The four-axis capability model
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AI Sales Engineering · v1.0 · Last verified 31 August 2026
The four-axis capability model scores a technical seller on four axes: solutions engineer, account executive, forward deployed engineer and value engineer. Each axis is scored 0 to 20 against evidence of what you've produced, and each score lands in one of five bands.
What are the four axes?
Solutions engineer, the technical sale. Strong looks like something existing in writing before the environment got built. Agreed success criteria, a POC with a scorecard, an objection answered with architecture rather than reassurance. You can name the input your product handles worst and you say it before the buyer finds it.
Account executive, commercial instinct. Strong looks like running the deal rather than supporting it. You can say whose budget it comes out of, what happens after your champion says yes, who else has to sign, and why you actually lost the last one. You know the numbers without asking anyone.
Forward deployed engineer, technical depth. Strong looks like having built things other people still run without you in the room. Evals from a customer's own examples, prototypes that went to production, debugging in the customer's environment rather than in a slide.
Value engineer, business case and executive framing. Strong looks like a quantified case built by you, in the customer's own numbers, with a payback period and a named assumption the whole thing rests on. This is the axis almost nobody has, and it's the one large organisations hire a separate person to do.
What are the bands?
Every axis is scored on the same ladder, and the bands are absolute. They don't get recalibrated to whoever happens to have taken the diagnostic.
| Band | What it means |
|---|---|
| No evidence | Nothing on this axis has actually been produced |
| Exposed | It happens occasionally and it isn't yours |
| Practising | You do it, inconsistently, and you can't always point at the artefact |
| Owns it | It's yours, repeatedly, and there's evidence |
| Sets the standard | Other people in your organisation use what you built |
Table: The five bands of the four-axis capability model, applied identically to all four axes. Source: AI Sales Engineering, August 2026.
Why four axes rather than one score?
Because a single score out of a hundred hides which axis is empty, and the empty one is the whole point. Two people with the same total can be completely different hires, and the money in this profession sits with the people who are strong on three or four axes rather than exceptional on one.
How do you get scored against it?
The diagnostic scores you against this model. Twenty questions about what you've actually produced, four scores out of 20, five bands, and one next action on the weakest axis. No account, no email, and the result is on screen.
Sources, and what is not verified here
Last verified: 31 August 2026.
What this is: a framework written by Lewis Crook from twenty years in enterprise technology and enterprise AI deals. The axes and bands are judgement, not a validated psychometric instrument, and they're stated as judgement.
Not verified here: the mapping from band to pay is a hypothesis the diagnostic's own data will test. It may turn out to be wrong.
Corrections welcome, and they get credited.
Use this on a live deal this week, then tell the room what happened. Not that it looked useful. What you changed, what the buyer did, whether it worked. If it didn't work, that's the more valuable post.
Get the next one when it ships, plus the benchmark at 200 responses.