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Sales Gravy

The AI Edge: How to Use Technology Without Losing Your Human Touch (Ask Jeb)

14 min episode · 2 min read
·
Caroline Cutter

Episode

14 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Relationships, Sales & Revenue

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • AI as a force multiplier: Use AI for research, first drafts, and meeting prep to compress preparation time — Blount reduces a half-day proposal prep to roughly one hour — then invest that recovered time directly into face-to-face or phone conversations with prospects.
  • Human wisdom remains scarce: AI provides unlimited intelligence but zero wisdom. Salespeople who lack foundational writing, grammar, and messaging skills will produce AI output that buyers immediately recognize as inauthentic, damaging trust and reducing response rates more than no outreach at all.
  • AI email blasting destroys list access: Recipients who identify AI-generated emails do not simply delete them — they block the sender entirely, permanently eliminating future contact. One poorly executed AI campaign can burn an entire prospect list within 24 hours, a mistake multiple companies have already made.
  • Three-tier sales performer model: Blount identifies apex performers as those who blend AI efficiency with human emotional intelligence seamlessly. The middle tier replaces relationships with automation and stagnates. The bottom tier rejects technology entirely and falls behind. Only the hybrid approach produces long-term revenue growth.

What It Covers

Jeb Blount advises sales professional Caroline Cutter on integrating AI as a productivity tool while preserving human connection, arguing that AI punishes mediocrity but cannot replace consultative selling skills or relationship-building instincts.

Key Questions Answered

  • AI as a force multiplier: Use AI for research, first drafts, and meeting prep to compress preparation time — Blount reduces a half-day proposal prep to roughly one hour — then invest that recovered time directly into face-to-face or phone conversations with prospects.
  • Human wisdom remains scarce: AI provides unlimited intelligence but zero wisdom. Salespeople who lack foundational writing, grammar, and messaging skills will produce AI output that buyers immediately recognize as inauthentic, damaging trust and reducing response rates more than no outreach at all.
  • AI email blasting destroys list access: Recipients who identify AI-generated emails do not simply delete them — they block the sender entirely, permanently eliminating future contact. One poorly executed AI campaign can burn an entire prospect list within 24 hours, a mistake multiple companies have already made.
  • Three-tier sales performer model: Blount identifies apex performers as those who blend AI efficiency with human emotional intelligence seamlessly. The middle tier replaces relationships with automation and stagnates. The bottom tier rejects technology entirely and falls behind. Only the hybrid approach produces long-term revenue growth.

Notable Moment

A CEO recently expressed genuine excitement upon receiving a sales email containing grammatical errors — proof a real human wrote it. In an AI-saturated inbox, visible human imperfection now functions as a credibility signal that drives engagement.

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Episode Transcript

This is the Sales Gravy Podcast. Hi. I'm Jeb Blunt, best selling author of fanatical prospecting, objections, sales EQ, and inked, and I'm here to help you open more doors, close bigger deals, and rock your commission check. Welcome back to the sales review podcast. I'm Jeb Blunt Junior, and this is wisdom Wednesday where you drive the agenda. Because on this segment of the sales review podcast, you bring your biggest sales challenges, and Jeb Blunt delivers his best answers. And those answers, they come straight from the trenches because Jeb's not just teaching sales, he's out there prospecting, closing, and leading sales teams every single day. Let's take the next caller. Alright, Tim. Who we got on the show next? Next up, we have Caroline Cutter from Dayton, Ohio. Dayton, Ohio. You're from New Hampshire. Right? Massachusetts. Massachusetts. Yankee States. Yeah. Alright, Caroline. Well, tell me what your question is. What you got going on? So this this kinda stems from the last book that you wrote. I haven't yet read the LinkedIn Edge, but you were talking about how, you know, AI is kind of obviously, it's everywhere you look. So I guess sales professionals like me, we're using AI all the time, but we wanna use it efficiently. You know, we don't wanna lose the human touch. So I just wanted to talk with you about that and how, you know, how you're guiding people to use it more efficiently. Have you read The AI Edge? Yeah. I've read it. But, again, you're you're sitting in front of me, so I wanna talk to you about it. Good. When you read The AI Edge, what did you pull from that book in terms of the messaging? Just, giving practical strategies to use AI so that we can spend more time being a human and connecting with prospects and, you know, being more empathetic and being having more time for creativity and things like that. Let's think about AI this way. We are living in a time where there is unlimited intelligence. You know, forever, if you wanted to tap into someone who is really smart, you had to wait in line because everybody wanted to tap into the person who's really smart. Now, if you're looking for information, you can go get it instantly on AI and it's all you can eat. Like, it's just as it's crazy like an an AI keeps coming back to you and asking, can I I can do some more for you? I can do more for you. I can do more for you. So I give you example. Yesterday, we're working on part of our website for fractional sales leadership. So small company, our founder doesn't have a sales manager trying to grow a sales team, needs some help temporarily, we provide a sales manager that can go in and help them with that. In the past, I would have either like spent a bunch of time writing copy …

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