Real Stories About AI That You Need to Hear: And Why Human-Led is Still the Best Play

🎙️ "AI Won’t Close the Deal for You—But Here’s How It Can Help"

AI is everywhere in sales—automating emails, tracking engagement, and surfacing leads. But let’s be clear: AI doesn’t close deals. Humans do.

In this episode of Revenue Remix, I break down:
🚀 Where AI helps—and where it backfires.
🚨 The biggest AI sales mistakes I’ve seen firsthand.
✅ 5 AI + HI plays that top sales teams are using to win more deals.

💡 The truth? AI should be your thought partner, not your sales rep. The best sales teams aren’t just using AI to move faster—they’re using it to work smarter.

If you’re not testing AI + HI in your sales process, you’re already behind.

Related Resources & Links:

• Mini Pod: Is Outbound Dead? Why you might think so and what you can do to fix it
• Get the complete AI+HI B2B Sales Guide
• Be the first to read a case study exploring a recent client success
• Apply for early access to our Smart Sales Playbook program - available to the public for the first time!

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services or to guest on the show and share your insights
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Transcript

summer: 0:00

Sales is a numbers game, but even more so it's a trust game and trust isn't built with robotic outreach at scale. It's built through authentic conversations.

0:09

Welcome back to Revenue Remix, a podcast from Rise of Us, where we take a fresh spin on driving revenue growth, hosted by Summer Pelletti, a fractional CRO who works with business owners and leaders who feel held back by outdated systems. This podcast explores how adaptable, unified frameworks can transform static processes. Equipping teams to meet evolving customer needs and drive resilient, lasting growth. Each episode features insights from Summer and her guests, offering practical strategies to sidestep common pitfalls and build real revenue momentum. It's time to remix the way we think about growth. Enjoy the show.

