.
And we teach them how to do that.
We show 'em how to do that and then we.
We teach them how to build an AI center of excellence.
All in the meantime, we are building our own products that are also supporting
this and their, and their clients.
So it's, um, it, it's, it's about showing the story.
It's about storytelling, is what it comes down to.
So traditional sales.
Tactics.
Um, I still apply.
Traditional sales engineering tactics still apply.
It's just the mundane tasks.
The, the mundane tasks are being automated like crazy.
So, for example, I have agents for myself.
Now what do my agents do?
It's all the crap that I don't like doing email, actually getting the,
not the writing of the content.
'cause I do all my own writing, right?
'cause for multiple reasons.
One, I enjoy doing it.
Two, I'm educating myself as I'm writing it.
And third, I have copyright on it.
Using ai, you don't have copyright on your content.
So.
What I use AI to is, is taking all that content and getting it all scheduled so I
don't have to go through the formatting, putting the images in, you know,
creating, you know, doing the videos.
I have those workflows all automated now in the form of an agent.
So it is literally, it just, it's running all the time and it just
happens and all I have to do is feed it content and it just happens.
Um, and then it allows me to do what I'm.
Exceptional at which is selling, right?
So it's getting in front of customers, listening to their problems, and
then doing this thing that I'm deeply passionate about, which is building
product and you know, product that is actually useful and product that is
actually going to deliver outcomes.
All right.
Well, my daughter decided to drop by.
Oh, hi.
Hi, I'm recording.
Avi.
She loves you, but sorry.
Uh, she's, she's not the one who got me sick, so I'm okay with her right now.
Uh
uh Okay.
Uh, so like you're using it on your business life on your own.
Yep.
As a business and you're helping businesses do it, I, I see like
salespeople, Andes are like the CEO and the CTO of their territory and region.
How should they be using a AI as well?
Absolutely.
Everybody should be using it.
So you mentioned those terms, and I use very similar terms, right?
You're the CEO of your own franchise, right?
Within the company.
I use that term a lot.
It's up to you to get resources and teaching them how to be that CEO.
What I don't agree with right now is territories anymore.
I'm a big believer in actually marrying the right salesperson to the right
clients so that you, 'cause people buy from people they like, that is,
that is not going to change Ramsey.
Right.
So it's about,
yeah,
finding the, the right person on your team to talk to the right
client no matter where they are, um, irrespective of location.
I, I, I agree with that.
Um, alright.
How, how would they, if they wanna start thinking, 'cause
obviously, so how would they
would do that?
They would start off by researching, right?
So, um, there's a very simple prompt to do, and, and in the beginning it's simple
words to you do in front of every prompt.
Don't hallucinate hallucination is a very real thing in, um, artificial
intelligence, and what that means is that it's representing data
as truth and it's being perceived as truth when in fact it's not.
So you need to verify it.
So the, the, the reason to put the words don't hallucinate or do
not hallucinate in front of every prompt is that it actually narrows.
The, um, the model quite significantly.
So it dramatically reduces the amount of hallucination and the
output, and you write the prompt in the way that you would describe
to your 6-year-old daughter, right?
Or your 14-year-old son or whatever.
Very simple language, you know, but not just the simple
life, but very specific terms.
So you imagine you've got yourself this.
Ultra bright, um, uh, you know, toddler that will do absolutely
everything that you say you do, precisely how you're gonna do it.
And then more.
This is artificial intelligence, uh, today.
Um, that won't be in a month or two months, um Okay.
Or three months.
It's, it's, it's crazy at the pace.
But where they would use it is on research.
Right.
Find, you know, I know that my solution that I'm selling and I'm representing.
Generate you.
Generally, it's this value for this class of customers.
Find me 50 companies that this, that have the same problem as this company.
You'll find, you find me the target, your personas, right?
So find me the CIO or the CTO or the VP of marketing or the director of marketing,
whatever products you're trying to sell.
Find the right title and identify those people for me who may have this problem.
