Meet Virtual SE: Force Multiply your Technical Pre-Sales

Systems Engineers (SEs) play a critical role in the pre and post-sales process for any SaaS or software company. These individuals bridge the gap between technical capabilities and customer needs and, more often than not, represent a primary reason why a prospective customer chooses to buy from a given SaaS company. But SEs are frequently over-worked and under resourced in high pressure and demanding sales organizations. 

Our team here at Powered_by has worked with some of the best SEs in the history of software sales. We deeply respect their roles and empathize with the demanding environments in which they operate. With a mission to lessen the daily burden on busy SE teams, Powered_by is announcing our newest AI agent solution: Virtual SE. 

Blending our voice & email agent solutions, a Virtual SE can support sales reps in pre-sales activities without needing a human engineer present. Trained on your company’s vast product knowledge and docs, this AI agent is able to participate in live technical discussions and sales meetings when a human one is otherwise unavailable. During a sales meeting over Zoom or Teams, for example, Virtual SE agent can join the meeting, participate in the conversation in real-time, and detect when a detailed technical explanation or answer is needed. It can then speak with a remarkably human-like voice to provide information or clarification just as a human SE would.

The goal is that Virtual SE should never replace a human pre-sales engineer. But it should extend their reach and omnipresence. Re-deploy your human SEs to other higher value tasks or on-site customer POCs and let the virtual one support your sales reps in intro meetings and technical qualification discussions. 

Don’t believe us? Allow us to explain it all:

How Does a it Actually Work?

Virtual SE is designed to integrate smoothly with common virtual meeting platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, & Microsoft Teams, It can also log technical notes and meeting summaries in Hubspot or Salesforce. Here’s how it works:

Joining a Customer Meeting: The AI agent can be added to a sales  meeting just like inviting a regular SE and joins as a virtual attendee using the Powered_by’s API. For example, in Zoom or Microsoft Teams, the Virtual AI agent would appear just like other meeting tools you likely already use, like Gong or Otter.ai.

Voice Responses with Human-like Cadence: The agent’s answers are delivered via a text-to-speech system that is architected to sound natural, professional, and most of all, human as possible. It speaks with proper intonation, pacing, pauses, and common filler words. For example, if a customer asks about integration capabilities, the AI would respond in a calm, explanatory tone, pausing briefly to let the information sink in. The cadence is important to avoid sounding like a monotone machine.

Detecting Technical Questions: One of the agent’s core capabilities is to recognize when a participant asks a technical question or expresses a concern that needs an SE’s insight. The AI uses natural language processing to detect question phrasing, like “How does…?” or “Can your product…?” and it’s context. For example, if the prospect starts talking about encryption or API integration, that’s a cue for the agent to quickly formulates a technical answer.

Real-time Note-taking: As the meeting progresses, Virtual SE is continuously transcribing and analyzing the dialogue. It identifies speakers and notes important details. The agent doesn’t just passively transcribe; it intelligently captures key points, such as product requirements, feature requests, or objections raised by the prospect. 

CRM Updates & Logging: It can update CRM records or a Slack channel automatically after and even during the sales meeting. As it recognizes important details, it can log these as notes under the relevant lead or opportunity fields in HubSpot or Salesforce. For instance, if the prospect says “We’d need the product to deploy in our AWS instance,” the agent might add a note: “Client requires AWS private cloud support.” Virtual SE ensures that CRM data is instantly updated and technically accurate.

From Zoom to Teams, and into your CRM, it’s a connected process. The sales team can focus on the human side of selling, while the AI handles the note-taking and on-demand technical explanations.

What are the Benefits?

Pre-sales engineers within the most well-funded SaaS companies are a scarce resource. Many times, sales reps must jockey to get available time on a given SE’s schedule in light of the many customer meetings and tasks for which he or she is already assigned. With Virtual SE, you can force-multiply your SE team coverage and re-allocate your precious human SE resources to the most high value-sales activities. The benefits of a AI SE include: 

1. Cost savings: Hiring and maintaining a skilled SE team is expensive. A sales engineer’s median annual salary is often one of the more costly budget line items in an operational plan. By contrast, Virtual SE can be deployed to unlimited meetings with minimal incremental expense. For example, instead of needing an SE for every sales rep or every call, a few human SEs can focus on complex deals while the AI agent handles intro or customer discovery calls. Essentially, the Virtual SE can do the work of many SEs simultaneously at a predictable cost, delivering a high return on investment.

1. Scalability and meeting coverage: Human SEs can only join one meeting at a time and are often double-booked in busy sales cycles. Virtual SE, however, can be deployed across many concurrent calls. This scales your technical expertise across the entire sales organization. If five demos are happening at 10AM on a Thursday, you don’t need five separate human SEs; the AI agent attends all five. This ensures no sales rep is left unsupported due to scheduling conflicts. Scaling also helps during peak demand like a big conference or marketing push that drives lots of sales calls. Virtual SE is available 24/7, which is useful for global teams scheduling calls in different time zones.

