The 2025 Sales Engineering Tool Buyer’s Guide
CEO, Co-Founder
SEs are burning out.
Between conducting back-to-back live demos, answering hundred-question-long RFPs, setting up sandboxes, and responding to ad hoc requests, there’s barely enough time in the day to work through their to-do list – let alone come up with better, more creative ways to approach the SE process.
Managers are seeing the effects of this pressure firsthand, trying to find new AI and automation tools to streamline SE workflows and alleviate some of their stress.
This guide covers the top types of software that can make SEs’ lives easier, whether they’re new joiners or veteran team members.
1. Demo Automation Platforms
What they are: Demo automation is a type of sales demo software that lets you capture your product once and turn it into either:
- An interactive product demo, so prospects can experience key features before or after a live sales call
- A sandbox demo environment that prospects can explore on their own.
Demo automation tools help you automate, scale, and personalize your interactive product or sandbox demos for different audiences.
What they solve: Demo automation platforms replace repetitive intro-level demos with interactive, scalable, no-code tours.
Use cases
- Website product tours so prospects can get their hands on your product as soon as they start researching it.
- Pre-call discovery to figure out what a prospect cares about ahead of a live conversation.
- Leave-behind demos for AEs so leads can actually use the features presented in the live demo.
For more use case inspiration, read Top Use Cases for Interactive Demos.
Why it matters
By automating the more generic demos, SEs have more time to personalize future demos. Prospects end up having better questions on live calls, too – they’ve already gotten access to the product.
Chris White, founder and CEO of Tech Sales Advisors, explains: “It’s great to have software to take some monotonous and tedious tasks off presales team members’ plates, such as the introductory demo. Those can be automated through software and sent to customers through email.”
Demo Automation Product Considerations
- Navattic (no-code, shows a prospect’s interests before a live call, uncovers new members of the buying circle, and allows teams to share personalized sandbox demos during live demos.)
- Walnut (personalized demos for ABM)
- Storylane (fast setup, simple editor)
- Reprise / Demostack (sandbox + guided hybrids)
For a full breakdown of these tools, check out Everything You Need to Know About Demo Automation.
2. SE Training Enablement Tools
What they are: Enablement software equips AEs, PMMs, and new SEs with training, demo resources, and playbooks.
What they solve: They reduce reliance on more seasoned SEs and sellers, giving everyone more time to focus on selling.
Use cases
- Role-based demo training, so teams get a feel for the various segments of your ICP and how to speak to each one.
- Sales onboarding content to get reps up to speed on your product – and how to best sell it – faster.
- Ongoing enablement, since your product (and likely your messaging) is evolving with every release. Sales and SE teams need to stay on top of those changes.
Why it matters
When new hires pick up on product ins and outs faster, it increases their time to value.
They don’t have to ask as many questions, which helps them nudge sales along and gives senior SEs and AEs time to work strategic deals that require more time and attention.
Mark Rida, Director of Solutions Engineering at Saviynt, shared a good way to ensure enablement is working (for both old and new hires) in a recent webinar we hosted with SE leaders.
“We do what we call ‘immersion training.’ We’ll grab a small group and have people practice with each other, give them scenarios. We bring our really experienced SEs, and we'll put our new hires in the same room.
And we’ll play stump the chump. The seasoned team actually comes back and goes, ‘Wow. I learned so much actually doing that.’”
If you’re not together in person, you could use video-based software or other enablement platforms to do this exercise virtually.
Enablement Product Considerations
- Loom (quick video-based training and demo recordings)
- trumpet (AI-powered digital sales rooms)
- Highspot (AI-powered sales enablement with scenario-based content insights)
- Seismic (sales content + enablement at enterprise scale)
3. Sandbox Environments
What they are: Sandboxes are simulated environments where SEs or sellers can demo their product live.
Because traditional demo environments can come with messy data and potential errors, many SE teams are turning to sandbox demos, which are completely preconfigured to highlight the most relevant workflows and data for a prospect.
What they solve: They provide secure, hands-on demo spaces that technical buyers want – without exposing production systems or sensitive data.
Use cases
- Proof-of-concept demos for technical evaluators who want to see what your product looks like and how it operates themselves.