And it will do write me the, write me the script to, you know, my,
um, for sales enablement that will get me somebody to respond to me.
And the sequences.
It will do all of that for you and it will manage it your time for you.
Because the thing that salespeople and es are particularly bad at,
and I know this firsthand, is we're typically bad at managing our time.
And it's, this helps you.
Tell me more about that.
Tell me more about being better at managing our time.
So when you look at a traditional sales person, right, when,
when, if you ask a sales person.
How much time they actually spend spend selling.
If they're really honest with themselves, it's between 35 and 40% of the time.
Right.
Why is that?
Because they've got all the other crap they've gotta do the
admin tasks and everything else.
You hired them to.
Be sellers for God's sake.
People get them out.
Selling.
Don't, don't have the CFO saying, gimme this report here, do this in
CRM there, do all of that's important.
Yeah.
Don't get me wrong, believe me.
I'm not saying it's not important, but yeah, eliminate the friction.
So the salesperson is not having to spend their weekends doing expense reports.
For CRM, but they've forgotten about because the meeting happened
on Monday, but because they've been back to back to back to back through
Friday, they're trying to remember what happened in the Monday, the
Monday morning meeting at 9 45.
Right?
And so being able to have all of that captured for you and then summarized for
you, and then turned into actions that either go into your calendar or into CRM
that are then prompting you from CRM.
However you want to work.
It enables you to work the way that you like to work while still providing the
company the information they need and the cleanliness of the data that they need
to go and run and operate the business.
So like is there a software available right now that does that for a salesperson
or do they have to, each has to build their own or is that what you do?
I'm getting close.
That's what you, this answer is
no, but I'm getting close to it.
Okay.
So there will be something.
Yes, there will be something.
I, I would love to see it when, when it's ready.
Uh, you know what,
I'll come back, I'll come back to you in a, in a few months because
we've got a few products to build out first, but we're probably two
months away from having something.
I can show you Ramsey.
That would be quite interesting.
Alright, good.
And I'm using myself
as the use case here.
Yeah.
And then I'm, you're using and then I'm, and then I'm using for my wife's
business 'cause my wife has a language services, per language services
company provides interpreters to.
To companies, hospitals, governments, et cetera, government agencies, et cetera.
And, you know, I'm gonna take what I'm doing here for her company
and see if I can replicate it.
'cause if I can replicate it, and my plan is I will replicate it, I can now scale
that into other, into other organizations.
And I'd love to have you test that.
Oh, I, I'd be happy to because you're basically giving me hope
and, uh, I, I really need it.
That's right.
'cause I don't, no, I haven't met a seller who likes to update CRMs, right?
No.
Or manage their calendar.
No.
Or, or set reminders for themselves.
Actually, I was talking to someone today and they were asking me
like, do you use a software that automatically reminds you of like.
I wish there was one.
I have to do everything manually.
Like I send out an email, I put it in my calendar that I have to follow up
with them in five days or whatever.
I'll do all of it for you.
That's all right.
All all right.
I, you're getting me excited.
I'm straightening you up, so this is all right.
This is gonna be interesting.
Uh, I look forward to that day.
Uh,
it'll be sooner than you think.
Yeah.
Well, I'll be reaching out.
So,
um, um, where was I, I got too excited now.
I, I don't know where I was going.
Uh, well we were, yeah, so, but going back to the, the SE role, right.
And Yeah.
You, and real, and really focusing in, and so imagine now that the, the SE
is now just focused exclusively and.
Using the part of the brain that make, gives 'em the superpower to be the SC
of the arm, which is literally getting to a whiteboard and drawing out a
solution for the customers saying, this is what I heard, is this Right?
And then And then, yeah, and building out, and then literally documenting everything.
And so the customer goes like, wow, I want that.
Yeah.
Well, here's the thing that I see about sales engineering and
where AI might disrupt that.
A lot of them treat themselves as a data sheet.
I'm here to answer questions.
