Everyone Has AI Now. So What?
I started my sales career three months before finishing my master’s in 2016.
Like a lot of grads fresh out of university, I thought I’d crush it. I could debate. I could argue. Sales would be easy money — or so I thought.
Most of you sales executives reading this (probably with a smirk) already know how that story ends.
But here’s the thing about 2016: being clueless didn’t matter. If you simply outworked everyone else, you won.
The formula was straightforward. The sales professional who did the most outreach usually had the most success. More cold emails and calls meant more meetings. And if you stacked more meetings, you usually closed more sales. Volume was the game. Simple as that.
Spray and pray wasn’t a strategy. It was the strategy. And honestly? It worked.
You got Salesforce. Added Salesloft. Maybe Gong if you had budget. Stack your tools, crank your activities, deals rolled in.
Then AI showed up and torched it all.
The Problem Nobody Talks About
AI made effort worthless.
Think about that. Any 22-year-old with access to ChatGPT can churn out a thousand “personalized” emails before lunch. That edge you earned grinding weekends? Gone.
I had coffee with a CEO last week. He said: “Mark, I haven’t looked at my real inbox in months. It’s unusable.”
Not overwhelming. Unusable.
When buyers see these AI pitches, they don’t think, “This rep gets me.”
They think, “This is the same garbage everyone else sends.”
That’s not trust. That’s suspicion.
And when every rep has the same AI tools? We all sound identical. You’re just vendor #47 in their inbox.
AI Made Average Worth Zero
Here’s the part nobody likes saying out loud:
In sales today, average doesn’t just fail. It gets punished.
The market has zero tolerance for mediocrity. None.
So, if everyone’s using the same AI, the same templates, and the same “best practices,” how do you stand out?
The Shift Nobody Saw Coming
AI isn’t your enemy. But it’s not your friend either.
It’s a leveler. And it’s brutal.
Everyone gets baseline volume now. Everyone can “personalize at scale.” Everyone can follow up perfectly. Those things still matter — but they no longer set you apart. They’re the minimum standard. The cost of entry.
The differentiator isn’t whether you can do those things. It’s whether buyers actually trust you when you show up.
And here’s the truth: we’re in the wild west of sales AI. There aren’t any Harvard Business Review studies or polished benchmarks to lean on because we’re living through the case study right now. The environment changed overnight, but our quotas didn’t. We don’t get to sit back and wait for the research to tell us what works. We must figure it out in real time — day by day, call by call, iteration by iteration.
On top of that, every week, a new AI sales product launches. A handful are genuinely useful. Most are just noise — flashy tools that don’t move the needle. Your job as a Sales Executive is to separate signal from noise. To know which tools sharpen your edge and which ones add clutter. Staying on top of the market, constantly reading, testing, and refining your stack, is now part of the role.
Which leads to the only thing that really matters now: trust.
I put it like this:
AI × Trust = Sales Impact.
AI gets you touches. Trust gets you deals.
Look at the difference:
The AI-dependent seller? They paste whatever ChatGPT spits out. Blast it to a thousand people. Hope something hits.
The AI-native seller? They use AI for grunt work — research, first drafts, data pulls. But when it’s time to engage? They appear as humans with genuine insight. Real challenge. Real value.
Most reps miss this: AI doesn’t replace selling. It exposes those who were never selling in the first place.
If you’re average, AI makes you louder at being average.
If you know your stuff? AI makes you dangerous.
Three Rules That Actually Work
Rule 1: Say something real.
AI pulls from the internet and averages it out. Which means it writes the same bland lines everyone else is writing.
Your pitch sounds like theirs. Theirs sounds like everyone’s.
Stop with the “We’d love to partner with you.”
Try “You’re about to lose $2M if you don’t fix this.”
One is noise. The other makes them listen.
Rule 2: Your reputation is everything.
Every call. Every email. Every follow-through. You’re either making deposits or withdrawals.
I’m thinking about the largest deal I ever sold. First email? 2018. Six years ago. Didn’t pitch him for the first two. Just sent useful stuff when I found it.
When he had budget? I was the only person he called.
AI can’t do that. It can’t show up for six years. It can’t build credibility through actions. It can’t become the person executives trust with their careers.
That’s your moat. Nobody can copy it.
Rule 3: Tell them what they don’t want to hear.
AI flatters. It nods along.
Executives are drowning in yes-men. Teams agree. Vendors nod. Their AI assistant validates everything.
What they need is someone to say: “That’s going to fail. Here’s why.”
Not to be edgy. To be useful.
The best meetings aren’t when everyone nods. They’re when someone finally says what everyone’s thinking.
But balance matters:
Challenge without empathy = you’re a jerk.
Empathy without challenge = you’re weak.
Get both right = deals happen.
Time to Make a Choice
Stop calling yourself a Sales Rep.
You’re either a Sales Executive, or you’re sliding into irrelevance.
Reps count activity. Executives count outcomes.
Reps chase quotas. Executives build reputation.
Reps use AI as a crutch. Executives use it as leverage.
AI can get you in the door. Only trust keeps you in the room.
The loudest sellers aren’t winning. The busiest sellers aren’t winning.
The trusted ones are.
That’s the edge. The only edge left.
Most sellers are still playing the 2019 game. Sending 500 emails a day. Celebrating meetings that go nowhere. Using AI to scale what was already broken.
They’re done. They don’t know it yet.
The question is: have you?