Welcome to the Climb
Hot Take: AI won’t replace your sales team, but it will expose its limits.
Welcome!
If we met in D.C. last week, glad you’re here. You’re in good company. Each Thursday, we share a quick, tactical pulse on how sellers protect margin and win upstream.
The Takeaway
AI will flood your team with capacity. Automated follow-ups. Instant research. Even full proposals written in seconds.
But that wave of productivity only helps if your team knows what to do with it.
Because more capacity doesn’t equal more closed deals. It just means your reps can show up late… faster.
The teams that win aren’t just faster, they’re earlier. They get in ahead of the RFP, before scope is locked, and shape how the buyer defines the problem.
That’s what creates margin.
When sellers influence direction early, they anchor the criteria, frame the value, and avoid price-based comparisons entirely.
The Real Lesson – Where Human Sellers Win
The Priority Sale isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing the right things, at the right altitude, at the right time.
What we help teams build:
A Sales Force That Creates Margin
Most teams are full of responders. We train creators—sellers who reframe threats, align high, and shape demand before it’s scoped.
A Pitch That Defends Price in the First 40 Seconds
The Priority Pitch earns executive-level access, not just “curious” middle managers.
A Framework for Margin-First Roles
We help teams rethink capacity: AI handles low-value quoting. Human sellers create value and protect margin.
A Path to Behavior Change That Sticks
Training fades. Daily reinforcement through our AI-driven platform (Navi) means reps practice upstream conversations until they become instinct.
If your team isn’t shaping the decision early, they’re just being shopped.
Try This
Audit your sales team’s calendar from the past two weeks.
How much time was spent in:
Executive-level conversations
Internal pipeline reviews
Task automation / email follow-up
Actual threat-framing dialogue
Now ask: what percentage of this could be automated by AI?
And where does human judgment still matter most?
In the Wild
LinkedIn sparked some worthwhile tension last week:
One post suggested the future of B2B sales will belong to teams that “do more faster” thanks to AI. But speed without capability just multiplies noise. The real advantage comes from sellers who can shape decisions, not just follow up faster.
Another exec questioned whether AI is actually changing how we sell or just automating old habits. Faster cadences and cleaner pipelines don’t solve for late access. If you’re not shaping the conversation early, you’re still chasing.
And one post argued that product quality should be enough to win the deal. But the best product doesn’t always win. The seller who frames the problem first defines what “best” looks like, and earns the margin that comes with it.