While many sellers use AI for basic tasks like writing emails, its true power lies in enhancing the buyer's experience. The real competitive advantage comes from leveraging AI to create decision-ready recaps, stakeholder-specific FAQs, and personalized recommendations, thereby shortening the sales cycle by making it easier for the customer to buy.

Selling foundational AI isn't a standard IT sale. It requires a dual-threaded process targeting the CTO, who builds the agents, and the CRO, who must monetize them. The key is educating the CRO to shift from selling seats against IT budgets to capturing value from larger headcount and outsourced labor budgets.

The traditional sales model, based on demonstrating a product's fixed capabilities, is failing in the AI era. Instead, sellers must embrace curiosity and experimentation, guiding customers through workflow discovery to find unique value, as the real work begins after the initial sale.

Unlike mature markets that rely on proven case studies, the nascent AI space rewards go-to-market teams for their ability to be curious, guide customer experimentation, and jointly discover new workflows alongside them.

In the AI era, large enterprises still prefer vendors who act as partners, offering on-site training and change management support. This "old-school" approach builds trust and ensures successful adoption, often trumping a purely tech-driven or product-led growth (PLG) motion.

Salespeople often fail to build rapport with technical stakeholders. Deploy your own engineers to work directly with the customer's technical team. This peer-to-peer interaction builds credibility and trust, as they speak the same language and can co-create value, making the 'build vs. buy' argument moot.

The decision to build or buy software has evolved. Companies should buy commodity infrastructure (e.g., dialers, CRM plumbing) but must own the "intelligence" layer—the unique business logic for things like ICP definition or lead scoring. This allows for customization and portability, preventing vendor lock-in.

An unnamed founder successfully sells AI by acting as a consultant. They focus on showing customers how AI improves their job and increases bandwidth, rather than just selling software features. This approach alleviates fears of job loss and loss of control, which is crucial for adoption in conservative industries.

While many teams use AI to accelerate product development, a key advantage lies in using it to improve customer interactions. Providing customized deployment plans and deep technical answers shows customers you understand their specific needs, building trust and positioning your team as a superior partner.