1 min lesson
Enough vocabulary to ask, not to pretend
Use "Enough vocabulary to ask, not to pretend" to tell the cases apart, then choose a response for each one.
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Enough vocabulary to ask, not to pretendthe line that matters
The goal is fluent questions, not fake expertise. Pretending to be an engineer fails fast; an honest, curious non-engineer who asks sharp questions earns respect.
"What's your stack and roughly how big is the team?"
"Where does onboarding a new engineer slow down today?"
"Which AI tools, if any, is the team already using?"
Don't fake depth on a framework you don't know.
Don't argue architecture with a staff engineer.
If you're out of your depth, say so and bring an AE.
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Full explanation
Stay current to stay credible
Stay current to stay credible
The AI-coding conversation moves weekly. Following it is how you keep credibility with a buyer who lives in it.
Most SDRs selling to engineers sound like they're reading a script and engineers can smell it in one sentence. Your advantage is technical empathy: you actually use the product, you're genuinely curious how their team works and you don't pretend to know things you don't. That posture is rare in outbound and it's exactly what a bottom-up, engineer-led company like Cursor screens for.
Bring one genuine question about how software gets built that you're actually curious about and ask it in the loop. Curiosity you can't fake is the trait Cursor is hiring for here and showing it live beats any rehearsed line about being "passionate about AI."