I'm not here to solve problems, which is kind of weird to say, but like especially
old school, ess, they were hired more as support engineers and their job is
to jump on a call whenever the customer has a problem before they escalate to,
yeah,
to support or a, how many like OSPF routes if you're networking.
Do you need to be able to do that?
How many users can your server support these kinds of questions?
And there will be utter, those people will be utterly replaced with AI and if not
already, um, but that'll also enable a lot of the great SE to go out and do what
you're saying in terms of whiteboarding and solving problems for their customers.
Correct.
Yep, that's exactly right.
And and hopefully it brings value to 'em.
They have more free time to spend time with their friends and their family.
Right.
And that's one of the things that this will give you.
'cause you're like, okay, I've gotta do e, I've gotta spend two hours on email.
No, your email's already done for you.
Right.
Well the biggest thing is RFPs, right?
That's same thing with RFPs, because I've automated the process for my
wife's company to respond to RFPs.
It literally doesn't, I do a lot of the writing, but it gets, it gets done.
'cause I've got a private instance of an LLM that just
does this and it just churns tho.
It just churns those out.
It's not cheating, by the way.
It's not cheating.
No.
Well, no, it's automated.
It's automated.
Yep.
Yeah.
Automating is not cheating.
Uh, and also if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough.
Uh, um, part of me, you know, honestly, uh, part of me has been
like, am I cheating doing this?
I mean, this is actually part of like.
I'm going, no, because guess what?
If I'm not doing it, somebody else is going to be doing it.
Well, it's not, it's not just that, like I, I feel cheating is when you're
doing something that harms somebody.
Yeah.
Yes.
Like you're doing something like, you know, if you're in
a bodybuilding and you're all taking steroids, is it cheating?
No, but if you're in a natural bodybuilding competition and someone's
taking steroids, then may, uh, maybe.
Yes.
Uh, and in this case, we're doing this that just helps
us help the customer better.
Right.
So if you're doing that, how is that cheating?
It's, it's not, it's just
the, it is just the internal feeling.
I'm going like this.
Normally it's the old thing.
Well, this would normally take me a week to do.
I just did it in five minutes.
Right.
Yeah.
In that like, is this good enough?
There, there are things that I do is like, and then I say like,
does it pass the grandma test?
Like if I look at, can I look at my grandma in, in the
eyes and be happy about it?
Yeah.
I, I'll be happy about doing that, even if it's too, too, uh, too good to be true.
And I feel like a lot of people have that same issue with, uh.
Finances.
Right?
When I first switched from engineering into sales, my wife was so worried
about me that I got a significant pay raise that she thought it was cheating.
She quickly got over that.
Uh, I'm sure she did.
Yeah.
But, but yeah, I feel like we, we sabotage ourselves.
Uh, there a little bit, uh.
Yeah, we do.
And, and you're absolutely right.
This is, this is actually about personal bias, right?
And, and our own cognitive bias, right?
And it's, you know, this, the limiting factor in, in all
of this is ourselves, right?
And, um, and back to your grandma test, I couldn't agree more with you because
I've gotta wake up in the morning, every morning knowing that I'm doing
everything ethically and responsibly.
Speaking of doing everything, I mean, you're, uh, looking at your
LinkedIn, you're the Chief Product Manager and go to market officer.
Yeah.
Officer and go to market.
Yep.
Uh, and you're doing se stuff, I'm assuming you're also doing sales stuff.
Absolutely.
Yep.
How do you manage, like you mentioned you use ai, it could help
you manage your time, but also.
You're doing so many different things.
How do you actually prioritize what's so important?
So I, I,
I do everything in p zeros through P four.
So I've got my P zeros, P ones, P twos, P threes, right.
My p zeros right now are, are, are product and revenue.
Right.
And they're intertwined and, um, and, and selling our offers.
So that's, um, that's where my time is spent.
And
can, can we, can we
pause
there?
Sure.
Um.
Like P zero, you have building product and selling and revenues selling.
Yep.
I mean, they work together, but they also are against each other.