summer: 0:51

Oh, and welcome back to another episode of Revenue Remix. I'm your host, Summer Paletti, and today I've got a mini pod for you. This is a companion to this week's blog on AI plus HI, the smart sales playbook for 2025. If you haven't read it yet, go check it out. for the biggest mistakes I see and how you can overcome them. There's also a link to a free detailed guide for beginner and advanced level plays. If you're in the AI hype zone like I am, have you ever stopped to wonder who's behind the AI workflows, the emails, the blog writing? It's Tech Bros! And no offense, they're about as good at sales as I am at coding. We're going to talk about When AI should be used and when a human seller is better, no matter where you're at in your AI journey, there's always room to grow. If you're an AI hater, I get it. It's everywhere and people like me won't stop hyping over it. But it is everywhere. How long do you think you can resist? You don't want to be like people in the 2000s who hadn't learned to email yet, do you? Through this episode, you'll learn a couple of little ways that your sales team can leverage AI to be more efficient with real world examples pulled straight from my client's work. I think, AI hype aside, the right balance is human led AI adoption. I don't just want a human in the loop. I want a person driving. And then AI helps augment their progress. And their productivity by taking on their time consuming admin work. It's almost like aligning the growth that your board wants with the human touch that your buyers and clients want. Before we go on, let me tell you a quick story from my baby AI days. When I learned about striking that balance, this is very early 2023 when chat GPT was pretty new. I was running a new business outside of my comfort zone and unfortunately without all the marketing support and training that the Franchisor had promised but chat GPT became like my best friend Since I needed help planning, learning local marketing, and a completely new industry, it was a game changer. It couldn't do searches back then, and its last data load was 2021. I mean, ancient history in the AI world, right? But it was still super helpful. Write a blog about the top 10 things to consider when buying an e bike. Write a blog about the routine maintenance you need to perform on your bike. It wrote blogs for me that made me sound like I knew what I was doing. And then a savvy customer came in one day that my mechanic wasn't there, and I looked pretty dumb. That was the day I learned that just because AI can do it, that doesn't mean that you should. And how does that relate to the B2B world? Because AI can't build relationships, and relationships are the heartbeat of B2B sales. Well, partner research tells us that B2B buyers still value a knowledgeable and trustworthy salesperson who continues the relationship beyond the sale, and AI can't do any of that. So head over to my blog at theriseofus. com and read about the top mistakes that I see. with actionable tips on how you can do differently. And then check out the fact that blog readers get a sneak peek for this podcast episode. They get little treats like that. Let's start off this mini pod by talking about why AI alone won't work in B2B sales. I worked with a company that had bet big on AI powered automation. Their outreach was impressive. LinkedIn messages at scale, AI generated sales emails, even hyper personalized videos where an AI deepfake made it look like the salesperson was saying the prospect's name. The problem is that people weren't responding. Sure, this company had sales activity, lots of it, but activity is not the same as engagement. Sales is a numbers game, but even more so it's a trust game and trust isn't built with robotic outreach at scale. It's built through authentic conversations. For a little more on that, check out a podcast episode I did at the end of 2024. It's about how. Is outbound dead? Robotic outreach at scale is one of the reasons why you might think that outbound is dead. Anyway, after some hard lessons, this company scaled back their AI use and put sales people back at the center of relationship building. AI still plays a role, but now it's behind the scenes helping sales people work smarter and not replacing them. Let's talk about How the best sales teams are using artificial intelligence and human intuition or intelligence together. That's that AI plus HI. Neither works well on its own. Today I have five winning AI plus HI plays for you. Number one, AI tracks engagement. HI verifies intent. A client of mine set up AI powered workflows to track prospect engagement. The system flagged anyone who opened an email or clicked a link as high intent and automatically enrolled them in a full on sales sequence. A great play for nurturing those MQLs who aren't yet sales ready. The problem is that AI was way too eager. I think you've heard me say that Chat GPT is like a hype friend. Some of those high intent leads were just curious. Lookers, people opening an email that caught their eye, maybe even accidentally. And others were out of office replies, which AI treated as a real reply. and high intent engagement. So when they're enrolled in a high intent sequence, but they're not ready, what resulted was unsubscribed rates spiked. And good prospects, or potentially good prospects who weren't just ready, they were getting turned off because we came on too strong. You ever had anybody on a first date talk about moving in? Yeah, no, I'm not thinking about that now, right? So then the fix was human oversight. Now, instead of blindly trusting the AI intent signals, the sales team reviews engagement signals weekly. And decides who actually belongs in that high intent sequence. And the result is that we now have an unsubscribed rate of 0. 2 nurture sequences, which is really impressive. AI surfaces potential leads, but humans confirm who's ready for higher intent outreach. And the lesson here at the heart of this is that AI can't understand nuance. H. I. ensures that you don't scare off prospects by jumping the gun. Play number two. A. I. generates discovery questions and H. I. asks the right follow up. One company I worked with had a great discovery process. Structured questions, solid conversations, decent, decent close rates. But the pipeline was full of deals that looked great until they didn't close. And why? Because reps weren't digging deep enough. They were uncovering surface level problems. And the fix here is that AI became their thought partner. We trained AI to analyze the prospect's industry, company, size, and pain points, and then suggest custom discovery questions tailored to their reality. And the reason why this is important is it goes back to research again. Buyers today are doing more and more of their research online. This is the further digitization of the B2B sales process. And what that means is that when buyers are engaging with salespeople, it's when they've whittled down their shortlist and they're looking for those little insights to make their final decision. If the salesperson comes in and treats it like The beginning of the conversation even though it's their first conversation The buyer's already in the middle or near the end of their buying journey So we're also having the salesperson Very quickly and very easily start in the in the middle of the conversation And get to those meaty discussions quickly cut out lookie lose quickly get to Are we going to work together or not much quicker? We're saving admin time for the salesperson on their research and their meeting prep. And the result is that there are fewer deals in the pipeline, of course, but a higher close rate. And the reason for that is the team is qualifying faster. There's fewer looky loos in the pipeline. They're focusing on the right prospects. And not only are they saving their own admin time for research and meeting prep, but they're also running. Faster and more effective meetings. The hour discovery call is now a half hour discovery call because they come in already knowing all the basic stuff and they just to the topic of conversation and again, get to that really meaty, impactful conversation right away. So the lesson is that AI can help shape. better questions, and then humans deliver and listen and read between the lines. Play number three. AI writes follow ups and HI personalizes them. AI generated emails are everywhere and they are painfully easy to spot. I mean, I delete them, don't you? I worked with a company that was letting AI write all their follow up emails. I mean, why not let ChatGPT save you some time, right? But the problem was it showed. Every email started with, I hope you're doing well, or just following up on my last email, or I'd love to discuss this further. Oh my goodness, instant red flags, right? Nobody loves talking about B2B. And when every email sounds the same, prospects tune them out. This is one of those reasons why we think outbound is dead. It's because we're doing bad outbound at scale and buyers are ignoring it. So we adjusted the process. Better AI prompts to improve the first draft and then human editing to add their own nuance and personality with a final review before sending. Now, AI still does the heavy lifting, saving time on admin tasks, brainstorming, getting past that blank page, but the emails actually sound like a human wrote them and we've got an open rate. of over 10 percent on a cold outreach sequence just within the first 90 days, and that is not too shabby. So the lesson here is that AI saves time, but HI, your voice builds trust. Let's pause for a quick message. from my sponsor.

