Brandon Chew · Singapore
Pre-sales Solutions Architect in AI. Nobody grows up wanting to be one. Explained via 60kg bars, koyok, and demo monkeys.
told as a scrolling story →The one-liner
Half engineer, half translator, full-time matchmaker between what a product does and what a customer actually needs.
Identity crisis
Keyword: pre-sales. Trap: one famous AI company flips it: "solution engineer" = pre-sales, "solution architect" = post-sales. Read the JD.
The job, in six acts
Find the customer's real pain; price it in hours and dollars, not vibes.
Story built on their pain: solution, not feature tour. Years to learn.
Demo says "it can work." PoC proves it: their data, their security, their environment.
Requirements become architecture post-sales can actually deliver. Nobody inherits fiction.
One of the most irritating things ever invented. Good news: AI helps fill them. Division of labour, settled.
The customer's advocate in-house, lobbying product teams for the roadmap the market actually wants.
And through all six: trust. Win it across the table, win the sale. Trust is the product before the product.
Expectation management 101
"They asked to deadlift 200kg on day one.
I handed them the 60kg bar."
First you find out where the ask is coming from. Sometimes the real job is moving a piano, and you don't need a deadlift at all. Then: what's solid today, what's honestly on the roadmap.
The golden rule
Koyok = snake oil. Over-promise and the blame lands on post-sales, not me. And post-sales will come find me.
I hand over like a surgeon to the ward: clean, honest, zero surprises.
Plot twist
Wedding plans, to your parents? Selling.
New drink, for the same-order friend? Selling.
One more episode of the favourite show, at 1am? Selling.
Not an alien skill. I just get paid to stay laser-focused on it.
Myth-busting
Mostly legend now. Happens when a junior AE treats the SA as a button to press. Good AE+SA = partnership, not summons.
False: nobody knows everything. Resourcefulness beats omniscience. Curveball comes, stay calm, cook an answer path on the spot.
Almost forgot
My programming sucked. I could always see the bigger picture. Apparently that's the whole job. Career path: integrations & automation → search & observability → AI.
What I tell every mentee: loving the product you sell beats the payslip logo. Wrong cup of tea? Your body tells you first.
In cold, hard numbers
The AI question
Literally debated this on stage at Pre-Sales Collective: "AI will replace pre-sales in 5 years." My side won. The keyword is replace vs change. AI automates about a third of the work (McKinsey's own math). Two-thirds stays human.
of B2B buyers will prefer human interaction over AI by 2030. AI caused the backlash itself. (Gartner, Aug 2025)
more buyer's remorse on digital-only purchases. Solo buyers crash; reps + tools are 1.8× more likely to complete a high-quality deal. (Gartner, B2B Buying Report)
ATMs didn't end bank tellers. They ended ledger-typing and made relationships the job. AI ends my typing, not my trust. (James Bessen, Learning by Doing)
The AI question, continued
Demos: two a day, now four. AI writes RFP first-drafts, researches customer KPIs and news, assembles my narrative.
Body language. Offline politics. The WhatsApp call that never makes the transcript. When AI answers wrong, someone still owns it publicly. Air Canada's chatbot found that out the hard way.
"AI won't replace humans — but humans with AI will replace humans without AI."
— Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business Review
The honest part
Three strikes. Three customers pissed me off; young me took it personally and lost weeks of sleep.
Now? "You want to be nasty? Okay lor." Skeptical customers keep me sharp; boundary-less rudeness gets no rent-free headspace. Emotional resilience is a learned skill, like demos.
So, why do it?
Long hours. Evil RFPs. But every week: new industry, new problem, new room to win over, plus eight years of lessons for the next mentee.
That's the job