Most business owners have tried AI by now. They've asked ChatGPT to rewrite an email, used Copilot to summarise a meeting, or watched a colleague experiment with it. But for most, the results have been average - and the tools have quietly slipped off the agenda.
Stefan Buss, founder of Crawley-based Sales & Marketing Engineers, is running a free online webinar in late April to help local business leaders close the gap between dabbling with AI and using it properly.
The session - AI Fundamentals Webinar - Practical AI for SME Growth - follows the in-person educational seminar Stefan delivered in November 2025, which filled up quickly and received strong feedback from attendees. This is a chance for anyone who missed that session, or who wants a refresher with updated content, to get the fundamentals right.
The webinar is deliberately pitched at SME owners, directors and team leads who are not full-time marketers or AI specialists. No jargon. No product demos. Just a structured starting point.
In 45 minutes, Stefan will cover:
- Where AI actually is right now - separating hype from reality
- The difference between dabbling and structured adoption
- A practical prompting framework you can apply the same day
- Memory vs context window - and why it matters for your business
- A live demo of Custom GPTs, Projects and Gems - the features that turn AI from a one-off chat into a trained assistant for your business
- Quick-win use cases across sales, marketing and operations
Recent research from Sales & Marketing Engineers' own SME survey found that 61% of companies cite skills and change management as the biggest barrier to adopting AI - not budget, not technology, not data. The survey also found that over 70% of businesses are either not using AI at all or experimenting without any real structure.
"What surprises me most from working with local business owners," Stefan said, "is how few have even heard of Custom GPTs, Projects or Gems - the features that turn AI from a glorified search engine into a trained assistant that knows your business, your tone, your processes. Over 90% of the people I speak with have never set one up. That's where the real productivity shift happens, and almost everyone is missing it."
The webinar is completely free to attend and runs twice to suit different schedules. Attendees will leave with a clear picture of where AI fits in their business, a practical framework they can start using immediately, and a foundation for rolling AI out across their team with confidence.
Webinar Details:
- Tuesday 28th April 2026 - 3pm BST
- Wednesday 29th April 2026 - 4pm BST
- 45 minutes + Q&A
- Online via Google Meet
- Free to attend
Reserve your place: https://www.salesandmarketingengineers.co.uk/webinar-ai-for-sales-and-marketing-in-2026
About the host:
Stefan Buss is the founder of Sales & Marketing Engineers, a Crawley-based consultancy helping SMEs engineer consistent growth through simple, connected sales and marketing. With a background in industrial engineering and over two decades working with technical and B2B businesses, Stefan brings a systems-minded approach to sales, marketing and AI adoption. Sales & Marketing Engineers is a member of Gatwick Diamond Business and Stefan has been a member for over 12 years.
