AI has triggered a pace of change that can feel overwhelming. In fact, 49% of companies cite “keeping up with innovation” as their greatest threat, according to IDC. However, AI also presents sellers with an unprecedented opportunity to rapidly respond, adapt, and fast-track growth.

“AI-powered humans” might sound like an oxymoron. Solving for people is not in vogue. We see agents for everything cropping up daily – particularly for sales. The professional sales community has therefore viewed AI with some trepidation, feeling it could replace or eliminate some human-powered sales activity. But “humans versus agents” is a false choice. Would you rather get surgery by a human, an agent, or a human with an agent? 

The Business Case for AI-Powered Sellers

There’s a strong case for an “AI with sellers” paradigm, not an “AI or sellers” paradigm. First and foremost, trust remains important – so people matter. Gartner, Edelman, and Salesforce have all published findings showing that trust is a top factor in vendor selection – often more important than product features or even price.

Also, buyer complexity is rising. According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), the number of B2B buyers per purchase has grown from 5.4 to 6.8 in recent years. Similarly, solution complexity is growing. An Accenture survey found that 86% of participants agreed that – as the world moves toward solution-based offerings – partner-to-partner collaboration becomes increasingly vital. Furthermore, 57% of these partners believe that the primary benefit of such collaborations is the ability to create more complete solutions that effectively meet customer needs.

It Starts with the Seller

AI is not a threat to salespeople because, when harnessed, it can reimagine outdated models. The biggest opportunity lies in transforming the conventional approach to how we activate and engage salespeople, which tends to be a factory-style, one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, AI can handle the complexity of hyper-personalization to build a tailored on-ramp to next moves for each salesperson. It’s like a personalized CrossFit program for sales.

This is a clear departure from what technology has meant for sellers. Conventional tools have focused on tracking and auditing. They reinforce activities rather than build new behaviors and drive results. They speak to vagaries, such as “in the flow of work,” rather than support precise go-to-market moments. Now, with AI, we can empower salespeople with the support and agency they need to do the job. AI means we can engage the right seller at the right time for the right opportunity. AI can scale rather than displace sellers with superpowers.

From Measuring Activity to Measuring Muscle Memory 

The initial crop of AI tools has stayed with the role of tracking and auditing. You’ve likely been pitched one of many sales coaching solutions that solve for precisely hammering into sellers what (and how) they should say something. This only perpetuates the tracking and auditing mindset. 

Sports offers a better approach: Star athletes aren’t made by coaching alone; otherwise, we’d all be athletes. They become elite by doing their repetitions. Repetitions offer a far more empowering framework that puts the person at the center rather than relegating them to a passive object. “I am coached” makes me the passive object, while “I do my reps” puts me at the center of my growth. 

Science backs repetitions. In Hidden Potential, Adam Grant writes, “Put yourself in the ring before you feel ready. You don’t need to get comfortable before you can practice your skills – your comfort grows as you practice your skills.” In Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, James Clear describes a photography class where one group was graded on the quantity of photos taken while another was graded on producing a single perfect image. Surprisingly, the quantity group produced better work – not because they aimed for perfection, but because repetitions led to rapid improvement. The experiment underscores a simple truth: Consistent repetition builds skill faster than waiting to get something exactly right.

A focus on repetitions reinforces and measures sellers’ active engagement, insights, and muscle memory for the next move. Muscle memory metrics provide a leading indicator to actual results, and they are far more relevant to match the right opportunity to the right seller at the right time to fast-track wins.

Converting Tribal Know-How to Collective Intelligence

AI also offers a powerful opportunity to move from “command and control” to “crowdsource and curate” at an unlimited scale. Sometimes the best pitch is in someone’s head – and hearing it from peers makes it far more credible and relatable for other sellers. This is evidenced by YouTube, as 86% of U.S. viewers say they often use YouTube to learn new things. Harnessing AI can move sellers from short-lived perfection toward continuous mobilization. They can learn from themselves, from each other, with AI feedback that can provide a safe space (I have never had ChatGPT get short with me), and with the mentorship of managers and experts when it makes sense. Prompting sellers to view content – as well as do repetitions and share insights – can reframe the challenge from driving compliance and adoption of tools to driving virality. With AI, tribal know-how becomes readily accessible collective intelligence. 

Start Small and Start Fast to Get Results

Managing this shift is managing change. To get started: Do your repetitions. Start small and start fast. Champion this new model of seller engagement and elevate early power users as your evangelists. Establish a 90-day success framework to assess ease of use, field adoption, and speed of iteration to ensure the platform stays fresh and relevant. Don’t solve for scale up front – test the platform in action for seller engagement and, of course, business results. Then scale from there.

We’ve seen a life sciences company sustain over 90% user engagement with repetitions, leading to accelerated time to market for a new drug launch – from three months to one week. A hyperscale runs over 100 sales plays a year, with 90% ramp within four weeks. An enterprise software company now assigns opportunities directly to partner sellers, based on visibility to seller-level repetitions. 

AI equips us to put sellers at the center and fast-track results.

Bhakti Vithalani is the founder and CEO of BigSpring, an AI-powered go-to-market mobilization platform.