Validating a problem around presales + technical qualification in service businesses

Hey everyone,

I’m currently exploring a problem I’ve heard from a few service-based businesses and wanted to sanity check it with this community.

In several conversations, I’ve noticed a recurring gap between sales and technical teams. Sales reps are great at relationship building and closing, but often struggle with the technical qualification and presales consulting part. That includes properly scoping requirements, asking the right discovery questions, preparing solution outlines, and creating technical materials before the deal is signed.

In some cases, this slows down deals. In others, it leads to overpromising or bringing in technical teams too late in the cycle.

I’m exploring whether machine learning / LLM-based tools could help support this stage. For example:

•	Guiding sales reps through structured qualification

•	Generating tailored discovery questions

•	Drafting solution summaries or technical proposal content

•	Acting as a lightweight presales assistant before a solutions engineer steps in

Right now, I’m in validation mode. I’ve only spoken to a handful of businesses, so I’m trying to understand:

•	Is this actually a widespread pain point?

•	How are teams currently handling presales if they don’t have dedicated solution engineers?

•	Would teams trust AI-assisted qualification and solution drafting in real workflows?

If you’re in sales, product, or running a service business, I’d genuinely appreciate your perspective. Is this a real problem in your experience, or am I over-indexing on a few anecdotes?

Open to candid feedback, including reasons why this might not work.