May 30, 2026 | Read online
One of the benefits of getting old is experience, and one of the benefits of experience is pattern recognition.
I've been through enough crazy stuff in my life to start recognizing patterns, and the one I'm worried about right now just got confirmed last night when I went to an IDC event in Boston - Navigating the AI Economy with Trusted Tech Intelligence.
If you've been reading my newsletter, you know I'm on my own AI journey, and I’m “learning out loud” along the way. When I made the switch from ChatGPT to Claude a few weeks ago and spent a weekend with CoWork, I wrote the newsletter entitled "I Know Kung Fu."
At first, I was fascinated and excited about everything that I could do with it, but then I became rather concerned.
It started to sink into me that I don't think I'll ever need to talk to a sales rep to buy something ever again. It validated what I've been saying for a while now, which is that I'm not worried about all these AI tools that are trying to automate sales and replace sales professionals. I'm worried about when the buyer wakes up and realizes they don't need us anymore.
Claude knows everything about me and my business. It's what I use to help me develop and execute my strategy, so it knows absolutely everything, including what I may or may not need moving forward. If I come across something that I think I need, the first place I go is into my own version of Claude and ask it whether or not it thinks I need it based on my strategy. It then gives me a full analysis with pros and cons and recommendations (with source links).
If Claude recommends that I look into it deeper, I don't call a sales rep, I stay in Claude and ask it to do deep research on that solution/product, including how it works, how it aligns with my current infrastructure and ecosystem, pros and cons, etc. I then ask it to compare the top 3 vendors in the space and give me a recommendation of which one I should dive deeper into.
I then have it do deep research on that vendor, all aspects of their solution, and have it find me videos or demos I can watch to see what it looks like.
If I can’t get a clear answer from Claude on something (which is rare when I use it to evaluate solutions) and I feel like I need to talk with someone at the company, I submit a request (inbound lead) and set up a meeting.
When I get on that call with a rep, I’m already so educated on their solution that I usually only need to know one or two specific details before I move forward.
If that rep then tries to put me through their "sales process," I'm gone. They need to add value immediately on the call and meet me wherever I am in my buying process. That's why most people want to talk to customer success or engineers way more than they want to talk to sales reps.
This is why, for me, and what I know I can do with Claude Co-Work, I don't think I'll ever need to talk to a sales rep ever again.
Now, let's be clear, I'm a two-person company, so I move fast, can break things, and security and protocol are not as critical for me as they would be for the enterprise, so we shouldn't be too worried about this happening for more robust businesses, right?
This is where pattern recognition comes in.
Many of you are probably too young to remember this, but there was a time when putting your credit card online to buy something was thought to be absolutely absurd. But then Amazon came out, and people started feeling comfortable buying small things for $5, $10, or $50 online. Eventually, I ended up buying a Tesla online without ever talking to a rep.
Let's use SaaS as another example. In the early days of SaaS, it was thought that it was a good solution if you couldn’t afford on-prem hardware and infrastructure, but there was no way it would ever be valid for the Enterprise. Then Salesforce.com signed State Farm for 1.4 million and threw that argument out the window.
So, how long do you think it's going to take for MM and ENT buyers to wake up and start using AI to evaluate every aspect of a solution and vendor before ever engaging with sales?
My bet? Not long.
This was confirmed last night when I went to the IDC event. Check out the charts below:
(Left image)
77% of buyers of complex B2B solutions use AI agents to engage, personalize, & support the buying process, RELYING LESS ON SALESPEOPLE.
(right image)
QUESTION: How do you expect the use of artificial intelligence to change how your company buys technology in the next 12 months?
ANSWER: We will assign buying tasks to AI agents using set parameters (e.g., price, availability, lift), to find exactly what we need to act and transact on our behalf.
- LESS THAN 10% “STRONGLY DISAGREE” OR “SOMEWHAT DISAGREE.”
QUESTION: How often do you use AI to assist with the following buying decision-making tasks?
ANSWER: Will act as my intermediary to write, solicit, gather, and compare RFI/RFP responses.
- LESS THAN 17% SAY NEVER” OR “RARELY”
This is a massive red flag for me and makes me very concerned for the future of sales professionals.
We need to level up, and we need to level up fast.
Leveling up means getting back to the fundamentals and making sure that we’re consistent with them and always improving. It also means becoming AI fluent so we can learn how to use it the right way and augment (not automate) the human aspects of sales that matter most (EQ).
I'm doing this across all aspects of my business and my training to help others do the same.
A good example is how I'm creating my sequences and cadences. I don't ask Claude to come up with messaging for me. I go through the process of identifying my key ICP, the priorities and challenges of the main personas I go after, and then mapping the components of my solution to their priorities to come up with messaging that is relevant and will resonate. As I go through this process, I use AI to help me learn about the personas and what they care about instead of just giving me the answer.
After I come up with messaging, I feed it into Apollo to create a sequence. By giving Apollo this targeted messaging, when it creates sequences for my target accounts, it's far more specific and relevant with the messaging.
However, even with a powerful tool like Apollo and great messaging, I still don't have it automatically send out anything for me. I have it put it all together and serve it up to me to review the emails/calls before I approve them to go out. I still believe the human needs to be the “last mile” and QC anything that goes out to the client.
Another suggestion I'm making to clients is that I think every company should have an internal SE AI bot that can answer most technical questions. This way, when a sales rep is on a call with a client who asks a technical question that the sales rep doesn't know the answer to, instead of waiting a week to schedule a meeting with the SE, the sales rep should share their screen, open up the SE AI bot, and learn out loud with the client. This approach shows transparency and builds trust with a client.
I even think one of the first questions we should ask a client when they get on a discovery call with us is - did you use AI to research us, and if so, what did it say, and what weren’t you able to learn? This way, you can learn pretty quickly how far down the process they are and where you need to meet them. Also, if they explain to you what they've learned and there are any discrepancies, you can correct them and then tell your marketing team about it.
There are plenty of other examples of how to use AI to level up and engage with the client while staying grounded in the fundamentals. When I started this newsletter, it wasn't meant to be a pitch, but this is exactly what I'm doing with my JB Sales Learning lab and my membership.
Regardless of whether or not you join my membership, I implore you to level up and level up fast. Use AI to learn, NOT to just give you the answer.
#MakeitHappen
