Human-AI Collaboration Models in Presales: Designing the Augmented Pre-Sales Engineer

Abstract

As explained in this paper, we present the concept of the so-called Augmented Pre-Sales Engineer where the role of AI would be to augment rather than replace a human in enterprise presales jobs. It suggests three aspects to organize presales work, according to cognitive load and AI-readiness, in parallel, sequential, and shared-control models. The paper also illustrates that concern by pitting a case study at a medium-size SaaS company and reports a decrease in turnaround time associated with the receipt of an RFP by 30 percent and an increase in solution engineer satisfaction. They find that trust, feedback loops, and ethical integration are among the important applications enabling human AI synergy. The present work proposes a tractable, well-organized roadmap to adopt AI and bring it to sales practices involving high-level tasks without reducing human expertise.