www.gtmaipodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasleem1/

The Experiment That Exposed Everything

When Tas Hirani, a veteran enablement leader with a Six Sigma background from GE, noticed her sales teams struggling despite having access to cutting-edge AI tools, she did something radical. She didn't run another survey or schedule more training sessions. Instead, she went undercover as a sales rep while maintaining her enablement role.

What she discovered explains why companies are spending millions on AI tools that collect dust while reps continue drowning in admin work.

The Brutal Truth About Sales AI Adoption

"Everyone's got LinkedIn, LinkedIn Navigator, ChatGPT, Perplexity... but when I actually sat in the seat and tried to use these tools the way reps do, it was Pandora's box," Hirani reveals. The problem isn't the technology—it's how we're implementing it.

Here's why 90% of sales AI tools fail:

The "Dead Weight" Problem: Traditional tech forced salespeople to adapt their workflow to the tool. As Hirani puts it, "Technology was like dead weight that people were hauling up the hill... trying to get to this sale, but I can't get there because I have to go to 12 different places."

The Generic Solution Trap: Companies throw in Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT behind a firewall and declare themselves "AI-enabled." Hirani calls this "a recipe for failure" because it ignores business-specific context.

The IT Power Play: When IT departments impose generic AI solutions because they have "those two magic letters," adoption inevitably fails. The tools that work are chosen by the business teams who actually use them.

The Reality Check That Changed Everything

During her time in the sales trenches, Hirani discovered something shocking. When she shared AI tools that worked brilliantly for her, the reactions from her team were mixed:

"Some reps said, 'I don't have any confidence in AI. It doesn't sound like me. My prospect is gonna know that it's not me if I haven't felt the pain and written that email myself.'"

This revelation led to a fundamental insight: Every rep is at a different point in their AI adoption journey, and one-size-fits-all solutions are doomed to fail.

Visual learners needed completely different tools than text-based processors

New reps loved real-time coaching popups; veterans found them distracting

Some thrived with vanilla ChatGPT; others needed specialized solutions