If you're spending time selling, you're not spending
time producting and vice versa.
So I'm spending at least, I'm, I'm dedicating at least.
Two, if not four hours a day on product.
Okay.
And the rest of my time is on selling.
So for example, when I get off, I mean I've spent all morning on
the phone with customers and this afternoon, once I'm done with you,
I'm working all afternoon on product.
That's how I do it.
I just dedicate the time and break it out.
So I organized, you know, my time around the cust, your government customer
meetings and when they can meet.
And then I, I then I block out the time to work on product.
That's how I'm doing it.
Is this considered selling right now?
The, right now what we're doing here?
Yeah.
Everything's considered selling, right?
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm selling myself.
I'm selling what my company does, and I'm selling what we do for our customers.
Of course, I'm selling right now.
I'm always selling, man.
Yeah.
I I'm just trying to see if it, where it fits, but yeah,
obviously, and it's the same way
in product, right?
Because I start off with the customer problem, right?
And it's more than just a problem.
It's a migraine.
What is the migraine we're solving from and.
I'm a process engineer when it comes down to it, right?
So I literally sit in process maps and creating process maps about how you map,
how, how you map out the entire customer experience in using the product, right?
And then drive into from that into, you know, the requirements
and building out the PRDs.
And honestly, we're, um.
So I've got a great director of product management who sits under
me, and he, he runs with the PRDs, um, all day, every day, right?
So he take, so we follow the Amazon way and actually writing everything down.
So we do six pagers and write everything down.
We have business narratives.
Um, we're really prescrip.
Everybody gets a chance to get their feedback and input.
So we're very, very organized about how we.
Actually go about building products.
So these aren't, this isn't Philip Swan's whim of the day.
Uh, this is about solving, um, um, real customer pro, you
know, real customer migraines.
So for those who don't know, what are PRDs?
PR P ds are product requirement documents.
And so it's taking what understanding of the customer migraine and
putting it in the form that you can actually build a product around it.
So this is the document that goes into engineering that they will actually
go and build your product for.
So in support, we used to have access to the PRDs and they helped us a lot
'cause uh, yeah, we always got tickets about what's supported, what's not.
That way I didn't have to go to engineering to see what's
supported, that what's not.
That's right.
Uh, so do you have any sales or ses working with you as well?
Yes, we do.
So we're actually bringing them on board, uh, as we speak.
So, uh, it's no longer just me right now, it's founder led.
Right.
And we're rapidly moving away from founder led.
We know I will always be selling, my partners will always be selling.
We are, uh, I'm starting up our.
Or the initial sales team actually in October.
Okay.
How did you make the decision to bring on a sales team?
Because now you're giving up control.
It.
It is.
It was back to your point of managing my time.
At what point do I get suffocated and I can't do both jobs?
And I'm at that point, right?
So, um, I need, I need somebody to upload, and our plan is
to scale very, very quickly.
So I, we need help, but again, we can leverage AI seeing as we are an AI company
to help us get through the scaling without having to hire a whole bunch of people.
So,
right.
We do not plan to be more than a hundred people in our
company and probably a lot less.
So the people we're hiring, the quality has to be there, number one, right?
So it's not just about somebody who logs a mirror, it's actually gotta be super
expert at what they do and, um, and are deeply passionate in the space that
we're working in so that, um, um, you know, they can deliver, they can deliver
value to our customers from day one.
And any ses or pre-sales as part of that.
Well, yeah,
so I'm hiring both.
Uh, my initial as a pre-sales guy and a sales guy, and they're both
men unfortunately right now, that are lead candidates for the roles.
But trying desperately to find women, uh, to fill that role is hard.
Um, and you know, it's gotta be people who are prepared to work hard.
Um, because we are all working hard, we're working seven days, literally
seven days a week right now, uh, because things are moving so quickly.
Um, and, you know, um.
The number of hours are crazy.
So this is not a job for the faint of heart, right?
Yeah.
This is some, this is, this is a job you've gotta be passionate about.
It's not a job.
