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The secret sauce to your sales success? It's what happens before the sale. It's the pre-sales. And it's more than demo automation. It's the work that goes on to connect technology and people in a really thoughtful way. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, pre-work centered around the human that makes the dream work, but you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what you already do best—combining your technical skills with your strategic insights. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to grow revenue. You're not just preparing for the sale—you're unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales engineers who make a difference, their challenges, their successes, and the human connections that drive us all, one solution at a time.
Taylor Bukowski [00:00:00]:
It's not taking your job. I want to double down on that. AI is not taking your job. But the SE who does know how to use this technology might, right? So you need to be paying attention. You need to get ahead of this. Go tell your manager. Don't get left behind. This is such an important time right now.
Narrator [00:00:19]:
You're listening to The Unexpected Lever, your partner in growing revenue by doing what you already do best, combining your technical skills with your strategic insights. This episode was taken from a LinkedIn Live series about sales engineering with our CEO Matt Darrow. We hope you enjoy.
Matt Darrow [00:02:01]:
All right, Taylor. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Matt Darrow, CEO and co-founder of Vivun. And I started Vivun after a career in global sales engineering, where I ran those teams at private and publicly traded companies. And I'm here today with Taylor, who you just learned a little bit about, one of Vivun's senior sales engineers.
Matt Darrow [00:02:37]:
So, Taylor, you did the warmup questions. That's fine. But how about a little bit more background about yourself and specifically the SE role? That's going to give us a lot of context for today's discussion.
Taylor Bukowski [00:02:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. So, as I mentioned, I'm based in the Boston area. I'm a senior SE here at Vivun, and I've only been in the role for about six years. And I say only because I get to talk to other people in the field every day. And these people have been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years sometimes. So I still feel like it's new. I still feel like I'm learning new things. Prior to being an SE, I was actually on the SalesOps side of the house, so I was a Salesforce admin.
Taylor Bukowski [00:03:15]:
And that's when I discovered I really liked solutioning. I really liked problem solving, being creative. And that's what I love so much about being an SE. No day is the same. Every single day is different. You have different things in front of you, different people you get to work with. I think it's a really exciting field to be in.
Matt Darrow [00:03:31]:
Also, you're sort of at this magical moment in time and career too, because six years in, you've seen a whole heck of a lot. You worked with companies, different shapes and sizes across all these different industries, but you also still have enough of a fresh perspective where, you know, it's not. I've done the same things for multiple decades along the way. That's why I think you're so perfect for today's discussion. And today's discussion, we're going to talk about leveraging AI as a teammate in the SE role. So if you are in sales or pre-sales and you're looking to keep up with AI's impact on your world, you are in the right place. Taylor. Okay.
Matt Darrow [00:04:08]:
You've been an early adopter for all things AI, a lot of it, because of your role as an se. And so I'm curious to first question is, how has your approach to Gen AI evolved over the last, say, last year?
Taylor Bukowski [00:04:23]:
It's evolved a lot. Right? The technology is moving so quickly, so things are changing every day. And I think when I first started hearing about Gen AI, I only started dipping my toes in. It was really narrow. Right. I started with ChatGPT, for example, and was doing like text edits, like make this email sound better. Right. Or help me with the slide deck.
Taylor Bukowski [00:04:45]:
Just very kind of small use cases. And then I kind of got more into the world of prompt engineering and understanding how important that was as an SE skillset and just with where we're going. And ultimately that kind of led into hearing about us developing our own AI SE internally. And I just got so many ideas about what that would look like, how I could use it, the different use cases. And for me, it really just kind of opened up my world of Gen AI once I realized all the different things I could do with it.
Matt Darrow [00:05:17]:
Well, and so much of the promise and the premise of Gen AI is to help us do the work that we do as humans. So fundamentally different than the SaaS software applications we've all been using for decades. How about your perception of AI? How has that changed over the last year? Because, you know, people are really across the spectrum on how they're sort of embracing this and how they feel it might sort of change their job or change what they do.
Taylor Bukowski [00:05:41]:
It's definitely a polarizing topic, I should say, right? Some people are all in and some people are like, ooh, stay away from it. And I think it's also one of those buzzwords for a while where everybody kind of said, we have AI, it's everywhere. Where now we're actually seeing that change. Now we're seeing real tools, real things come onto the market and it's hard not to kind of look around and be like, am I next? Is AI coming to take my job? Like, that's a natural fear, you know, I understand. But I think for me, I've approached it the way SEs approach everything, with curiosity and figuring out how I can break it. I really wanted to see how I could use the tools to my advantage. Once I started exploring, I really used it to take things off my plate, give me a little bit more independence, my deals, more strategy, and really like add a level of polish to my work. Right.
