Navigating the AI Sales Landscape with Michael Stephan

Sheikh Shuvo: Hi, everyone. I'm Sheikh. Welcome to Humans of AI, where we meet the people building the technology that's changing our world. Today, we have Michael Stephan, who's been a sales leader in the AI world for many years. Michael, thanks for joining us. Thanks.

Michael Stephan: So much for having me, Sheikh. Appreciate the time and look forward to having this chat.

Sheikh Shuvo: Yeah. And for everyone out there, in full disclosure, Michael and I have known each other for about 10 years and worked together at Mighty AI, an early leader in the training data world that was eventually acquired by Uber ATG. So, you might fall into some inside jokes at some point.

So, Michael, you've worked at a ton of different companies over the years, both in software sales and services sales and now in AI sales. But when you talk to your kids and they ask, what do you do, how do you describe your work to, let's say, a five-year-old?

Michael Stephan: Yeah, it's a great question. I've actually challenged a number of our executives across companies to figure out how we can position the company in that way. And thankfully, I think it's fairly simple. And I've actually tested this against my kids and conversely, also against my grandmother, who's never touched technology. So I think it resonates.

Oh, that's a higher bar. It is. But I think the easiest way to describe what I do today is to help computers understand the real world. Obviously, we can branch off and chat, discuss with them in a little bit more detail, but that's the easiest way to kind of comprehend what Kognic is doing today. And generally, what I've been doing over the last eight-plus years in AI machine learning.

Sheikh Shuvo: Nice. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Well, on that note, let's time travel a bit. Tell me about your career and how things started. I'd be curious to hear what some of those inflection points were along the way that led you to where you are now.

Michael Stephan: Yeah. I mean, I've listened to several of your other podcasts and I certainly am the least technical person that you've interviewed thus far, and probably one of the more interesting journeys given that I didn't train technically to get into the field. And actually, I go back to this quite often. It was almost by sheer luck how I ended up getting into deep technology. Of all things, I responded to a Craigslist ad back in 2010 about a cloud-based startup in Bellevue, Washington, that was building some disaster recovery technology for the SMB that was in the cloud. And I remember reading the job description and getting an interview scheduled that same day. Immediately called my dad to ask what the heck the cloud was, had no understanding of what it meant technically, and tried to get up to speed as quickly as I could for the interview.

Sheikh Shuvo: Were you disappointed that there wasn't an actual cloud involved?

Michael Stephan: I wasn't. I was smart enough to know that physically wasn't a component of it, but just barely. But it was quite a dive into it. I think I applied on a Wednesday, interviewed on Thursday, got the job offer Friday, quit Friday afternoon, and started at the company on Monday. Wow. And then from there, you know, I was fortunate enough to build a great relationship with the then VP of Sales, who was actually my boss for nine years. Obviously, your boss as well at Mighty AI. And was fortunate enough to be taken to a couple of other startups prior to Mighty AI. And then we kind of stumbled upon this AI, machine learning, computer vision world that, again, was completely foreign to me. But one of the most exciting career trajectories that I've been on. I feel that I hope I get to stay in for quite some time.

Sheikh Shuvo: So, I feel like this podcast can just become an ad for Craigslist. That's where all great careers start. Let's do it. Well, as you've gone through different types of selling different types of technology, Michael, what's been different about selling AI versus other services and products?

Michael Stephan: Yeah, it's a good question. When you compare AI technologies to traditional legacy tech or hardware, I think we're still relatively in the early stages of AI and understanding the business applicability. Obviously, there are use cases where the business is built around AI. But in a lot of other cases, companies are still trying to figure out how they can monetize AI as a technology or as a platform. And then, you know, take manufacturing as a prime example, the previous field that I was in, AI for manufacturing. You look at manufacturers, and things are largely done the same way they were 20, 30 years ago. Sure, they've updated machinery and there's some advanced technology, but when you bring the concept of artificial intelligence into discussions, it's extremely foreign to them. They don't understand it, how to buy it, and it's very hard for them to elaborate the business case internally to key stakeholders on what AI can bring.

