Hey friends,
I was listening to the latest episode of Topline with Amanda Kahlow.
She founded 6sense. Now she runs 1mind, and she builds AI agents she calls superhumans.
It's the second time she comes to the pod (I'm a big listener of Topline), and this time it was really interesting.
She told a story.
She flew to Austin for a second meeting with a CPO and a CMO.
She brought an AI solutions engineer on screen. His name is Nigel.
The meeting lasted two and a half hours. Nigel spoke for one-third of the time.
The deal is now in procurement for over 250K.
Keep in mind that Amanda sells this.
Her whole narrative is humans against superhumans, and the superhuman always wins. (of course...).
I think she also sounded a bit overenthusiastic sometimes, but I understand she had to keep her stand on this.
But one part stayed with me.
We are close to the moment where an AI agent runs a demo better than a human.
The AI is not brilliant. The bar in sales is just very low. (you all know this).
Most reps do not ask questions.
They do not listen. They talk over the buyer, they show every feature, they answer things nobody asked.
An AI does not do this. It asks. It waits.
It gives the exact depth the buyer wanted, at the moment the buyer wanted it.
That is the part I like, and it says something uncomfortable about my own profession.
So we might see this more and more in the future - AI that goes all into a demo.
Below a certain contract size, I believe you can already automate the full cycle.
I was talking to a friend who is a senior director at a large US corporation yesterday.
He is thinking of adding automations and agents across the SMB sales cycle. Makes sense.
Up to something like 1-2K / year, in the right market, an AI can take a deal from first touch to signature.
Above that number, I do not buy full replacement as of today.
I buy a superhuman plus a person. The AI carries the product demo, the sales engineer role.
The person carries the relationship, the follow-ups, the politics, multi-threading and all the complexities of selling enterprise deals.
Overall, I am bullish about superhumans in the sales cycle.
If you asked me just a year ago, I would have said no to all of this.
However everything in that episode is a US story.
US buyers, US budgets, US tolerance for a talking avatar inside a serious meeting.
Europe will get there in five to ten years. It will not happen next year.
But it's coming, and if that is the trend, we've got to start thinking what we will do when the revolution comes this part of the pond.
This is an interesting prediction, and I do believe we don’t need to wait too long for this.
Amanda also predicts marketing, sales and customer success will become one function within a year from now.
I agree with the direction.
Those three teams have been pretending to be separate for years while doing the same job. More or less.
I trust that the AI will push all three functions into one, probably under the CRO hat.
I used to say AI helps you prepare, research and build lists, and stops there.
Most of the value still sits there today.
But I no longer believe the demo is safe.
And if a machine asks better questions than a trained salesperson, then Houston we have a problem (do we?).
But one question remains unsolved in my mind…can AI start closing mid-market / enterprise deals too?
Thanks for reading this far. See you all next week!
