There’s a lot of noise right now about artificial intelligence rewriting the sales playbook. Some are already handing over the pen. But before we let a chatbot draft our closing arguments, maybe we should ask a different question: Are we replacing bad habits with good tech, or are we just digitizing the same tired mediocrity?
It’s easy to get swept up in the glow of Ai. Type a prompt, get a pitch. Ask a question, get a playbook. The illusion is seductive, sales without sweat, strategy without scars. But here’s the problem: selling, especially in the gritty trenches of copier and office tech, has never been about who has the best research. It’s about who understands the room.
The Ai crowd will tell you that large language models are like digital Swiss Army knives. They can prospect, prep, pitch, follow up, and even role-play objections. Sure, they can do those things. But they do them without smell. No scent of hesitation in the voice. No quiet clue that the IT guy in the back just raised an eyebrow at your lease terms. No sixth sense that tells you when to lean in or when to shut up.
What Ai gives you is speed. What it cannot give you is presence.
Take that rep who went from missing quota to hitting the President’s Club thanks to ChatGPT. I don’t doubt her results. But the story that gets lost is what she already had going for her, drive, field experience, instinct. Ai didn’t turn her into a better salesperson. It just amplified the strengths she’d earned the hard way. That part doesn’t fit neatly into a prompt.
Let’s get real. Most salespeople don’t struggle because they lack information. They struggle because they lack application. You can feed Ai every prompt in the world, but if you don’t know how to spot a gatekeeper power play or call out the unspoken objection hanging in the air, the machine can’t help you. That’s not a software problem. That’s a reps-on-the-ground problem.
And don’t forget the danger of dependence. There’s a growing crop of sellers who haven’t cold-called without a script in two years. Who think ‘engagement’ is measured in clicks and opens. Who couldn’t write a handwritten thank-you note if their bonus depended on it. When the tech fails, when the data’s off, when the power goes out, what do they fall back on?
Not instinct. Not memory. Not even grit.
Nothing.
So no, I’m not anti-Ai. But I am against lazy thinking. I’m against the notion that we can prompt our way past the human parts of selling. Because in a business built on trust, nothing will ever outperform a gut-level understanding of who you’re talking to and why they should give a damn.
Use Ai? Absolutely. But use it like you’d use a flashlight in a blackout, helpful, not holy.
Because at the end of the day, you’re not in the business of pushing buttons. You’re in the business of pushing belief.
And no bot’s gonna do that for you.
—Celeste Dame 🚀🧠
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