It's gotta be a passion.
And it's, you know, and you know, the drive for this company is to, is success.
So everybody will share in that success and, um, and, and hopefully
make, uh, some people a bunch of money, uh, in the process.
Many companies, they hire like 10 salespeople before
they hire their first se.
Why did you decide to hire a pair?
Because having a team, knowing myself, and when I, so when I switched out from
being an engineer into a sales engineer being teamed with a sales person, I
was actually teamed with four of them.
Okay.
Uh, was, um, was, you know, was incredibly valuable for them.
What wasn't so valuable for me was, is that I was making these
salespeople a whole bunch of money and, um, and I wasn't.
Which is why I insisted on me becoming a salesperson.
And in the first year, guess what?
I became the global sales, you know, you know, salesperson of
the Year award in my first year.
Why?
Because I knew what the hell I was selling, and I knew who the
hell I was selling to, um, and, and delivering those outcomes.
So it was, it was a no brainer for me, and I've just repeated
that throughout my entire career.
It's about understanding your customer.
I call it grokking your customer.
All right.
Um, so how are you gonna enable that team?
Like that's more work for you as well.
Uh, so the, the good, you know, the key, the key thing about enabling those
teams is that we can use AI to create all the, uh, and we already have it.
Most of the content, because I've already created, I created it for myself.
Um, most, most of the content and the collateral out there.
Um, and, you know, enable, you know, enabling them is just like here, you know?
We are vertical agnostic, like says like here, here are the types of
companies that we think we should go for.
And having them leverage our tools to find them not only the companies, but
the people within the companies that we need to be talking to, to have the
initial discovery discussions with.
That's so funny.
Like you would basically demo how you found them.
Mm-hmm.
To show them how they can find their own customer.
Yep.
Your own dog food.
Yep.
Yeah.
I've worked with companies where they sell equipment to help testing,
but they don't use that equipment themselves or that software themselves.
I'm like, how do you that don't use the
product yourself.
How can you sell it?
Their objection was, it's too expensive.
I'm like, if it's too expensive for you, who is it not expensive for?
So that, that, that pissed me off.
Yeah, I bet.
So Philip, we're, we're coming to the end of our time.
Is there a question you were hoping I was gonna ask you but I did not.
Well.
I think it, I think it really drives back into what's the future
for sales and sales engineering.
Right.
You know, in, in the advent of this, and I, it doesn't go
away, it's the short answer.
Yeah.
What becomes, what I think the, the, the real question is,
is that how do you, are you.
It's self-questioning yourself.
Am I deeply passionate about being an se?
Am I deeply passionate about being a salesperson?
What future do I want to create for myself?
So, and how can AI help me responsibly be the better me, right.
And be a more efficient me.
You know, if you do that, your job is not gonna get eliminated.
You're not gonna get replaced by a robot.
Yeah.
Well, what I like about it as well is that.
There are things about when you ask like, are you gonna be passionate
about sales, engineering, or, or sales?
So I always shifted outta sales, engineering into sales, and I feel
like the things that I hate about sales could easily be solved with ai.
We just don't have that solution yet.
That's right.
I guess so.
Maybe as a sales person,
we want, we love talking to people, right?
Even if we're introverts and the engineers like you and I are, we still love, I
still love talking to customers every day.
Yep.
That's, well, they're, well, I guess they, they're the reason I make a living, so.
Exactly.
Alright, uh, Phillip, thank you so much for your time.
Uh, and I look forward to hearing more about your solutions.
Awesome Ram.
Appreciate it for sales engineering.
Uh, stick around for a second after we, we stop the recording.
Go do.
But, uh, appreciate, appreciate it.
And that's it.
We're done.
Curious, where do you see AI taking us?
As, uh, a people, as sales and professionals, se
professionals, is it helping?
Is it making things worse?
There's research how creativity drops when you use ai.
There's research about how great it is.
So where do you stand on the AI chasm if there is such a thing?
Let me know in the comments below.
And with that, I'm signing off.