So, what I was doing in retro causal was a lot of consultative selling, needing to be the subject matter expert and helping guide not only the business but also the technology side of an organization on how this type of technology can be applied. In self-driving cars, AI and ML are really the core of what that technology's promises, so it's a bit of a different sale. But one of the harder things about selling AI products is that there are still a lot of unknowns in what the long-term business applications can be and really what the business benefits can be. Obviously, there are some clear-cut examples, but in a lot of businesses, they're still trying to figure it out. Taking the approach to become a trusted advisor, a consultant to and for the company, has been one of the best ways I've tried to approach this and have had degrees of success.

Sheikh Shuvo: Obviously, when you're making a sale to an enterprise, there are many different customer profiles involved and different levels of trust that you need to build. Going back to your point about educating the company and what the business value is, what type of stakeholder on a company side have you found the trickiest to work with? Where do you find the friction points as you're selling now or in the past?

Michael Stephan: To be frank, it's almost more of a challenge on the procurement side. They haven't had the insight into what the various business units are trying to accomplish. They are tasked with one relatively simple job, to drive down costs as much as possible, irrespective of understanding the value of the technology to the business or why the business is making the purchase. So it's less strategic for someone in the procurement world. It's really about the numbers at the end of the day. And I think that's been one of the bigger challenges we face when we go up and down the chain of command to try to get approvals and ultimately POs for products and services. It's trying to help the procurement folks understand what their teams are asking for and the value associated with whatever the dollar purchase is, whether it's $40,000 worth of software or multiple millions of dollars. There still seems to be a gap between the business procurement folks and what the business is actually asking for at the end of the day.

Sheikh Shuvo: So really, arming folks with the information they need to become champions there?

Michael Stephan: A hundred percent. Got it. A hundred percent.

Sheikh Shuvo: Going back to the career shifts you made, from different types of technology sales as you shifted into the world of AI, what are some of the ways you educated yourself, and especially now, how do you stay on top of the latest things that seem to be changing every single week?

Michael Stephan: That is the challenge, especially in this AI/ML world. Everything seems to be changing almost on a daily basis. And as I alluded to earlier, I didn't grow up in technology. I didn't go to school for this. I didn't study computer science or really anything technical. I went to university for business and finance. And ultimately, when I graduated, I was in banking. So, when I got into the field, it was like trying to drink out of a fire hose, trying to get up to speed as much as I possibly could. I forced myself to come up with a routine that I still do to this day, where I've got my tech publications that I'm subscribed to. Every day I go to these publications and read the latest and greatest news, try to understand what companies are getting funded, and really just try to dive in. That's what's worked best for me to stay on the latest trends and techniques in machine learning. And I learned a lot of this from you, staying on top of research papers and new publications that are coming out in terms of the new breakthroughs in the tech world that are always applicable to the folks that I've been selling into and working collaboratively with. So, having that routine of staying on top of all the news has helped me get up to speed in this world. But then working with colleagues like yourself, who are far smarter than I am, and other technical stakeholders within the company, who can help build my vocabulary around different techniques and whatnot in the world of machine learning, has been key for me.

Sheikh Shuvo: Especially now, as you go through those routines, are there any AI tools that you're using in your personal workflows?

Michael Stephan: You know, maybe this just speaks to my age, but I'm a bit old school in that regard. I haven't implemented a ton of AI techniques into my approach. I am still a wholehearted believer in the personal aspect of selling, and trying to come across that way as someone who's genuinely interested in what the other person is doing. I've messed around with Bard and ChatGPT and some of the other things that are out there now, but for me, I've always had the best success being genuine in coming across that I really do want to understand what the folks in our field are working on. Having that genuine curiosity knocks down some of those barriers. I can have more open, candid discussions with folks. I know enough to be dangerous so I can sit across the table from an executive or a machine learning engineer and so on. But I've always taken the tact that being a human and not relying on AI in terms of my sales approach has served me best. Now, that being said, there's probably something in the works that will be launched next week that will replace me. But that's generally the way I've approached it and haven't really adopted too many AI tools.

Sheikh Shuvo: No, that's a great point to make just on the limits of automation and the importance of still being human when you're buying and selling expensive things. It seems your superpower, Michael, will be staying old school.

Michael Stephan: Absolutely. Still take notes with pen and paper.

Sheikh Shuvo: Okay. Well, recently you joined a very interesting startup out of Sweden called Kognic. Tell us more about your work there.