Taylor Bukowski [00:06:29]:
Again, talking about those text edits, those small use cases I kind of started with really kind of allowed me to hone in on my craft and also gave me a lot more time to focus on like the relationship-building aspect. I feel like that's a part of my job that I'm very good at, hopefully. And so when you're really busy and there's admin burdens and there's all these other pieces to do that gets really difficult. So I've been able to get a lot of time back to really build those relationships and do that customer-facing, one-on-one work in my deals that really ends up making a difference.
Matt Darrow [00:07:02]:
Well, I like what you said about using it as an advantage because you talked about the polarizing concepts of a lot of people saying, wow, this is coming from my job. It's sort of a fox in the hen house. I don't want anything about this. But there is some degree of truth to the fact that AI is here to help us do the work that we do as humans. That naturally leads to those questions. And back in the summertime where we published this very, very first state of sales engineering report that was focused on AI and about 40% of respondents, these were over 500 SE professionals, we asked them if they thought that AI could completely take their job. And 40% actually agreed, which actually surprised me too, because this was even like maybe four or five months ago. What's your perspective on that answer?
Taylor Bukowski [00:07:47]:
No, No, I do not. Like I said, you know, the natural fear. We're all looking around, we're all like looking at how AI is automating things, but people like doing business with people. Right. Sales, there's this really human aspect to it. And honestly, I think Gen AI has just made me better at my job. Right. As I mentioned, it's saving me time, it's allowing me to do the things that make me more strategic.
Taylor Bukowski [00:08:12]:
So I don't see it coming for our jobs anytime soon. But I will say the SE who knows how to leverage these tools could come for your job. So it's definitely really important for myself and everybody else out there to really get ahead of the curve on this stuff. Because it's coming, it's here, it's here to stay.
Matt Darrow [00:08:31]:
Yeah. Personally, you're staying ahead in unique ways. Not just because of your roles in SE, being curious and always exploring technology, but you're also one of the very, very first people to get to work with an AI SE. And that's a little bit of a unique position to be in because you're at Vivun and we've brought ava, the first AI SE to market this year. You've been such a core part of that process, not only through the build and the design and the rollout and everything else and the feedback. What's that been like?
Taylor Bukowski [00:08:58]:
It's been incredible. Like we've been saying, the technology is just moving so fast. So for us, our AI SE agent, Ava, is literally getting smarter every day. So I feel like every time I open my computer, every time I try something new, there's new things I'm discovering. So it's been really fun to kind of watch that evolve, see all these use cases and see other people use it in ways that I hadn't really expected. And I really kind of see it more as a teammate. I know that sounds silly, but it really, truly feels like a teammate when everybody's doing these big, like, you know, cuts and riffs and things that happen or do more with less. Like we're not getting more headcount, whatever it is.
Taylor Bukowski [00:09:38]:
This was a full person add to our team. This literally gave us another teammate, another person we could use for solutioning, we could use for our deals, we could use for Q&A. Whatever it was, it really brought more powerhouse to our team, I would say. And because I think Ava, our AI agent, has this like, concept of pre-sales and technical selling. It was all within my own context. So everything I was getting back from her, I didn't need to like massage or go back and say, hey, can you say this in another way? Hey, this was wrong, actually, can you correct this? Which you often have to do in those other tools. It was really cool. And one example actually I have is we use Gong internally.
Taylor Bukowski [00:10:19]:
We love Gong. Our sales team uses it. And when you finish a Gong call, if you guys are familiar with it, you get that nice little summary, right? Like kind of who was on the call, what was talked about, and then maybe like next steps. Great, very helpful. But what Ava does is in our platform, she actually takes that transcript. She's going to look at it and look at that information that's helpful to her. But then she is going to reorganize it in the context of technical selling. So she is going to pull out the highlights.
Taylor Bukowski [00:10:46]:
She is going to understand what is the most important for this deal at this point in time. And it's not like the person needs to say on that, like, hey, Taylor, here's my top five use cases. Yeah, if you do that gong, anybody can pick those up, list them out for you. Great. But that usually doesn't happen, Right? So with Ava, she's able to actually parse through those things, understand what are use cases, what are pain points, what are business objectives, and really bring that to the forefront for me. So it's been really exciting on my end.
