Most sales teams are now using artificial intelligence, or trying to. Salesforce surveyed about 5,500 sales professionals in 27 countries for its State of Sales report. More than four out of five teams said they were experimenting with AI or had already rolled it out. The teams using it were 1.3 times more likely to grow revenue than the teams that weren’t.
The trend reaches well beyond sales. McKinsey’s latest study on AI found that 88 percent of companies now use it in at least one part of their business. So the real question for salespeople is how to use it without losing the human touch that still closes deals. William Shifrin is a good person to ask. He’s an enterprise account executive who sells an AI and data platform at a major tech company. That puts him in a rare spot. He uses AI tools to do his own job. He also sells the data systems that other companies need before their own AI can work. He sees the change from both sides, which gives him a clear sense of what’s real and what’s just hype.
The Market Changed In A Matter Of Months
William Shifrin started in tech sales right out of college. He worked as a sales development representative in Austin, Texas. Back then the job was simple and manual with cold calls, emails, and a lot of patience. He spent time as an account executive in telecom. He moved home to Connecticut, earned a master’s in education, and spent about five years teaching and coaching. Then he came back to tech sales and barely recognized it.
“What I was selling when I started compared to where I am 10 months in is not a different product,” William Shifrin says, “but the conversations are completely different.” In less than a year, his company struck major deals with large language model providers and shipped a wave of new AI features. On paper, the product looked almost the same. In practice, the pitch, the buyer’s questions, and the use cases had all changed. That speed is the hardest part of selling in the AI era. It’s why William Shifrin treats learning as part of the daily job.
What AI Actually Changes Day To Day
AI’s real impact comes down to one thing, and that’s ‘time’. Salesforce found that sales reps spend only about 30 percent of their week actually selling. The rest goes to admin work, data entry, research, and follow-up. For William Shifrin, the best use of AI is getting that time back. “Updating the CRM can be automated,” he says. “The amount of time you can save so you’re really focused on being in front of customers.” He also uses large language models to write personalized outreach faster. A message that once took 15 minutes to write by hand now takes a fraction of that, and it still feels personal. The point is that he uses AI to clear away the busywork around the human, so the human can spend more time doing what only a human can do.
Selling The Foundation That AI Runs On
Most talk about AI in sales focuses on tools that help reps. William Shifrin works on the layer underneath like, the data that decides whether a company’s AI works at all.
His pitch is easy to state and hard to ignore. A general AI model is great with public information. But it can’t see a company’s private data when that data is scattered across old systems, inboxes, spreadsheets, shared drives, and dozens of disconnected apps. Without one trusted place that pulls all of it together, the company can’t see the full picture and neither can its AI.
“You’re not going to be able to see the full picture,” William Shifrin says of companies whose data lives in pieces. “And without a single source of truth for all of that information, your enterprise is never going to be able to get the insights you need to make the right decisions.” Once that foundation is in place, he adds, employees can ask questions of their own data in plain language.
This is why his view carries weight. He’s in the room when chief data officers, engineering leaders, and software engineers decide whether their company is truly ready to build on AI or just talking about it.
William Shifrin came back to enterprise sales right as AI moved from a curiosity to a top priority for executives. Within his first 10 months, the platform he sells released major AI features and partnerships. Buyer expectations shifted almost overnight. That created two problems at once. He had to stay credible with technical buyers whose questions kept changing. And he had to keep hitting his targets every quarter against several well-funded competitors.
He leaned into the change in two ways. First, he kept retraining himself on new features so his sales conversations matched the current product. Second, he started using AI in his own work to handle CRM updates and speed up outreach. That freed up time for live customer conversations. The approach worked. William Shifrin has consistently hit his targets while managing about 700 accounts. He’s built a reputation for honest, helpful conversations, the kind buyers increasingly reward. His takeaway is that, “If you’re not getting up to speed on what those AI features are and what’s important, you’re going to get left behind.”
Here’s the twist William Shifrin keeps coming back to. The more automated sales become, the more valuable a real human becomes. AI now floods every inbox and channel with content and automated messages. So a prepared, genuinely helpful person stands out. What used to be normal is now rare, and rare gets noticed.
He tells a story that sums it up. He recently cold-called a prospect who thanked him for the call and admitted he’d half-assumed William Shifrin might be a bot. “This is refreshing,” the buyer said. When people expect to be sold to by software, a real person who shows up prepared has an edge precisely because so few do.
So the strategy builds on itself. Automate the repetitive work, William Shifrin argues, then pour that saved time into conversations, relationships, and trust, the things machines can’t fake. “People buy from people they like,” he says.
If William Shifrin has one piece of advice for other salespeople, it’s to stop treating AI as optional. Technology is changing what products do, how buyers research, and what good selling looks like. And it’s doing all of that in months. Reps who wait for things to settle will find the world has moved on without them.
Embracing AI means using automation to protect a seller’s scarcest resource, time, and spending that time on the human work that still decides who wins. The reps who thrive will be the ones who know exactly where the machine helps and where a person still needs to show up.
That balance defines how William Shifrin sells. It’s also a useful guide for anyone working in a job being rebuilt in real time. The tools will keep changing. But trust, preparation, and real human connection, if William Shifrin is right, will only matter more.
Is AI replacing B2B sales reps?
ANS: Mostly it’s helping them, not replacing them, at least in complex enterprise sales. Salesforce found that 68 percent of AI-using teams actually added staff, compared with 47 percent of teams without AI. As Shifrin puts it, AI works best when it handles the admin work so reps can focus on the relationships that close big deals.
What are the most practical ways a salesperson can use AI today?
ANS: The most useful uses are also the least flashy like automating CRM data entry, speeding up research, and writing personalized outreach faster. Shifrin uses large language models to build tailored messages quickly. That lets him stay personal across a large set of accounts without spending 15 minutes on every message.
Why do companies need a “single source of truth” before adopting AI?
ANS: General AI can’t see a company’s private data when it’s scattered across old systems, inboxes, spreadsheets, and disconnected apps. Pulling it all into one trusted place is what lets AI give accurate, business-specific answers. Without it, even the best model is working with half the picture.
How fast is the AI sales landscape really changing?
ANS: Faster than most people expect. Shifrin notes that the platform he sells shipped major AI features and partnerships within his first 10 months, which changed buyer conversations even though the core product stayed the same. Constant learning is now a basic requirement for staying credible with technical buyers.
If AI is everywhere, what makes a salesperson stand out?
ANS: The human element, more than ever. As automated outreach fills every channel, a genuine, well-prepared conversation becomes rare and valuable. Shifrin’s view is to automate the busywork and reinvest that time in building trust, because, in his words, “people buy from people they like.”
