July 4, 2026 | Read online
67% don't want you. 69% do
I used to use a Gartner stat in my training that was about how 43% of B2B clients want a “rep free” experience. I used this to highlight the challenges we face as Sales professionals. I would then contrast that with the good news that of those 43% who wanted a rep free experience, they had a 23% higher regret rate. This meant that they regretted their decision more when a rep wasn't involved. I highlighted how this proved that Sales reps added value, it’s just that it was different than ever before, and that we needed to level up to meet the moment.
Well, it’s time to level up again, and even more based on some new Gartner stats I just came across. The updated bad news on this is that the percentage of clients wanting a rep-free experience jumped from 43% to 67%. The updated good news is that 69% of buyers turn to sales reps to validate their AI-generated insights.
On the surface, these two data points seem to contradict each other, but they don’t. If you combine them, I think they tell us exactly what kind of rep today’s buyer actually wants.
Buyers don't want a rep who repeats what AI already told them (that's the 67%). If you show up to a discovery call and start walking them through information they can pull from ChatGPT in 30 seconds, they would rather stay in the AI, because it's cheaper, faster, and less awkward for them.
When it comes time to invest and allocate real budget on something, the same buyer wants a human in the loop. They don’t necessarily need us to educate them; they want us to validate what they already learned, connect it to their business context, and tell them what the AI missed. That's the 69%.
The bar for Sales reps has gone up significantly in this world of AI. AI hasn’t replaced the need for Sales reps in general, but it has replaced the need for the rep who was showing up unprepared and hoping the discovery call would tell them what to sell. That rep is done.
The rep who wins now is the one who does the work before they even reach out to a prospect and/or get on a discovery call.
TWO CONVERSATIONS, SAME ANSWER
In the last few weeks, I got on the phone with two different friends of mine. Both are smart, experienced operators and are building new products and bringing them to market. (BTW, this is the type of support I provide through my new Sales Advisory Services)
I asked each of them the same first question. "Who is your ideal customer profile? Who is this actually best suited for?"
Both of them, independently, gave me the same answer.
"We can pretty much do anything for anybody. Our product is a fit for everyone. It could be used in almost any way."
I told them what I've been telling sales leaders for 25 years.
If you can sell anything to anybody, you're going to sell nothing to nobody (I know that’s a double negative, but you get what I mean).
If you don't know exactly who your ICP is, exactly what problems they're facing, and exactly how your product ties to those problems, there is no way you’re going to get outbound traction. You will send generic messages to a mixed list, get generic responses, and blame the tools when it doesn't work.
I'm going through this exact exercise myself, and it's harder than I want it to be.
For most of my 25 years, my customers have been almost entirely in Tech/SaaS. That's the audience booking my keynotes, running my training, and buying my membership. That's the ICP I’ve optimized against.
Something has definitely shifted in the last six months, though. Because of the AEO work we’ve been doing, the inbounds have started coming from very different places. Different industries, different structures, different words for the same problems. My historical ICP is still there, but there's a whole new segment of my market that I hadn't been targeting deliberately, and I'm getting pulled toward it by the market itself.
So I'm doing exactly what I would tell anyone else to do. I'm going back to the top of the funnel and rebuilding my ICP from scratch with real data.
First, I'm using Claude to walk through my FTF02 Ideal Customer Profile prompt pack on my own business. It's a six-phase exercise that pulls patterns out of my top 10 to 20 customers, builds a tiered framework, pressure-tests it, and outputs an approach strategy for each tier.
Second, I'm using Otter (sponsor) to pull the transcripts from every conversation I've had with new inbounds in the last two months. I'm running those transcripts through Claude using the MCP connector and asking it to extract the actual problems these prospects are describing, the language they’re using, and where their pain shows up before they even name a solution. That analysis is telling me a story I could not have gotten from a spreadsheet, because it's coming from the words the prospects themselves used.
Third, I'm feeding all of that back into Apollo. Refined ICP, updated persona definitions, sharper messaging that matches how prospects are actually describing their problems, and short-loop tests across small batches to see what resonates before I scale. The refined ICP goes into the audience filters. The refined messaging goes into the sequences. Apollo is where the ICP work becomes an actual pipeline.
Bad targeting used to mainly cost you time and burn through your lists. Now it costs you something far more important - your credibility. When you send generic outreach to a wrong-fit prospect, the AI-native buyer at the other end knows immediately. They've seen ten of those emails today. The moment they see yours, you're the 67%.
Sharpening your ICP isn't optional in the AI era. It's the first move that lets you be in the 69% that clients want to talk to.
The rep buyers want in 2026 is the one who does the work. The work is knowing exactly who you should be selling to, exactly what problems they're facing, and exactly how you show up differently than the AI that already told them the surface-level answer.
If your answer to "who is your ICP" is "everybody," you don't have an ICP. You have a wish list. And in a market where AI has made generic outreach effortless, that wish list is going to hurt you faster than it ever has before.
Do the work at the top of the funnel. Everything downstream gets sharper from there.
#Make It Happen
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