Matt Darrow [00:11:17]:
Well, and also, if only sales was as easy as getting on the phone with somebody and say, well, what keeps you up at night? How much money do you have to spend? Well then great, here's an order form. There's so much more nuance behind it and even that nuance of like working with AI as you're sort of seeing this as working with a teammate, which is very different than how sort of over the last 10, 20 years we've all been used to working with SaaS software in B2B, which is it's not like working with a teammate. Those are very much systems to help you organize your world to get your work done versus hey, these teammates, to your point, these are like full headcount ads that are supercharging everything that you do. What are some of the most interesting use cases that you're leveraging Ava for?
Taylor Bukowski [00:12:03]:
Absolutely. So I'm going to give you my top five use cases that I've been using for thus far. And as I mentioned as a caveat, I'm coming up with new stuff every day. Like we're finding new ways to use it. But definitely the first one should be, no surprise, demo scripts. Right? So I mentioned that was kind of my first little dip into the Gen AI world, kind of helping me edit my demos, my different scripting, but it was really more like change this paragraph or rewrite this, you know, sentence. But with Ava, she could actually not only provide the entire demo script output, but she's going to do it in the context of not only technical selling, but my style. So I definitely like the Tel Showtel, like demo to win, if folks are familiar with that.
Taylor Bukowski [00:12:48]:
So because she knows that about me, because we have that information, she actually will present the demo script already in Tel ShowTel. So it's not just about kind of oh, how do you want it presented? It's also so specific to the users, which I think is really interesting because everybody can kind of get their own flavor. So that was definitely a big one that I've used. Another one is solutioning, right? So much about what we do in SEs is really just building this broad solution. How does your customers pain points, business objectives, you know, all those things fit into our platform, our features, how do we tie those things together? And that's something that Ava can actually do as well. So she provides a physical solution document. And the coolest thing is anytime there's new information or a new call or anything that happens, it's constantly updating that document. So it's growing and learning with my deal over time.
Taylor Bukowski [00:13:44]:
And it's just such a valuable asset, I think, just to organize my thoughts, understand where we're at. I like to think I'm pretty good at my job, but sometimes like things slip through the cracks, right. Or I can't be everywhere at once. But with Ava, it really allows me to have that full breadth of what's going on in a deal and that solutioning is such a big part of it. Another piece is definitely, you know, I mentioned Ava can be there when I'm not in the room. So it's learning when you're not in the room, right? So you can drop into any deal with context. So whether you're like an overlay, you know, maybe who's somebody who's just coming in to demo a certain part of your project or maybe you're covering. I just had to cover for one of my coworkers a couple of weeks ago when he was out on maternity lead and I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going to get caught up on all the stuff they've already done, all the notes they've taken, all the meetings, all these things.
Taylor Bukowski [00:14:33]:
It's been really cool to be able to leverage Ava to have that instant grounding in where we're at in the deal. What's happened so far, what's been solutioned, that's been really, really huge for me. And then definitely my last two are. One is a customer handoff and this is definitely something that I talk to people about every single day in all of my discovery calls and lots of my conversations. This is a consistent pain point for folks, right? Somebody like myself, you know, getting all of the knowledge, all of the things that I have learned over the past sometimes year sales cycles and transferring that to your post-sale team, it's really painful, it's difficult. There's not a great way to do it and talk about stuff like slipping through the cracks. It can be painful. So with Ava, I've been able to like drive that continuity, make sure that customers are hearing us so that once it gets to that post-sales side of the house and our technical account managers, they already know everything, right? Like they're verse, they know what we solution, when we solution, what they liked, what they didn't, what were the pain points.
Taylor Bukowski [00:15:39]:
They have this full running, you know, synthesis of sometimes a year's worth of conversations, right? So they can jump in and just continue in with the customer. And I think that's been so huge for us here, building that relationship, having that continuity really so our customers understand we're hearing you, we're not just passing you off to another team and see you later. We're really keeping that experience good for the customers. And the last one is definitely another one in the SE world where you always have this tribal knowledge, right? So like, if there's a question that comes up, who do you think the first people that they're going to ask about it is? It's always going to go to the SEs, right? Whether it's about your product or a prospect or whatever it was, there's always this tribal knowledge that ends up living with certain folks on the SE team. So, you know, maybe my coworker is an expert in certain section, I'm an expert in another, and there's not always a good way of sharing that across the team. But now that I have access to kind of all of my team's knowledge, in addition to everything that Ava's learned, it's really allowing me to have that where it's spreading that tribal knowledge. And not just for my team, for anybody in go to market that wants access to this, wants to be able to engage with that information. They now get the power of some of your best SEs and their hidden knowledge that lives deep in their brain that nobody else knew until now.