3. Consistency in technical messaging: Virtual SE will deliver a consistent narrative aligned with your company’s approved messaging every time. It draws from a single, centrally updated knowledge base that you provide. This means prospects hear the same accurate information regardless of which sales rep or region they are in. The agent also stays up-to-date like when your product is updated or messaging is refined. 

4. Efficiency and productivity: Beyond cost and coverage, Virtual SE boosts the productivity of the sales team. Sales reps can focus on relationship-building and understanding customer needs, without pausing to look up answers or schedule a follow-up for unanswered questions. The AI agent shortens sales cycles by providing information immediately. It also captures all that meeting information which can be searched later.

5. Accessible expertise for every rep: Not every sales team member is deeply technical, especially in startups or fast-growing SaaS firms. An AI-driven SE means even a non-technical salesperson can confidently handle a highly technical customer call. They have a “virtual expert” who provides technical coverage on demand. This flattens the learning curve for new reps and ensures that technical know-how is not a bottleneck in any deal.

In short, Virtual SE offers cost efficiency, scalability, consistency, and productivity gains. It augments the sales force so that every meeting is fully supported technically, without the traditional constraints of human SE availability.

SaaS Vertical Use Cases

Let’s consider a few scenarios in different vertical SaaS domains. In each case, the Virtual SE would be trained on your specific industry domain and respond with expert information in real-time:

Cybersecurity Vendors: Imagine a pre-sales call for a cybersecurity software company that offers a cloud security platform. The prospect’s security team is on the call and asks, “How do you handle data encryption and threat detection?” Virtual SE detects this technical question and immediately responds. It might say, in a confident voice: “Our solution uses AES-256 encryption for all data at rest and TLS 1.3 for data in transit, ensuring end-to-end protection. For threat detection, we employ a multi-layered approach: a combination of signature-based detection updated daily.” The AI agent provides this answer with the same level of detail a security engineer would, possibly even referencing compliance standards like SOC2 encryption or OWASP guidelines.

AI Vendors: Now consider an AI company that offers LLM model development and deployment products. In a demo call, the potential customer may asks, “How does your platform handle model training capabilities in production?” The Virtual SE then provides a succinctly instant answer: “For model training, our platform can automatically scale across a cluster of GPUs or TPUs. You can bring your own model in TensorFlow or PyTorch.” If the prospect asks about a niche detail, say “Can we do incremental model retraining with new data?”, the AI SE can confirm that capability and perhaps describe the pipeline for that.

Cloud Computing Vendors: Consider a cloud SaaS provider where, in a sales meeting, the client’s IT architect asks, “Does your solution support multi-cloud deployments?” The AI agent would reply with specifics: “Yes, our platform is designed for multi-cloud. It allows you to manage resources across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud from a single console.” The AI agent can easily answer questions like “How do you integrate with our on-prem systems?” or “What about latency between cloud regions?” The agent in turn would provide architectural details describing the vendor’s hybrid cloud connector or use of a global CDN to minimize latency.

In each of these vertical use cases, Virtual SE adapts to any product domain’s jargon and depth. The key is that it responds immediately, in the flow of conversation. Prospects get their answers on the spot, which keeps the meeting momentum strong and helps build trust in the pre-sales process.

Privacy & Compliance Considerations

Its important to note that deploying an AI agent in pre-sales meetings requires careful attention to ethics, accuracy, and regulatory compliance. Powered_by has implemented several guardrails and policies to ensure the Virtual SE behaves responsibly and meets all privacy & security mandates. Powered_by’s AI agents are trained on your unique knowledge base from approved documentation and messaging.

The AI agent’s behavior is also aligned with your company’s sales and communication policies. It will only share information that is allowed; avoiding any confidential roadmap details or comparisons that aren’t permitted. Powered_by has also built the Virtual SE service to meet enterprise security and compliance standards from the ground up with SOC 2 Type II certifications and GDPR compliance built into its model & training. 

Lastly, companies must decide whether to disclose the AI nature of the AI SE to meeting participants. It can be tempting to present it as just another team member, but transparency is usually the best practice. Powered_by encourages a policy where either the AI introduces itself or the sales rep clarifies that some answers might come from their AI assistant. This honesty helps maintain trust and your customers should never feel deceived into thinking a machine’s answer is coming from a human. 

Ready to Evaluate Virtual SE?

Virtual system engineers represent a transformative opportunity for SaaS sales organizations, addressing resource constraints and scalability issues while maintaining high-quality technical support. By leveraging Powered_by's advanced NLP, LLMs, and TTS, these agents can join meetings, understand conversations, and provide real-time answers, offering cost savings, consistency, and valuable insights.

Contact our team to schedule a personalized demo of the solution. In a 30-min meeting, we can show you Virtual SE in action in a mock customer Zoom call. This one-on-one demo will let you experience the technology firsthand and ask any questions specific to your industry or product domain.

Book a Free Consultation Meeting & Demo HERE.