Thoughts on sales, AI, and impossible expectations
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Sales attracts competitive people.
And competition is healthy - it pushes you, sharpens you, keeps you scrappy.
But competition has an ugly twin: comparison.
And it’s hard to separate the two…
Your teammate books 12 meetings while you booked 4.
Someone on LinkedIn closes a $300k deal, you’re average deal is $30k.
A rep at another company gets promoted in 14 months and you’re on month 26.
A competitor announces record growth while you’re behind your number.
It never ends.
The problem isn’t comparison itself - it’s comparing the outcome and ignoring the cost.
It’s easy to envy the rep who finished at 185% in Q3 and cashed a $65k commission.
It’s harder to acknowledge the tradeoffs:
the constant stress of doing “enough” each day
the early mornings and late follow-ups
the Sunday evening work sessions
But that’s just the emotional side.
The operational side might be even tougher.
Modern sellers are held to impossible expectations.
You’re responsible for:
researching accounts
tracking signals
understanding competitors
tailoring POVs
personalizing outreach
multi-threading deals
maintaining perfect CRM hygiene
running clean discovery
managing 50+ accounts
…all while being told to “focus on revenue producing activities”
The reality is sellers carry two primary responsibilities:
The main thing thing - selling.
The other stuff - everything required to earn the right to sell.
The best reps I work with today are finding ways to use AI to automate “the other stuff” to maximize their time spent engaging with buyers.
Tools like ZoomInfo’s GTM Workspace can help here, automating activities like research, prospecting, drafting emails and follow-up.
In fact, my favorite outbound AI use case today is buyer research — it’s one of the highest ROI activities and what used to take 10+ minutes can be done in seconds.
These “extra effort” tasks that once separated top reps from the pack are now available to everyone.
Which means the real gap today isn’t who grinds the hardest…
It’s who executes best when they're actually talking to customers.
Discovery.
Negotiation.
Objection handling.
Deal strategy.
The human parts are the parts AI can’t replace.
Sales will always have competition.
Comparison will always exist.
And AI + growth expectations have made the expectations higher than ever.
The reps winning right now aren’t the ones who hustle 12 hour days.
They’re the ones whose systems remove everything that isn’t selling.
If you’d like to see how ZoomInfo can help here, check this out.
If you want to see how I’m using AI for outbound, look here.
Until next Thursday,
TSG
P.S. I reply to all emails.
P.S.S. next weeks post is my favorite one of the year — Your 2025 Holiday Gift Guide — it drops on Wednesday.