How Should Salespeople Talk About AI Adoption With Clients?
When they say: “We need to hire an AI person.”
What you should hear: They know they’re supposed to be doing something with AI. They just don’t know what. Their instinct, because it’s the instinct of every executive, is to make it someone’s job.
You say: No single hire solves this. If you hire a technical person, they’ll build things nobody uses. If you hire a strategy person, you’ll get beautiful frameworks but nothing gets built. What you actually need is a system that turns your existing people into AI Builders — and we work with a group that does exactly that.
Key question to ask: What specific business problem are you hoping that person would solve first?
When they say: “We’ve given our teams ChatGPT — we’re using AI.”
What you should hear: They have some pockets of activity, but likely no momentum. Employees are using it for surface-level tasks and have never considered deeper workflows or decisions that are staying completely untouched.
You say: Having access to a tool and getting value from it are very different things. Most organizations hand out licenses and hope for the best. What’s missing is a methodology — a way to identify your highest-value problems, build solutions to them, and measure whether they’re working. That’s the gap we can help you close.
Key question to ask: How are you measuring what’s actually creating business value? And do you have a plan to scale the ones that are working?
When they say: “Our board is asking about AI.”
What you should hear: Top-down pressure without bottom-up capability. This is AI Theater — expensive, performative AI initiatives that produce impressive presentations and zero business results.
You say: We see this constantly. The pressure is real, but the response matters. A $1.2 million PowerPoint from a Big Four firm that sits in a folder unopened — that’s what happens when you respond to board pressure without a methodology. There’s a better path, and it starts with your people, not a slide deck.
Key question to ask: When you say AI strategy, what does success look like for your business unit in 12 months? What’s different about how your team works?
When they say: “We’re worried about falling behind our competitors.”
What you should hear: Fear is driving this decision. Fear is a powerful motivator, but it leads to terrible decisions — buying enterprise AI licenses nobody uses, hiring the wrong people for the wrong roles.
You say: The fear is understandable, but here’s what the data actually shows: 95% of organizations are seeing zero measurable return on their AI investments. The race isn’t about who spends the most — it’s about who builds the capability first. And the companies that win will be the ones with people who can break down real business processes and automate the right parts.
Key question to ask: What are you specifically seeing your competitors do that concerns you?
When they say: “We’ve already spent money on AI and aren’t seeing results.”
What you should hear: They treated AI deployment like a software rollout — buy the tool, install the system, train the staff. But that approach fails because AI doesn’t have a single discrete use case. It requires a fundamentally different adoption model.
You say: You’re not alone. MIT research shows that 95% of organizations see zero return on estimated $30–40 billion of enterprise AI spending. The problem isn’t the technology. The technology is extraordinary. The problem is treating AI deployment like a software rollout, when it’s fundamentally different. You need a methodology, not another platform.
Key question to ask: Where do you think the breakdown happened — the technology, the rollout, or the adoption by your people?