Picture Fifth Avenue in New York City, Easter morning 1900. Horse-drawn carriages dominate the street. Fast-forward just 13 years, and they've completely vanished—replaced by automobiles.
Here's the twist: both moved at 11 miles per hour.
This is where we are with AI in sales today. Massive transformation. Incredible efficiency gains. But are we actually more effective?
When we surveyed 300 pre-sales professionals at DemoFest London, 68% said selling AI feels completely different from selling their core product. The energy around AI is real. CFOs are opening budgets. C-suite meetings are easier to land. Everyone has a mandate to explore.
But here's what those same professionals confirmed: the fundamentals haven't changed.
You still need great discovery. You still need to connect to buyer motivations. You still need to map value across operational, departmental, and strategic levels. AI hasn't rewritten the sales playbook—it's just added a new chapter.
Here's a sobering stat: 61% of pre-sales professionals have over seven years of industry experience. Another 42% came from consulting or implementation roles before joining sales.
For decades, we've relied on that deep expertise to tell compelling stories. We've lived the customer's pain. We've implemented solutions. We know what works.
But with AI? We're all beginners.
Only 15% of training budgets focus on AI fluency, even though 75% of organizations have C-suite mandates to explore AI tools. We're being told to experiment without being taught how to experiment well.
The result: lots of excitement, not enough expertise.
Look at how teams currently use AI:
17% for call summaries and note-taking
13% for demo prep
12% for account research
12% for emails and communications
Notice something? Almost every top use case is internally focused. We're saving time on admin work. We're automating repetitive tasks. We're getting faster.
But are we better?
One participant shared a perfect example. They built a custom AI tool that generated five pages of excellent analysis. When asked to summarize their point of view, they couldn't. They just scrolled and read from the screen.
This is the trap. AI can shortcut research. It can handle note-taking. But it can't shortcut the internalization and critical thinking that makes you effective.
As one panelist put it: "AI plus HI equals Activated Intelligence." Artificial Intelligence plus Human Intelligence creates real value.
The best organizations aren't just throwing AI at problems. They're:
Strategic and focused – They define clear use cases with measurable ROI
Building proof points early – They're creating micro-POCs at the start of sales cycles
Investing in continuous learning – AI clubs, Friday meetups, prompt banks, and internal hackathons
Keeping humans in the loop – Using AI to accelerate judgment, not replace it
And here's the key: when they find a use case that works, they socialize it. They share it. They scale it.
MIT research shows 95% of AI projects deliver zero business impact. But the 5% that work? They deliver outsized returns. The winners are the teams that fail fast, learn quickly, and amplify what works.
First, stop treating AI as separate from your core sales motion. It's an enhancement, not a reinvention. Discovery, value mapping, storytelling—these still drive deals.
Second, move from efficiency to effectiveness. Don't just automate tasks. Use those time savings to think more critically about customer outcomes. Develop stronger points of view. Tell better stories.
Third, build your AI fluency in community. Start small. Pick one use case. Master it. Share what you learn. Ask five "whys" with your prompts, just like you would with a customer.
Finally, remember this: pre-sales professionals have always been trusted advisors because of deep expertise. That hasn't changed. Your AI fluency is now part of that expertise.
The hype will fade. The curiosity will normalize into competence. And when it does, the teams who leaned in early—who experimented, learned, and led—will have an unbeatable advantage.
The transformation is here. The question isn't whether to adapt. It's whether you'll use this moment to become truly better, not just faster.