Michael Stephan: Yeah. So, historically, as you know, I have ties to the self-driving car, ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), autonomous driving world. I was lucky enough to get connected with the Kognic team prior to this summer. Based on the technology stack that I saw, I was extremely interested and super eager to get back into it, to finish the business that we started back in 2015. One of the things that really drew me to Kognic was their best-in-class sensor fusion platform that they had built specifically for the ADAS and AD domain. They've built a vision around this notion of an alignment platform, helping align expectations of what humans want out of AI and what the AI actually does, explicitly focused in the autonomous vehicle space. After being out of the world for three and a half, four years, all of the same challenges that we were starting to solve for back in my DAI are certainly still there, turning unstructured data into highly accurate structured data sets for training perception models. What got me excited is their vision of building a true software platform that really helps teams understand what data they already have existing in their data lakes that could be useful for training, but also building more programmatic ways to understand and explain model performance, whether it's data-related or model predictions versus ground truth, and purposing those in an easier way to help speed the iterative process to help ML teams get to a production rate model faster. The promise of self-driving cars for me has always been fascinating. I think there's limitless applicability of what you can unlock queue time, which is the one commodity that is probably most valuable to us, and I think we can get back. So having the ability to unlock that, I think, is just a tremendous value for humanity, and something that I'm still super excited about, and one of the reasons why I got back into the space with Kognic.

Sheikh Shuvo: As you were evaluating whether Kognic would be a good next step for you, what are some of the questions you asked to evaluate both on the technology side as well as on the go-to-market side, extrapolating to what type of questions a salesperson should be asking as they make their next shift to a technology company?

Michael Stephan: On the technology side for me, it was a little bit less about that. I had a bit of a head start, so I kind of understood what I was walking into here. But there are always a few core things that I look for in an organization. For me, culture was the number one thing, especially being a Swedish-based company. I wasn't sure how the cultures may work together or not, with a lot of cultural nuance between European organizations and U.S. organizations. So I spent a lot of time with our CEO, Daniel, trying to understand the culture he's built within the company. They've been around for five years and have had great success during that timeframe, a great roster of customers, which gave me faith that the technology was real. But I really wanted to understand the culture that he had built and instilled within the organization. That was one of the things that sold me on the organization, stepping away from diving deep into the technical front. And then the same thing with the sales organization. Historically, Kognic hasn't had a massive sales footprint, but they have recently invested in that side of the house, brought in a new chief revenue officer earlier this year. So I spent a lot of time with him, understanding his vision for the sales team, what he needed out of me, how I could bring maximum value to the organization to help speed up growth here in the U.S. The cultural aspect of it really aligned with what I think I was looking for, especially at this stage in my career. Secondarily, what was the overall opportunity? Having been in this world a number of years ago, while there's been consolidation in the AV world, I think the opportunity is still massive. That was what drove me to dive into this in more detail and ultimately see if I wanted to go back. With the tech stack the team had built around 3D Sensor Fusion, the platform aspect they've built from a software standpoint that is truly scalable, all ultimately won me over. I joined six weeks ago. Those are some of the things that I looked for, not necessarily diving deep into the technical stack. Being around for five years, working with the customers we work with today, I had full faith that the tech was there and what I was shown was actually on the truck and sellable, but it was more some of the soft stuff that I looked for, to really understand if this was going to be the right fit for a career move.

Sheikh Shuvo: Makes a lot of sense. As you build your own team here in the US to drive Kognic's expansion through North America, outside of the obvious of just sales experience, what type of qualities are you looking for in people you hire? How can someone stand out and really grab your attention?

Michael Stephan: Yeah. For me, it's maybe less about experience. Certainly, coachability is a big portion of it. What I've seen, and what has somewhat been validated, is that finding folks who have deep technical selling experience in artificial intelligence or machine learning tech is few and far between. So for me, it's less important from that vantage point, but really trying to find somebody who's hungry, who's coachable, wants to win. Looking back at my career, I think that's one of the things that has helped me significantly. I come from an athletic background, so again, I didn't know this at the time, but having the discipline to be able to get up every day, do the things that were uncomfortable to me at the time, just training day in, day out. Looking for those types of traits because the reality is that you have to build a sales muscle. And if you haven't done that before, it's infinitely more challenging to do so. And when we're in a fast-moving space, where there aren't defined walls to work within, if that's what your expectation is, you just fall apart relatively easily. So those are some of the things we look for. Certainly, having a technical background makes it a lot easier, just in terms of ramp-up speed, but I wouldn't say it's a prerequisite, which thankfully, looking back on my career, that wasn't one at the time. Otherwise, I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today from a selling deep tech standpoint.

