AI-Powered Seller

AI is everywhere in sales right now, and that’s exactly why sounding human has become a competitive advantage. Jake Dunlap sits down with Kelly Lichtenberger, VP of Sales Development at Silverfort and author of Prospect Like a Girl, to get real about EI versus AI and why “outsourcing” emotional intelligence is a fast way to lose trust on the phone. If your outreach is starting to feel generic, scripted, or weirdly identical to everyone else’s, this conversation will hit close to home.

Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn.

Skaled’s AI GTM Pulse survey was conducted in April 2026 to understand how GTM teams are using and operationalizing AI.

In this debrief, I bring those insights together, connecting the dots across usage, automations, ownership, and measurement. The debrief reframes AI as GTM integration and shows what it takes to move from never-ending experimentation loops to real impact.

• Hear the current pulse on AI in GTM. Not adoption, not how many hours saved, not doing more with less… a pulse on how AI is actually showing up in processes and workflows. 
• Realize the delta between usage vs adoption, real automation, and pilot success.
• Get an interpretation of what the data actually means inside GTM orgs.
• Gain the six things GTM leaders and teams can do right now to move from experimentation loops to real GTM impact.

If by the end of this debrief you’re thinking “we’re stuck experimenting, and not scaling,” these are your next steps:

1. See where you stand today with the AI GTM Maturity Assessment
2. Then get the AI GTM Strategy Playbook: PLAN
3. Book time with Skaled to put the plan into action

Still feeling stuck at step zero with AI—lots of prompts, no real leverage? We walk through five concrete moves that flip AI from novelty to advantage for frontline sales leaders and ambitious sellers. It’s a fast, tactical tour: onboarding that compresses ramp, a coaching memory that never forgets, development plans that stick, a leader-specific GPT that encodes your standards, and a pipeline risk radar that tightens forecasts without more meetings.

We start by rebuilding onboarding so reps get high-quality “at bats” in week one. By training an assistant on your ICPs, buyer personas, and competitor positioning, you can simulate role-plays, rehearse objection handling, and focus on the three messages that matter for each persona. Next, we set up a per-rep project that stores one-to-ones, call clips, and commitments, eliminating recency bias and turning scattered notes into trend-aware coaching. From there, we spin that context into personalized development plans with clear weekly agendas and outcomes chosen by the rep, not imposed from above—because ownership drives practice.

Then we introduce a Leader GPT that captures your playbook, stage definitions, must-ask discovery questions, and go-to moves for sticky moments like pricing or procurement. With your norms searchable and consistent, the team self-serves tactical guidance and you recover hours lost to repeat questions. Finally, we assemble a pipeline risk radar that blends transcripts, CRM notes, and emails to surface the real drivers of deal slippage. Instead of relying on generic call scores or single-source tools, you’ll get nuanced risk calls, evidence checklists by stage, and next-step coaching that aligns to your methodology.

The throughline is simple: let AI handle repetition, recall, and synthesis while you lean into nuance, judgment, and presence with customers and reps. Pick one use case to deploy this week—onboarding drills or a rep project—and measure one outcome like faster stage exits or tighter forecast calls. If this playbook helps, share it with a teammate or your VP so the whole org can move beyond experiments and into durable wins. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us which use case you’ll try first—we’ll send follow-up prompts to help you launch.

Tired of gut calls and keyword roulette deciding who joins your team? We sat down with Chrissy Manzano, CEO of Blueprint Expansion, to map where AI actually improves hiring today—without pretending it can replace thoughtful human judgment. From SDRs and BDRs to manager and director roles, we break down how to speed up sourcing, standardize interviews, and create a candidate experience that reflects your brand.

We start with sourcing, where legacy tools cling to keywords and miss context. Chrissy shows how to encode practical criteria—real SaaS exposure, tenure stability, and proof of growth journeys—to help AI surface people who match your motion, not just your titles. For private-company rocket ships, we talk about triangulating signals across press, funding rounds, and team expansion. Then we turn to screening, where conversational AI shines for high-volume inbound and entry-level roles by capturing narratives, clarifying gaps, and keeping response times tight, while senior and passive candidates still warrant a human touch.

The heart of the episode tackles interview bias. Too many debriefs end with, “What do you think?” and fuzzy scorecards. We lay out how to record and analyze interviews, tag against a tight ideal candidate profile, and compare candidates on evidence, not charisma or pedigree. We also get real about limits: AI still hallucinates and can be gamed at the edges, so structure and critical thinking remain non-negotiable. Finally, we look ahead at team design—why internal talent teams may shrink while specialist partners using AI deliver faster, more predictable results—and share two immediate plays for CROs: use AI to build a rigorous interview framework and deploy a candidate-facing agent to standardize information and elevate experience.

If you want a hiring engine that moves faster, reduces bias, and keeps the bar high, this conversation is your blueprint. Subscribe, share with a hiring leader who needs a reset, and leave a review with your favorite tactic so we can dig deeper next time.

