Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity. What he clearly didn’t see coming? That in the 21st century, everyone would be doing exactly the same thing - and getting exactly the same result.
So what’s today’s topic? You guessed it. AI.
AI has given us speed, but it has flattened the way we talk about sales. Conversations sound more and more alike. The same arguments, the same questions, the same language about “customer needs”. Of course, AI didn’t break sales. In a way, it just sped up what was already happening anyway.
For years, most client conversations have started with what’s on offer - the product, the proposal, the features. I’ve been hearing about value selling for 15 years - and for 15 years it’s been the same uphill battle against human nature. AI has simply copied that template thousands of times over. As a result, more and more conversations sound the same.
Value ≠ information
We’ve been talking about selling value for 25 years. And yet most sales conversations still sound like a catalogue. Features, specs, PDFs, discounts. In this flood of information, the client is simply left exhausted.
Research from SiriusDecisions shows that decision-makers are four times (4x!) more likely to talk to a salesperson who brings a new perspective, rather than yet another dose of product data. That ability is what’s becoming a real advantage today. Because AI can say things correctly, but only a human can say something that changes the way people think.
A delay that worked in my favour
I was recently reminded of a project from more than ten years ago. A company got in touch with an enquiry, but I replied too late - I was travelling at the time (I’ve had a few slip-ups like that in my career - nobody’s perfect!). By the time I got back and called them, it was a done deal. They’d chosen someone else. Someone cheaper, I knew (no surprise there). The decision had been made - at least officially.
Even so, I decided to have another go. I didn’t call the CEO, but someone one level below who had a say in the decision. I didn’t try to talk them round - I simply asked for a short meeting. And I got it. That meeting opened the door one level up - to the CEO himself.
I knew that if I wanted to stand out, I couldn’t walk in there with slides. I just made sure there was a flipchart in the room. I didn’t bring a presentation. I brought four markers.
I spent a few hours preparing for the first meeting. For the meeting with the CEO - several days (no exaggeration: my room looked like a detective’s office, with a wall of photos, pins and printouts). I knew I’d only get one shot.
I wasn’t selling the CEO a solution. I helped him (quite effectively, I think) see his problem in a new light. He more or less knew what he wanted - but now he saw it differently. More fully. I sketched out the situations they’d described themselves. I connected facts they’d been treating as separate. It wasn’t a presentation - it was a conversation that ended with a shared vision on a flipchart. I still have a photo of that flipchart sheet.
At the end, I was told the decision had already been made anyway, and the competitor was cheaper. A few days later, they called back. They’d changed their minds (boom!)
Not that my product was so different (OK, let’s be honest - obviously it was better). But mainly because the conversation was different. It let them look at the whole thing from another angle. That was enough to make them rethink their decision.
Buying vision: selling that sets the direction
Research from Sales Benchmark Index shows that 90% of won deals go to suppliers who were on the initial shortlist. If you’re not in that top three, you’re effectively out of the running.
Salespeople respond to requests instead of creating conversations that change how the client thinks. And this is where the so-called buying vision comes in. A study by Forrester Research found that 76% of B2B decision-makers choose the salesperson who was able to build a buying vision - in other words, who showed them a new way of understanding their situation.
Not the one who answered the questions best. Not the one with the lowest price. The one who helped them see how to think about the problem differently.
That’s exactly what happened back then - on the flipchart with that CEO. My product wasn’t all that different from the competition’s. But I had a conversation that gave them a new perspective. And that project opened the door to something bigger. It was right after that project that I founded Meaning Makers.
Looking back now, I think that was the moment I entered my own Momentum Loop - the very one I wrote about last week.
Tool ≠ conversation
Fast forward to 2025. Two situations. Google and Tomasz.
I spent most of February and March on planes - five countries, seven workshops for the sales teams of a certain tech giant that’s currently slugging it out with OpenAI for a share of the AI market.
Paradoxically, even though AI in sales was inescapable wherever we went (the sponsors were actively pushing it), the discussion centred not on the tool, but on the message.
How to build a story people will remember. How to talk about data so it sounds meaningful, not like a slide. How to make technology help you, without letting it speak for you.
The experience only confirmed that AI won’t replace conversation. It can speed up preparation, help with analysis and suggest ideas - but it can’t build trust. It can’t stir emotions, change its tone of voice or adapt to the moment when the other person is really listening.
Steve Jobs understood this better than most of us. Although he created one of the most influential tools in the world, he limited his children’s access to iPhones and iPads. In an interview with The New York Times, he put it plainly: “We don’t use them at home.” Not because he didn’t trust the technology. But because he knew how easily it could take over the conversation.
AI can talk, but it still can’t do… well, something more. And that’s exactly why the biggest winners will be the people who use it not to say more - but to speak with more substance.
Why this still wins
Closer to home, last week I spoke to Tomasz, a sales leader at an industrial company. It was practically a rerun of the first Meaning Makers project, only this time on a whiteboard - a virtual one.
Afterwards, he said simply: “A strategy means nothing if people can’t tell its story.” He also said he was completely sold on what I’d shown him.
The best plans, products and offers won’t change a thing if the sales team can’t show value in a conversation. Not in a proposal. Not in an email. In a conversation.
I spent several days preparing for that earlier project. The meeting with Tomasz took around fifteen minutes. I think the outcome will be similar, although the talks are still ongoing.
And that’s exactly the difference between then and now: technology lets you prepare faster, but it’s still the conversation that decides whether something will work.
That’s why at Meaning Makers we teach that you don’t sell with a product. You sell through conversation. A conversation that gives the client a new perspective. A conversation that gives them confidence that the decision they’re making makes sense.
AI in sales: four things to remember
AI isn’t the enemy of sales. It’s a tool that can make the best even better - as long as you don’t let it take over the conversation. It’s worth remembering four simple things:
- Preparation isn’t enough. AI cuts research from hours to minutes. But data doesn’t sell itself. What you do with it in the conversation is still up to you. So learn to lead that conversation - in your own words.
- Personalisation isn’t understanding. AI can help tailor the words, but not the tone of the conversation. Clients can tell when you’re talking to them - and when you really understand them. Or when you’re just reading from a script.
- Data isn’t reflection. Analyses, notes and summaries are just raw material. Just knowledge. Without a moment’s thought, they’re worthless. Less is always more. What will you pick out of the flood of information AI has generated for you?
- AI will teach you to talk, not to listen. Most models teach you how to put sentences together… But in sales, the most important things happen between the sentences.
Don’t scale mediocrity
AI is a huge opportunity. But only for those who know what they want to do with it. Because if you don’t have a strategy, AI will multiply the chaos. And if your conversation adds no value, AI will scale that emptiness too.
As Toby Newman put it: “AI allows humans the time to truly comprehend what brings value to their lives.” AI doesn’t take the conversation away - it makes room to finally think about it.
So don’t scale mediocrity. Scale conversations that clients will remember. Because in a world where everyone sounds the same, the real difference still starts with an equation - perhaps slightly less complicated than Einstein’s:
human + human (+ AI) = a new perspective.