Sheikh Shuvo: So just start looking for ex semi-pro soccer players like yourself?

Michael Stephan: Ironically enough, we, prior to me, a couple of weeks before, we had an ex-professional golfer who joined the team.

Sheikh Shuvo: So there's some proof. Well, if I see Tiger Woods with a Kognic.com email address, I'll know why.

Michael Stephan: Perfect, you will.

Sheikh Shuvo: Cool. Going back to the cultural piece you mentioned, Michael, now you've worked at companies all over the world, across the US, India, and now Sweden. As you've worked in these different corporate cultures, have there been any major differences you've noticed in terms of what the approach to sales is across those companies?

Michael Stephan: Yeah, it's a great question. To be frank, I haven't seen a major difference due to cultural nuances. Earlier on in my career, when the first startup I was at was acquired by an Indian-based company, Persistent Systems, I anticipated there would be some sort of cultural shift, given the gravity of the company was based in India, and that this may impact how we operated as the US arm of the company. But at the end of the day, I think it comes down to leadership. We had leaders in place that did a good job of molding the two teams and shaping the expectations of what was needed to build a cohesive organization. We were still heavily reliant on a lot of the technical folks in India while running the business in the US, and vice versa. And I think because of the leadership, it was less of a disruption to the business than I originally thought.

But when I look at Kognic now, being a Swedish-based company with 135 people, and currently I'm the sole guy in the United States, yes, there are cultural differences. They take more holiday in Sweden than we do here in the US. Work hours may be more defined in Sweden more broadly. But our CEO has done a great job of instilling that, yes, we're a Swedish-based company and we're going to adopt some of the Swedish aspects of running a business, but at the end of the day, he's here to grow and drive the business forward. He's put the right people in the right seats to have, for lack of a better term, more akin to a US-based startup feel than maybe a traditional European organization. I don't have a ton of work experience with other European companies, but it's very much like a US startup from what I've experienced. The right people are driving the ship, we've got the right people in the right seats, everyone is rowing in the same direction, and I've not really seen any difference from what I've been accustomed to with US-based startups. And again, I think that just goes to the nature of the leader.

Sheikh Shuvo: It sounds like the company is at a really exciting inflection point right now. Definitely excited to talk to you about this in six months and just see where things are.

Michael Stephan: A hundred percent. Looking forward to it.

Sheikh Shuvo: The very last question I have for you, Michael, is, you know, as someone who's been in this world for many years, I'm sure you have a lot of habits that are dialed down and going back to the types of discipline you mentioned. But as you think about where you want to take your career next, what are some of the things that you're doing to improve as a salesperson? Are there any books or courses or daily habits that you can recommend to someone who's just breaking into the field?

Michael Stephan: Yeah. Again, I always try to stay on top of everything that's happening in my specific area of domain. I've also made it a point, from a career standpoint, to find people that I can lean on as mentors. I've been lucky enough through my career to build really good relationships over time, where not only can I reach them at any point in time to ask questions, but they will challenge the way I think and how I approach things to build a business. And that's absolutely invaluable. At the end of the day, they can rip me up one side and down the other, but when we hang up the phone, I can send a text message and, if I'm in town or they're in town, we can go out and grab a drink, and we're buddy-buddy. That has been invaluable to me. With three young kids, I don't have a ton of time to read much these days. I do read a lot of online publications. But I do have my core go-to books, like 'The Ultimate Sales Machine' and 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team', that I kind of grew up on, thanks to Eric Webster. Those are my fallbacks. Having those mentors that I can pick up the phone for monthly one-on-ones with has been absolutely invaluable to me. So, I would highly urge younger folks coming up through the sales ranks to the extent that you can, build relationships with the higher-ups within your organization. See if you can potentially leverage those as you continue to grow your career, move on from organizations, and so on. But I think that's been the biggest help to me in going from an individual quota-carrying sales guy to something more substantial within our organization.

Sheikh Shuvo: Timeless advice. Well, Michael, that's all I got for now. Thanks so much for joining us and sharing more about your world.

Michael Stephan: No, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Sheikh. Appreciate it.