Good morning,
Going forward, you will find a new format.
Still three sections for each workshop. But now, module 1 is for sellers, module 2 for managers, and module 3 for business owners. And there will be a PDF workbook accompanying each newsletter to get right into the workshop activities.
This will make it faster to read and easier to find a few ideas for the week ahead.
Now on to the good stuff… 😀 People, not AI, are the key ingredient in closing deals. But… How many hours did you or your team spend last week on work that AI could have done in minutes?
Sales teams that use AI tools spend 28% more time on revenue-generating activities than those that do not (Salesforce State of Sales 2025). That gap is not closing on its own.
Without AI embedded in your process, your people are still manually researching prospects, writing every email from scratch, and chasing pipeline data that should surface automatically.
FOR SELLERS | AI cuts your prep time so you show up to every call knowing more than the competition. The sellers who learn to use it now are the ones who carry the bag in two years. |
FOR MANAGERS | AI gives you visibility into what your team is actually doing - and what they are missing. Stop coaching on gut feel. Start coaching on data. |
FOR OWNERS | AI is the force multiplier that lets a lean team compete against a fully staffed one. Used well, it closes the headcount gap without adding payroll. |
The revenue impact is direct. Reps who use AI for pre-call research, email drafting, and follow-up scheduling close more and churn less. Managers with AI-assisted pipeline tools forecast better and coach faster. Owners who build AI into their workflow stop losing deals to bigger competitors with bigger teams. |
Turn to Best View Tables Below
Key Terms
GENERATIVE AI | AI systems that produce new content - emails, proposals, summaries, call scripts - based on the prompts you give them. The output quality depends entirely on how well you direct it. |
PROMPT ENGINEERING | The skill of writing instructions that get AI to produce useful, specific, sales-ready output instead of generic filler. It is a learnable skill that compounds over time. |
AI-ASSISTED WORKFLOW | A revenue process where AI handles the repeatable, time-consuming tasks - research, drafting, logging - so your people can focus on the judgment-dependent work only humans can do. |
Do's and Don'ts
DO | DON'T |
Use AI to do the first draft of every outbound email, then edit it to sound like you. | Send AI-generated emails without editing them - buyers can tell, and it kills trust. |
Give AI specific context - the company, the person, the deal stage - and the output improves immediately. | Ask AI generic questions and expect specific answers - vague prompts produce vague results every time. |
The Workshop
MODULE 01 - FOR SELLERS AI-Powered Pre-Call Prep Use AI to research faster, personalize better, and open stronger. |
Most sellers walk into calls knowing the company name and not much else. That gap shows up immediately when the buyer senses you did not do your homework.
Pre-Call Research Audit
How to use this: run it solo in 5 minutes, bring it to your next 1:1, or use it as a team standup opener.
RESEARCH AREA | WHAT AI FOUND IN 2 MIN | HOW YOU USED IT IN THE CALL |
Company news and recent press | Buyer announced a new product launch last month and is expanding the sales team. | Opened with a question about how the launch was tracking against their Q2 number. |
LinkedIn activity of the decision-maker | VP posted about difficulty retaining reps after the first 90 days. | Connected the solution directly to onboarding speed - made it their problem, not a feature list. |
Competitor positioning in the market | Main competitor just raised prices and shifted upmarket, leaving a gap in mid-market. | Mentioned the gap unprompted and positioned our solution as the natural move for mid-market buyers. |
YOUR TURN | [YOUR ANSWER] | [YOUR ANSWER] |
FIELD NOTE Give AI the buyer's LinkedIn URL and the company's press page - those two inputs alone produce a better prep brief than most sellers build in an hour. |
Q: What is one piece of information you regularly miss before calls that AI could surface in under two minutes? A: Start with LinkedIn activity and recent company news - those two areas close the biggest research gaps for most sellers and take less time than reading your own CRM notes. |
MODULE 02 - FOR MANAGERS AI-Assisted Pipeline Coaching Use AI to surface coaching opportunities before deals die. |
Managers who coach on gut feel miss the same patterns their reps miss. AI gives you the data to coach on behavior, not just outcome.
Pipeline Health Signal Tracker
How to use this: run it solo in 5 minutes, bring it to your next 1:1, or use it as a team standup opener.
