AI’s Impact on Sales + Marketing
My 3 predictions for what comes next in the world of B2B GTM
A few years ago, I started to notice more clutter on my LinkedIn feed. More formulaic self-congratulatory posts. More shameless, canned, clumsy pitches. More broetry. More (as a friend quipped) “B-players teaching C-players how to be A-players.”
I didn’t like it. So I wrote a rant. About what I was seeing, and how I felt the world’s #1 professional platform was contending with the inevitable side effect of its own popularity: Noise.
This was all before ChatGPT came along. And given the explosive adoption of generative AI, I think things are about to get a whole lot noisier — on LinkedIn, sure, but also in general for anyone selling, marketing, or buying anything in the world of B2B.
Thanks to AI, here’s where I think we’re headed.
Prediction 1: AI Creates an Explosion of (Mediocre) Content
I’ve talked to a lot of early sales & marketing adopters of ChatGPT.
They’re all saying the same thing:
“Yeah, this is cool — but there’s still a lot of work you need to do with what ChatGPT spits out before you can use it.”
Sure, AI can give you a running head start on almost any kind of content. But creating something you’re proud of — something people remember you for — still takes a lot of work.
A lot of people out there won’t do that work. They’ll just tweak the stuff the AI spits out and post it. It’s too fast. It’s too easy.
Here’s the side effect of this: All the platforms you spend time and money on are going to get a whole lot noisier.
Simply creating content won’t be enough. Everyone’s doing that now.
You need to find a way to stand out.
Prediction 2: “Selling Visually” Separates The Winners + Losers
So how do you stand out? You get people to watch — not read — your stuff.
Given the explosion in AI-enabled textual content (and the increased noise on all digital platforms), video content will stand out more than ever — and will be more effective at commanding scarce attention from the people you want to buy your stuff.
Video = good. Video built with customer empathy = even better.
How do you do that? It’s a two-step process.
(1) Answer a single question they care about.
(2) Make it fun or interesting or different or unexpected.
That’s it.
Prediction 3: Sales Teams Take On a Dual Mandate
A CMO once told me he thinks of his PPC expense not as lead generation per se, but as insurance.
“It’s the cost of guaranteeing my buyer sees my message.”
Winning teams will start to lean on their sales teams as a similar sort of “distribution insurance” for their most important video content.
Winning sales teams will still manage deals, but will start allocating more of their time to act as “content concierges”: Making educated guesses on where potential buyers are in the funnel, and then sharing helpful, video-heavy answers with them on a 1:1 basis — with very little asked for in return.
The best teams will give far more than they get from most prospects. They’ll also build a lot more trust.
This will change the mindset and hiring profile these sales teams seek out.
Salespeople who know how to build trust + create demand by sharing the right content at the right time and who can effectively guide people through the buying process once they’re ready are going to have a lot of fun and make a lot of money in the next 5–10 years.
Here’s what I think.
✔ Winning GTM teams have already noticed this is happening. They’re already adjusting their approach.
❌ Losing teams will keep doing the same old thing — and while sharing a drink in a hotel bar sometime in the not-so-distant future, they’ll complain and they’ll wonder… why their job feels so much harder than it did just a few short years ago.
Which kind of team do you want to be?