The SE Who Rewired the Team

Ava: Okay. One of my SEs built something over three weekends that has — genuinely — changed how the whole team works.

Nate: Built what?

Ava: Agent orchestration. He wired it into our CRM, every deal conversation we've ever had, our knowledge base, our skill repository. And the piece that got me — through an MCP server, it can actually configure our product. Spin up a tailored demo environment in about four minutes.

Nate: Four minutes. My SEs wait four MONTHS for InfoSec to sign off on anything that touches customer data.

Ava: Yeah. That's exactly why I wanted to talk about this today.

Ava: Welcome to Leading PreSales. I'm Ava.

Nate: And I'm Nate. One idea, five minutes. Today — what happens when one curious SE on your team rewires the whole job.

Nate: Alright, who is this person?

Ava: Marcus. Mid-level SE, strong technically, quietly obsessed with AI. No ask, no project plan — just built it on weekends and showed up one Monday with a working setup.

Nate: And what does it actually do? Walk me through a real moment.

Ava: Last Tuesday, I told it "build me a demo for the mid-market logistics prospect we have Thursday." Four minutes later — working demo environment, sample data matching their vertical, dashboards configured the way their ops team would actually set them up. Last year that's a full day of work for a senior SE.

Nate: And it doesn't make things up? Invent features, hallucinate customer detail?

Ava: It makes choices I might not make. But Marcus built guardrails — it pulls from our approved demo library first, only improvises at the edges. I still review before every customer call. The SE is never out of the loop.

Nate: What about the deal context side? The conversation history piece.

Ava: That's actually the bigger shift. Before every call, it compiles the full picture — all prior conversations, CRM state, the champion's recent activity, what we committed to last time. Two years ago that was three hours of my SE's Monday morning.

Nate: And now?

Ava: Thirty seconds.

Nate: So what are your SEs actually doing with that time?

Ava: More customer conversations — but it's not just quantity. They walk into calls sharper. They've seen the full arc of every conversation. Two years ago half my team brought piecemeal context to the table.

Nate: And when it's wrong — because it's wrong sometimes — how do your SEs catch it?

Ava: Two weeks ago it drafted a security answer using specs from a deprecated version. My SE caught it before it went out. That's the other shift — my team edits and catches now more than they create. Different muscle.

Nate: But here's the thing — that muscle still needs training.

Ava: It does. Which is why I still run critique sessions. And speaking of things I didn't expect... my team is starting to sound the same.

Nate: That's the part I was going to push on. Same demo flow, same discovery structure, same exec pitch.

Ava: Exactly. They're all pulling from the same patterns.

Nate: So you lose the individual voice.

Ava: Kind of. Or... maybe? My newest SE — two months in — her deal work LOOKS like someone with three years of experience shipped it. Is that a problem? Or is that progress?

Nate: Depends what you lose at the ceiling. The floor goes up — great. But the ceiling is still about reading a customer in real time. Catching the one thing the CFO didn't say. That's the part no agent touches.

Ava: Right. That's the part I'm coaching toward now. The floor is Marcus' setup. The ceiling is still us.

Nate: And that changes how you coach. Stop coaching the template — coach the judgment. You hire differently too. The "organized operator" SE, clean on follow-through and CRM hygiene — that profile just got cheap.

Ava: Way cheaper. I'm hiring for curiosity now. The SE who'll sit in silence and let a CFO fill it.

Nate: One concern I have to ask about — what if Marcus leaves?

Ava: I ask myself that every week. If he walks, the setup keeps running — but the rate of improvement slows way down. I'm pairing him with someone else on the team. It's a real risk I'm actively managing.

Nate: Can I be honest about something?

Ava: Please.

Nate: My org can't ship this right now. Security review alone is six months. By the time I roll something like Marcus' setup through a hundred SEs, you're already on version four. It's a real asymmetry, and it's the part keeping me up.

Ava: So what do you do?

Nate: I'm telling my managers — start with the context layer. Even without the action piece. Just aggregating deal context across conversations. That's a fight I can actually win this year.

Ava: Okay. The move.

Nate: Find your Marcus. Every team has one — the SE who's secretly obsessed with AI, building little scripts on the side. Give them oxygen. They'll build the future of your team faster than any vendor will ever sell it to you.

Ava: And as the leader — start thinking NOW about what the ceiling looks like. Because in eighteen months, everyone's floor will be the same.

Nate: I'm Nate.

Ava: And I'm Ava. See you next episode!