- Configurable trial environments for enterprise buyers, so it’s tailored to their preferences and unique use cases.
- Risk-free live demo backups when showing complex workflows, like integrations or features that require large amounts of synthetic data.
Why it matters
Sandboxes can dramatically accelerate technical validation in the sales cycle.
When someone can verify that your product can, in fact, do the things you say it can themselves, they’re much more likely to advocate for your product.
Plus, being able to store different variations of sandbox demos in one centralized environment and share them via link reduces the burden on SEs.
They don’t have to repeatedly spin up custom sandboxes every single time they’re scheduled for a new demo (or bug their engineering team to do it for them).
One of our customers, SourceDay, added interactive sandbox demos as a part of their sales rep playbook.
“Now, solutions consultants are spending 30% less time on early stage demos and can now fully focus on higher value and more strategic deals.”
Sandbox Product Considerations
- Navattic (lightweight, no-code sandbox builder with automatic screen linking)
- Demostack (enterprise-grade sandbox-first solution that shows iFrames, pop-ups, and animations).
- Reprise (hybrid model offering both cloned sandbox environments and guided live overlay click-through demos)
For a deeper look at these tools, check out Sandbox Demos: What It Is, Benefits, and the Top Tools.
4. AI Assistants for SEs
What they are: AI assistants are specialized tools that use large language models to expedite and augment a variety of tasks across the sales cycle.
What they solve: They automate repetitive, time-intensive tasks like qualifying leads, researching prospects, answering one-off questions, and meeting prep.
Use cases
- Auto-logging notes in Salesforce or HubSpot and surfacing potential aha moments or features to double down on based on prospect reactions.
- Demo scheduling and lead qualification with AI chatbots.
- Real-time competitive insights during calls.
Why it matters
An AI assistant can cut down on administrative work. But more importantly, it minimizes context switching, a big drag on SE workflows.
Instead of being pulled in multiple directions, SEs can stay heads-down and figure out the best ways to tackle and win big accounts.
Michael Ammaturo, Head of Solutions & Partnerships at Experience.com, suggests experimenting with AI as a role-playing tool.
“Have it be the person who’s going ot throw you off. Do that role play with the AI. The limited work that I've done with it has been helpful because it throws questions at me that I might not have come up with on my own.”
AI Assistant Product Considerations
- Drift Conversational AI (AI-powered chatbots for qualification and scheduling)
- Clari Copilot (AI note-taking and deal intelligence)
- Regie.ai (AI content generation for sales outreach)
- Gong AI (real-time conversation and deal insights)
5. RFP & Security Questionnaire Tools
What they are: Tools that help SEs manage the time-consuming process of responding to a buyer’s evaluation questions.
As evidenced by multiple Reddit threads, RFPs and security questionnaires can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 80 hours.
One Redditor says, “It might take a team of 20 across multiple departments [filling out] an Excel sheet. That spans from 2-3 days to 2+ weeks, especially if there's a need for a fully written executive summary of the proposal, lots of attachments, need for SME review of answers, etc.”
What they solve: They speed up deal cycles by automating heavy documentation.
Use cases
- RFP library management, so SEs can pull data from old questionnaires when writing new ones.
- AI-assisted response drafting to speed up the writing portion of the
- Multi-team collaboration, as SEs often have to consult legal and product SMEs. Allowing them to edit the same doc live or async can help get forms submitted quicker.
Why it matters
Enterprise deals stall when RFPs and security questionnaires don’t get done. But SEs rarely have the bandwidth to complete them.
These tools keep deals moving and prevent SE bottlenecks at critical stages.
Class, an edtech company, uses Iris to complete hundreds of complex security questionnaires and RFPs every year.
“We’ve used Iris to automate the tedious and mundane aspects of filling out security questionnaires, so our teams can focus on more important tasks. Now, completed questionnaires are ready for the prospect by the next day, instead of the next week, or even a month later.”
RFP Product Considerations
- Iris (AI tool for presales RFPs and security questionnaires)
- Inventive (AI-powered proposal automation with compliance tracking)
- 1up.ai (Competitive enablement + AI RFP responses (integrates with sales tools for faster collaboration)