What happens when a seasoned CRO decides to stop “exploring” AI and actually master it? We sit down with Colin Van Excel to chart the path from a single prompt that wrote a price increase letter to a full, AI-first sales operating system. The story is practical, candid, and packed with takeaways you can use today, whether you lead a revenue org or carry a quota.

We start with the real barriers holding teams back: fuzzy sales processes, inconsistent stage criteria, and sellers buried in admin. Colin explains how he rebuilt around the buyer’s journey, then layered AI to enforce consistency and speed. Think call transcripts auto-summarized into Salesforce, hot points captured and resurfaced before the next meeting, and follow-up emails drafted with context and tone in minutes. The result? More time with customers, less time wrestling with notes, and a measurable lift in deal velocity.

Colin also breaks down why certification matters and how structured learning accelerates impact. He walks through a six-week arc: sharpening prompts, using variables, building workflows in Make, and presenting a working automation to graduate. The big unlock is meta-learning—using AI to learn AI. When he got stuck, he fed the system context and constraints and received working code and steps to finish the job. That shift turns leaders from passive consumers into confident builders.

We don’t sugarcoat the stakes. Leaders who stay hands-off risk being underemployed by 2028. The advantage goes to those who learn the tools, define clear processes, and deploy automations that free sellers to sell. If you’re ready to replace “pay your dues” busywork with AI agents that actually move revenue, this conversation is your playbook. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs the push, and leave a review with the first workflow you want to automate—we’ll tackle the best ones on a future show.

What happens when you stop predicting the future and actually audit the past?

In this episode of AI Powered Seller, Jake Dunlap revisits his 2025 AI predictions and gives them an honest scorecard. No hype. No backpedaling. Just real lessons from the front lines of revenue teams adopting AI.

Co-hosted by Skaled’s Head of Marketing Kara Burd, this conversation breaks down how AI really impacted sales teams over the last year and why some widely held assumptions completely missed the mark.

You will learn:
 • Why reps adopted AI quietly while leadership debated policy
 • How AI created performance gaps instead of replacing jobs
 • Why most copilots became distractions instead of deal support
 • Why personalization is now table stakes, not a nice-to-have
 • What surprised Jake most about high performers resisting AI
 • What sales teams must operationalize in 2026 to win

This episode is for sales reps, sales leaders, RevOps, and founders who want a grounded, experience-based view of AI in revenue, not theory or trend-chasing.

If you are trying to figure out how AI actually fits into your sales motion, this episode will save you months of mistakes.

Listen now and start 2026 as a truly AI Powered Seller.

Most AI in sales content is stuck at the top of funnel: prompts, prospecting, and research.

This episode is different.

Jake Dunlap sits down with David Maloof, Founder and Managing Partner of Pre-Sales Advisory Group and longtime pre-sales leader across high-growth SaaS and enterprise orgs, to unpack a truth most teams miss:

AI’s real power shows up in pre-sales, where discovery, storytelling, and demos decide whether you win or lose.

David breaks down how the best SEs and revenue teams are using AI to:

• show up to discovery with a point of view
• move from cookie-cutter questions to validation-style discovery
• create stronger, faster, more tailored demos using transcripts and structured feedback
• build a tighter AE and SE operating rhythm because AI gives teams back time
• use frameworks like MEDDIC and MEDPIC with better pattern recognition, without outsourcing human judgment

They also tackle what modern buyers expect now that they can research everything themselves, and why the demo jockey era is dead.

Key takeaways

• AI-assisted discovery starts before the call, not during it
• If you are not putting in at least as much effort as the buyer did to meet you, you are already behind
• Top SEs in 2026 and beyond will be defined by curiosity and consistency, not perfect tooling
• AI is not replacing great sellers or SEs, it is replacing the ones who will not adapt

Learn more about Skaled: https://www.skaled.com

Jake's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmaloof/

Check out Journey AI: http://meetjourney.ai/

AI Certification for Reps:  https://bit.ly/ai-sales-certification...

AI Certification for Managers: ​​https://bit.ly/ai-sales-certification... 

Want Jake’s AI Playbook? Go to one of Jake’s LinkedIn posts and comment or DM the word “prompt”

New episodes weekly. Follow and subscribe so you do not miss what’s next.

2026 is the year AI stops being optional in sales.

In this episode of AI Powered Seller, Jake Dunlap walks through his five biggest AI predictions for 2026 — and why sellers and leaders who don’t act now will be forced to catch up later.

This conversation goes beyond tools and trends. Jake explains how AI becomes a true go-to-market teammate, why generic personalization is dead, and how signal-based selling will redefine outbound, deal cycles, and account growth.

You’ll learn:

• What digital teammates actually look like in modern sales workflows
• Why AI-generated personalization alone won’t cut through
• How coaching shifts from post-call to real-time execution
• Why signal-based selling becomes mandatory, not optional
• Why AI fluency becomes table stakes in 2026

If you want to win in sales next year, this episode is required listening.

Learn more about Skaled: https://www.skaled.com

Connect with Jake on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/

Check out Journey AI: http://meetjourney.ai/

AI Certification for Reps:  https://bit.ly/ai-sales-certification-rep

AI Certification for Managers: ​​https://bit.ly/ai-sales-certification-manager