Every morning, Fortune 500 executives delete hundreds of emails without reading them. The reason? They can't tell which messages came from humans anymore.
If I were to write a book on sales, I'd call it Reputational Capital: The New Currency of Elite Sales. Reputational capital is the accumulated trust, credibility, and recognition you build as an individual sales professional—separate from your company's brand. As of the last two years, I've been obsessed with understanding how proper, elite selling should be done in the age of AI—more specifically, in the age of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
The AI Pollution Problem
Ask any executive what their inbox looks like and they'll tell you they don't go anywhere near it because it's polluted with generic AI-generated outreach. Prior to the AI boom, executives typically received hundreds of cold emails from sellers that were copied and pasted manually in a scattershot attempt to get a reply. Sometimes those messages were personalized—oftentimes, they weren't. But buyers could still sift through the noise to find compelling emails that would interest them enough to schedule meetings.
Now, everyone is using AI. How is AI trained? AI models learn from internet data—think about the sprawling, often mediocre content published across the web. Mountains of mediocre, repetitive content. Even with proper prompting, most AI-generated content trends toward average—because it’s trained on the internet’s average signal. You might get slightly better results with proper prompt engineering, but you're still likely to get mediocre content, especially in cold emailing and prospecting. The result? Executives today aren’t just skeptical—they’re numb.
This means generic AI-generated content has flooded every executive's inbox at scale. Most executives can barely look at their emails because they're cluttered with automated messages. How do they separate signal from noise when it's all noise?
I've watched two reps approach similar prospects in the same industry. One sent a templated message about "driving efficiency and reducing costs." The other referenced a recent earnings call where the CEO mentioned challenges with their supply chain integration. Guess which one got the meeting?
Why Trust Beats Technology
What does the future of selling look like? Will AI replace all sales executives?
I don't have a crystal ball, but I can confidently say that capitalism will likely remain our dominant economic system for the foreseeable future. If capitalism persists, there will be selling to be done. The question is: who will do that selling—humans or AI?
Humans who effectively leverage AI will replace those who don’t. But the future of sales lies in reputational selling—not your company’s reputation, but your own.
When I first got into sales nine years ago, some reps at my company had posters of Leonardo DiCaprio from The Wolf of Wall Street taped to their desks. As a novice, I thought selling meant smooth-talking someone into opening their checkbook. “Sell me this pen!”
Those folks were quickly shown the door. Sales never was—and isn't—about being a high-energy, smooth-talking salesman in a five-thousand-dollar suit. Real enterprise sales—selling expensive solutions, not $10 widgets—requires deep understanding of complex problems.
When you're selling, you're not actually selling. You're building trust. Modern buyers at credible companies are intelligent and sophisticated. They're armed with more data points, references, and analytical capability than ever before. You can't mislead sophisticated buyers, and frankly, all buyers today are sophisticated.
Don't get me wrong—AI is incredibly powerful for research, data analysis, and administrative tasks. But when it comes to building relationships and earning trust, human authenticity remains irreplaceable.
Building Your Reputational Capital
You need to earn trust by understanding prospects' businesses and unique challenges, then offering insights that help advance their organizational goals and, indirectly, their careers. You must earn their respect. Only then will they open up and share insights that help you identify needs for your services and properly align those services to their organizational goals.
But it all starts with trust.
You can't earn trust by relying on generic AI-generated content. You have to be authentic. The good news? Most sales reps are still using automated approaches, giving you a competitive advantage through authenticity and genuine relationship building.
Here's how to start building your reputational capital:
Become genuinely knowledgeable about your prospects' industries
Read their earnings calls and follow their executives on LinkedIn
Understand their competitive landscape before sending that first email
Write thoughtful industry analysis on LinkedIn
Speak at conferences when possible
Publish insights based on real customer conversations
Become known as someone who truly understands the challenges your prospects face
This approach takes more work than spray-and-pray, mass-volume tactics, but it's far more effective for securing meaningful meetings and closing deals.
The more you become a node of insight in your industry, the more reputational capital you compound.
The Path Forward
The sales reps who thrive in the next decade won't be those with the best AI tools—they'll be those who've built the strongest reputations for genuine insight and trustworthy advice.
Start today: Pick one prospect and spend 30 minutes researching their business challenges. Then craft a message that demonstrates genuine understanding rather than generic value propositions. Your future deals depend on it.
In the AI era, trust is the new scarcity. And the scarce resource always wins.
I’ll be exploring this further in upcoming posts. Subscribe if you want practical ideas on how to thrive in the future of sales and relationship-building.
What's your experience with AI-generated outreach? Have you noticed a difference in response rates when you take a more personal approach? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.