12:02

Summer Pelletti of Rise of Us helps her clients transform by building adaptable, customer focused sales systems that replace outdated models. With these new frameworks, their teams can respond quickly to evolving customer needs, reduce friction, and work as one cohesive unit. This shift equips them with the tools to drive consistent growth, lowering churn, and creating lasting customer relationships. As a result, they achieve sustainable revenue growth that positions them ahead of competitors and prepared for future challenges. Together, you and Summer will create a foundation that not only meets today's demands, but supports long term success.

summer: 12:43

How'd you like that? I have mid roll ads now. By the way, um, H. I., me, wrote them and then A. I., voice, showed up to deliver. How fun is that? So play number four is that A. I. finds leads and H. I. chooses the right ones. This is where I'm gonna fall on the sword. As a fractional leader, I was working with a company and I set up an AI powered lead gen workflow, pulling leads every week and auto enrolling them into a cold email sequence. The problem is that the AI tool was not as accurate as advertised and there was a lot of stale data. Some of the cold leads were already paying customers. We caught it fast and fix it by adding a human review step. Now the workflow still builds the lead list, but a real person checks it and only enrolls the people that make sense. The lesson here is that AI Gets you quantity, and then HI ensures that quality. This is where we're starting to correct the bad outbound at scale. Last but not least, play number five. AI flags stalled deals, and HI knows when to push. Most of your major CRMs have some AI in them that will tell you that a deal is cold, or that it has stalled, or whatever. Definitely use that. But I worked with a sales team that almost marked a deal as dead because AI had flagged it as cold. But the human sales rep knew something that AI didn't. That prospect wasn't ghosting them. They were just waiting for an acquisition to close before moving forward because they needed my client's solution for the company that they were buying. And if you've ever been involved in an acquisition, they always take longer than you think. Luckily, this came up during a weekly sales meeting before the deal got scrapped. Instead of walking away, the reps stayed in touch with a nurture sequence and the deal closed the next quarter. So the lesson here is that AI sees data points and humans see context. And we should be looking at the AI flagging potentially stalled or dead deals because we also know that sales reps tend to hold on to deals. It really, it's bad psychologically for them to mark a deal as dead. So that AI is important because it's a gut check to the salesperson. But then it's not always accurate. Here's one of those where the best play is to have AI plus HI reviewing the deals in the pipeline to see which ones are good and which ones are no longer good. I've got a one week actionable plan to get some improvement for you. Day one, audit your sales process. Identify where AI is or isn't helping you. Day two, choose the right AI tools. Make sure they align with your workflow. Days three through seven, test, train, and refine. Implement small AI pilots with human oversight. AI is going to make you faster and human intelligence will make you smarter. Use both and you win. Here's the reality. Sales teams using AI tools are already way ahead. In fact, 83 percent of them reported revenue growth in the last year compared to just 66 percent of teams that aren't using AI. That's a massive gap. If you're not, Testing A. I. plus H. I. in your sales process right now. You're already behind, but guess what? There's people even further behind you. So you still have time to start and get it going. And then if you're already in the middle of your A. I. journey, just remember to check yourself and maybe understand the dangers of going too far with A. I. The right AI strategies remove friction for your sales team and let them spend more time doing what they do best. Meeting with and talking to customers, prospects, and partners. When you hired your sales team, you probably didn't imagine them spending most of their time doing admin tasks, did you? Okay, so let's wrap this up. If you want exclusive insights on how AI transformed a financial services sales team, we're breaking it down in our upcoming case study. Need help implementing AI plus HI in your team? Book a free strategy session today. I'll spend 15 to 30 minutes with you and give you at least one actionable insight. Subscribe to this podcast for more insights on revenue growth and smart sales strategies. And go check out the blog because we cover different things in the blog. And that's a wrap. I appreciate you joining me on Revenue Remix. Remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and our YouTube channel for more insights and interviews. And I would always appreciate a share to your network if this resonated with you and a review so it helps my reach. And as I always tell my clients, when your team's strategies and goals align, growth isn't just possible, it's inevitable. You can find me on LinkedIn, I'm Summer Palletti Rhymes with Spaghetti, or online at theriseofus. com, where you can find information on guesting if you have a great story you'd like to tell. I appreciate the listen, and I will see you next week!