Taylor Bukowski [00:17:01]:
Now having a system where that's all in one place has been really awesome.
Matt Darrow [00:17:05]:
Thanks for sharing the five, Taylor. Because they're, they're like perfectly specific, too, around those different use cases that when I think about even when I was an SE or leading SE teams, I mean those were all enormous amounts of time, whether or not it was prepping demos and building scripts, building solutions. I love your customer handoff story. Why that one is, I think timely and interesting too is I think so many pre and post-sales teams are combining now. And you used to see that with like the snowflakes and the data bricks of the world where they had such technical sales teams that they didn't really have CSMs. But you see that now even with the company that you and I used to be at at Zora, right? This is a billing company that makes a business application and they're merging these two worlds together too. And I think as more and more companies say, hey, there's sort of one domain of technical expertise like Ava's like the perfect companion for this. I've even found myself when deals close, being like asking, because I wasn't involved, like, what did we oversell? Like, what are the bear traps that we're going to go and walk into? Which is just a phenomenal thing to see now.
Matt Darrow [00:18:08]:
So all of that, you know, taking work off your plate and everything else, but that changing your day-to-day, and I have to Imagine that's making your day-to-day life as a individual SE better too.
Taylor Bukowski [00:18:18]:
No, absolutely. I mean, besides the very obvious like efficiency gains for sure and adding some polish to my work, I think it's really helped me in a few different areas. One is it definitely solves the problem of sort of the no-warning call, right? If you're an SE, this has happened to you, right? You've jumped on a call without any prep or hey, they need a demo tomorrow, sorry, no time for discovery. We can't really change those behaviors, right? Those things will happen every once in a while. We'd like them not to, but they do. And I would get really anxious, I'm not gonna lie to you, every time it would freak me out. I like to over-prepare, I like to be ready. But this really solves that problem because now I do have context, I do understand what's happened, what conversations took place, what was important to them, what I should be focused on.
Taylor Bukowski [00:19:09]:
So even if I didn't get that time for discovery or a, you know, a meaningful conversation with the prospect, I can now drop in and give an overview demo that actually resonates. It's not just like throwing up the product and here you go. I know what they care about, I know where to focus. That's been really huge and I think another aspect of it is definitely that self-service piece, right? So not only for myself, but my AEs and my counterparts and people I work with every day. Just the other day actually One of my AEs had a question about a deal, right? And so in our Slack channel, he asked actually what kind of software the customer was currently using. And I was like, you know what, I'm just going to go ask Ava. So I did. So I asked Ava, she gave me a response and then I copy and pasted it into our chat.
Taylor Bukowski [00:19:58]:
And I said, hey. I asked Ava and here's what she said and we were both obviously, you know, impressed she got the answer right and everything. And then his response, which I loved, was, wow, I had no idea I could do that. I'll do that next time. And he was like, maybe I should have done that instead of wasting a valuable SE resource. And he gave me a little smiley face. So I mean, he was joking around, but it was true. I mean, you know, it took me a couple of minutes to get that response over to him.
Taylor Bukowski [00:20:25]:
But in reality, if he can actually answer those questions himself, especially if I'm not available, if it's off hours or you're supporting people across time zones or whatever, it is. That self-service aspect has definitely given me time back because you're not the bottleneck, you're not the funnel anymore. For all the questions to go through, they now have another resource to go to first.
Matt Darrow [00:20:47]:
Yeah, that sort of like power and independence for the whole sales team. You could be a AE and SDR, a CSM. I mean, there's a reason why that relationship is so strained with ratios because if everybody could have 100% coverage, they would. But the economics just don't often make sense. But with an AI teammate now these things start to become possible. 100% coverage, everybody has availability. Right. This AI teammate obviously doesn't ever sleep and it never goes on vacation.
Matt Darrow [00:21:20]:
As you mentioned too. It's all about you, Taylor. Your life is better, you're changing your career. Okay, okay, how about, how about the customers you work with? How does this trickle down to what they experience?
Taylor Bukowski [00:21:30]:
In our case, that post-sale handoff. Right. So that was a big one I mentioned in terms of my use cases because the customer's really feeling heard. I can't tell you how many times where our technical account managers get on and they get all the information or whatever it was in the past. And then it feels like you're starting from scratch. It feels like you're repeating yourself after you just, you know, signed a contract, entered into an agreement, build this important relationship with the vendor and then you're like, okay, you didn't hear me. So I think from a customer perspective that's huge. We're able to carry all your needs over, have that continuity, develop that relationship.
