November 15, 2025 | Read online​

I’ve been extremely worried about the future and relevance of sales reps in this new world of AI.

At first, I was worried about all the tools coming out to automate sales from the sellers perspective, but that’s not what I’m worried about anymore.

What I’m way more worried about is when the buyer wakes up and realizes they don’t need us anymore (at least for the majority of the “value” a sales rep brings to the current buying process).

I challenge any sales rep, right now, who thinks they aren’t in trouble, to go into any AI model and pretend like they’re a potential customer for their own solution.

For me, I would go into ChatGPT and say, “I’m a VP of Sales at a 50-person SaaS company with 20 SDRs and 30 AEs. I need sales training for my team to improve their prospecting skills, and I am looking to evaluate the JB Sales training. Tell me about the training, what are the pros and cons? Give me the top 5 positive and negative reviews on G2, compare their training against the other top 3 vendors on G2, etc.”

When you realize in a 5 minute conversation with AI you’ll get far more value than some 22 year old who’s going to ask BANT questions, give limited insights or value, and then wait a week to talk to an AE who’s going to ask you the same questions and maybe show a canned demo and then wait another week to talk to an SE who’s going to ask you the same questions and then hopefully give you the value you’re looking for, you know we’re in trouble.

I used to think sales reps didn’t need to know a ton about the product/solution and just needed to be the quarterback to help coordinate all the different moving parts on both sides.

Recently I’ve shifted my mentality and started thinking the rep needs to know a lot more about their product/solution because the days of “I don’t know, let me get back to you on that” or “we’ll have to set up another call with our engineer” are not going to be tolerated anymore by the client.

If we’re not adding value at every stage of the sales process and with every interaction, the client will easily find it somewhere else, whether that be AI or our competition.

This is what’s been keeping me up at night, wondering how the majority of reps are going to stay relevant. But then it hit me, if the client has access to that type of insights and power using AI, so do we and we should use it.

When I launched my newsletter a while ago, I called it “JB’s Learning Lab” with the concept of “learning out loud.” I realized that things were moving so fast there was no way I could know everything and translate that to my audience in any meaningful way, and I also know that I’m not exactly the brainiac of the sales industry, so I figured I would just try to learn out loud with my audience and share what’s working and what’s not.

It dawned on me the other day that we can do the same thing with our customers. We can learn out loud with them throughout the sales process.

Most companies have an internal AI bot trained on their content at this point, but even if yours doesn’t, you can still create your own or even just use a general AI platform.

I’d recommend creating a custom GPT and including all your marketing material, competitive intel, ICP, case studies, etc. I personally don’t think there is anything “proprietary” any more but make sure if your company still thinks they have “secret IP” they don’t want to get out into the public (even though I almost guarantee it's already out there) then don’t add that to the GPT. You can even feed it some of your previous sales calls or recordings of demos.

There are plenty of use cases for creating your own custom GPT to help prep for meetings, summarize key take-aways, role play and more, but the “Learn Out Loud” use case didn't hit me until recently.

The reason this clicked for me recently is because I realized that a large portion of the value I bring to my clients through my training and coaching right now is to show them all the possibilities of how to use AI throughout the sales process without losing the human touch.

Many times, while I’m trainin,g I’ll pull up Chat GPT to show what it can do or help me get an answer to something that I’m not sure about.

When I use it WITH the teams or individuals I’m working with, and learn together with them, I see the engagement and interest go way up.

This made me go back to the sales rep being the “Quarterback” analogy, but just in a different way.

Do I still think that sales reps need to have more product knowledge and be able to answer more detailed questions in the moment without relying on an SE? Yes. Do I still think chasing automation is a fool’s errand? Yes.

But, do I think the sales reps who are willing to use AI to collaborate WITH the client will be the ones who will stand out and add the most value? Yes!

Most people are not used to the power of AI yet. Imagine how you could differentiate yourself by not only using AI in the meeting to get answers, run scenarios, identify root cause issues, etc. but to show the client the possibilities of what they can do with it.

This obviously isn’t appropriate in every sales scenario, especially when the person you’re talking to is highly AI savvy, but if that’s the case they probably know all the information the sales rep knows anyway.

I believe this approach could add value in multiple ways.

• It’s a truly transparent way of collaborating with the client
• It could provide immediate answers to questions so you don’t have to get back to them and lose the momentum of the sale.
• It shows your ability to get creative and figure things out
• It stops the facade of sales reps trying to pretend like they know certain things they’re unsure of at the moment.
• It might impress the client with HOW you sell versus WHAT you sell which is the ultimate differentiator in a world of commoditization.
• It allows us to continue to be the quarterback of the sales without having to delegate too much of the process to others and lose control.

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I know it’s not the answer to all the challenges we’re facing in sales right now but it's a way to stay relevant when it’s getting harder and harder to do so.

Let me know what you think and if you give it a try, let me know how it works for you.

P.S. If you’re starting to explore how AI fits into your GTM strategy—or wondering if your team’s even ready for it—ZoomInfo built a solid AI Readiness Assessment. It’s a 2-minute quiz based on MIT research that benchmarks your data, adoption, and strategy. Worth checking out before you go all-in on AI.

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