I came from a non-tech background and landed a mid-market AE role, but I’m struggling with the technical depth customers expect in demos. How should I close this gap? I'm not sure if I should double down on certifications, shadow SEs, or even step back into a more junior role to learn properly.

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You don’t need to become an SE, but you do need a good enough technical baseline plus a killer handoff. Shadow SEs on live calls, ask them to sanity-check your talk track, and build a simple demo script that you can run while they handle deep-dive questions.​​ Certs can help if they’re tightly tied to your product or buyers, but you’ll learn faster by pairing with SEs, sitting in on product meetings, and running dry-run demos internally.

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The AE isn't expected to be a technical expert. It's your job to uncover the clients needs and pain points a d understsnd at some higher level how your offering can alleviate that pain. You own the executive relationships, and need to be able to explain clearly non-technical terms what your offering is capable of.

If you don't have access to a team of technical sellers, then yeah, it's on you to learn a bit more detail about what you are selling.

You need some basic understanding, sure. For the more technical questions, you take them down and get back to the person asking asap. Taking on a different role doesn’t mean you will focus more on the technical side of it.

I agree with what SR1 said, you don't really need to know all of the technical ins and outs. Yes, the basics are good. But nobody is expecting you to be a developer and there's absolutely no problem with finding out the information from the more technical folks and getting back to the client later.

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