Taylor Bukowski [00:22:05]:
And I think really it gives me the bandwidth to do that as well. So again, automating some of those things, taking those pieces off my plate that are really kind of like low-hanging fruit, allows me to spend more time with my customers, get that FaceTime, do those things that really impact my deal.
Matt Darrow [00:22:22]:
Yeah, switching gears a little bit. So earlier this year at Vivun, we got an enterprise-wide license for OpenAI and ChatGPT. And the whole reason for doing this was these tools are just going to become foundational for your success in any role in the future. And it's like, well, if you can't use Gmail or Outlook, right, you're not gonna be successful much like using these tools. And we rolled that out as well. And I find myself, I use ChatGPT all the time. I find myself going into first, even over Google often. And I know you do too, even while you have an AI teammate that's an agent that's specifically built for sort of doing a particular role.
Matt Darrow [00:23:00]:
Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, how is an agent different but then also like how are these tools complementary? Sort of the General Purpose LLM, like a ChatGPT, but then also like the specific agent that's built to do a core role within your business.
Taylor Bukowski [00:23:17]:
Like you mentioned, these tools are definitely complementary. And when we first started and we all got our ChatGPT licenses, I was really excited to try it out. But again, I think once I approached that platform, once I saw how it worked, once I started engaging, it really felt like a question-and-answer kind of chatbot thing. Just as I started, it was more like script edits, follow-up emails, just kind of very transactional, narrow use cases. It wasn't actually until I started using Ava and we started to see all the things she could do that I expanded that use, they started to push it more that I started to come up with new use cases and new ways to use the technology. And again, ChatGPT is great, you're going to get great results. But I think for me what was happening was sometimes I would get an answer that was just completely irrelevant, right? Because ChatGPT doesn't understand what I can do, right? I can tell it and I can teach it and I could do this stuff, but like it doesn't understand the life of se, which is already hard to explain to people anyway.
Taylor Bukowski [00:24:19]:
So I would get answers or responses that I'd have to massage. So it was like you try once and then you have to go again and then you try again and then you got to go again. And like it would end up taking almost as much time as it would take me to like Google it or do it myself or whatever. So I think the quality of the results just change so much with Ava. And again, because she's primed for technical selling, because she understands it, her responses can be so specific and she's proactive. Right. She's also going to come up with new things I should be doing and suggestions and all these different pieces. And I think for me like that was really the force multiplier.
Taylor Bukowski [00:24:57]:
ChatGPT is great and on an individual basis I think it's a great tool for folks to use. But I think looking at my team and across our go-to market that has access to Ava now, it's made a much bigger impact in that regard. Just because it understands our world, because it understands selling, because it has these things in mind.
Matt Darrow [00:25:16]:
Awesome. Thanks for the context there too Taylor, on how you're using these things complementary and Some of the differences, just a little bit of a wrap up covered a lot of ground today. What's the one thing the audience remembers? What's the takeaway? What do you want to leave them with?
Taylor Bukowski [00:25:29]:
I think the biggest one I do have to say is it's not taking your job. I want to double down on that is not taking your job. But the SE who does know how to use this technology might, right? So you need to be paying attention. You need to get ahead of this. Go tell your manager, don't get left behind. This is such an important time right now. And don't wait for it to be perfect to start using it. Get in there, play around, push the use cases, push the boundaries like we always do as ses.
Taylor Bukowski [00:26:00]:
But really do make sure that you're paying attention, that you're getting your team involved because it's here to stay. It's not going anywhere and you could get left behind.
Matt Darrow [00:26:10]:
Thank you, Taylor. Thank you. The audience. As you guys probably feel it at Vivun, we know AI is changing B2B selling for good in so many ways. That's why Taylor and the rest of our team are working to bring a lot of these new innovations to market so you can build your sales team of the future. That's what this is all about. And if you like this discussion, you want to engage more, hit us on the website, hit us on LinkedIn, follow our page on LinkedIn and you can also subscribe to Vivun's podcast, The Unexpected Lever on YouTube, Spotify and Apple and look forward to seeing you guys next time. Thanks again, Taylor.
Narrator [00:26:43]:
For additional resources, check out vivun.com and be sure to check out V5, our five-minute soapbox series on YouTube. If there's a V5 you'd like us to talk about longer, let us know by messaging me Jarod Greene on LinkedIn.