DEAL / REP | AI-FLAGGED RISK SIGNAL | COACHING ACTION TAKEN |
Marcus - mid-market deal, 60 days in stage | No executive contact logged. Only one stakeholder engaged. No next step on calendar. | Ran a 15-minute deal review. Helped Marcus build a multi-thread outreach plan to two other contacts. |
Priya - enterprise deal, champion went quiet | Email response time dropped from 4 hours to 3 days. Last call summary shows the buyer raised procurement concerns. Then stopped emailing back. | Coached Priya to re-engage with a business case framed for the CFO, not the champion. |
Jordan - SMB renewal, no activity in 30 days | Usage data down 40% last quarter. No check-in scheduled. Account at churn risk. | Scheduled a joint call. Brought customer success in and built a 30-day success plan together. |
YOUR TURN | [YOUR ANSWER] | [YOUR ANSWER] |
FIELD NOTE Pull your three longest-stalled deals into an AI tool and ask it to list the missing signals - you will see the pattern your reps cannot see from inside the deal. |
Q: Which rep on your team is most likely carrying a deal that is further from closing than the CRM shows - and what AI-surfaced signal would tell you that? A: Look for deals where contact frequency is dropping and next steps are missing - those two signals together predict deal death faster than any single indicator and are the first place to apply AI-assisted review. |
MODULE 03 - FOR OWNERS AI as a Revenue Force Multiplier Use AI to scale your team's output without scaling your headcount. |
Small teams lose deals not because they lack talent but because they run out of bandwidth at the wrong moment. AI eliminates the tasks that eat the time your team should be spending on buyers.
Workflow Automation Opportunity Map
How to use this: run it solo in 5 minutes, bring it to your next 1:1, or use it as a team standup opener.
TASK YOUR TEAM DOES MANUALLY | HOURS PER WEEK SPENT | AI SOLUTION TO TEST THIS WEEK |
Writing first-touch outbound emails for each prospect | 6 hours per week across the team. | Use a GPT-4 prompt template to generate a personalized first draft in 30 seconds per prospect. |
Summarizing call recordings and logging to CRM | 4 hours per week in post-call admin across three reps. | Use a transcription and summarization tool - Granola (My current favorite), Otter.ai, Fireflies, or Gong - to auto-generate and log summaries. |
Researching new prospects before outreach | 5 hours per week - 30 minutes per prospect for two reps. | Build a standard AI prompt that pulls company news, LinkedIn signals, and competitor context in under 3 minutes. |
YOUR TURN | [YOUR ANSWER] | [YOUR ANSWER] |
FIELD NOTE Pick one manual task from your team's week, give it to AI for five days straight, and measure the time recovered before building anything else - prove the model before you scale it. |
Q: What is the single most time-consuming repeatable task in your revenue process right now - and what would your team do with that time if AI handled it? A: Start with the task that touches the most people most often - that is where AI delivers the fastest visible return and gives you the proof point to build a culture of adoption around it. |
KPI Dashboard
Track your progress against these three metrics. Where you start is fine. Where you are at 90 days is what matters.
MODULE | STARTING POINT (1-5) | 90-DAY GOAL |
Module 01 - Sellers: AI Pre-Call Prep | 1 = entering calls with no AI-assisted research. 5 = using AI to build a complete prep brief before every call. | Use AI pre-call prep on 100% of scheduled calls and cut average prep time to under 5 minutes. |
Module 02 - Managers: AI Pipeline Coaching | 1 = coaching based on rep updates alone. 5 = using AI-flagged signals to drive every pipeline review conversation. | Run weekly pipeline reviews using at least three AI-surfaced risk signals per rep per meeting. |
Module 03 - Owners: AI Workflow Automation | 1 = no AI in the revenue workflow. 5 = AI handling all repeatable tasks so the team focuses only on buyers. | Automate at least two repeatable revenue tasks and recover a minimum of 8 team hours per week. |
Recommended Reading
The AI-Powered Enterprise Seth Earley | 2020 | Lioncrest Publishing Earley lays out how to build AI into business operations in a way that sticks - not a pilot program, a real infrastructure shift that changes how your team works every day. |
Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence Agrawal, Gans, Goldfarb | 2018 | Harvard Business Review Press This book reframes AI as a prediction tool that changes the value of human judgment - a practical lens for any owner or manager deciding where AI belongs in their process. |
Revenue vs. Sales Mort Greenberg | 2023 | digitalCORE Publishing The practical guide to building a revenue process that wins - and how AI fits into a system designed around real buyer behavior, not wishful pipeline math. |
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The Revenue Workshop isn’t theory. It’s a field-tested system used by real leaders, in real markets, under real pressure.
Each newsletter is based on one of over 300 workshops and worksheets found in the eight books of the RevenueVsSales.com and TheFocusedSeller.com book series.
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