Human connection in sales is what moves trust forward, and no amount of AI-driven automation changes that. Katrin Gurvich, GTM Strategy & Operations leader at Navan, has built connection as a deliberate skill across roles at Dropbox, HealthScape Advisors, and PNC, and her take is direct: AI can speed up the work, but the reps who use it best are the ones who use the time it gives back to get sharper, not just faster.
About Katrin
Katrin Gurvich is a GTM Strategy & Operations leader at Navan, where she partners across sales and revenue teams to translate high-level strategy into day-to-day execution, with a focus on pipeline visibility, business health diagnostics, and separating real signal from vanity metrics like quota attainment. Before Navan, she held roles in sales planning and analytics at Dropbox, management consulting at HealthScape Advisors, and corporate banking at PNC, giving her a cross-functional view of how strategy, data, and operations intersect.
Connect with Katrin: LinkedIn
What you’ll learn
- Why networking is a skill you can build through repetition, not a personality trait you either have or don’t
- Why referrals only matter when real trust sits behind them
- How AI use reveals ownership, curiosity, and judgment in ways that are hard to fake
- Why human connection in sales still determines what moves a deal forward
- How onsites, events, and personal touches change the quality of sales conversations
- Why reps need to use AI-given time to get sharper, not just faster
Networking is a skill, not a personality trait
Most people treat networking as something you either have a talent for or you don’t. Katrin’s take is different. She has built connection deliberately, through repetition, by showing up consistently at events, following up intentionally, and treating every interaction as a building block for something longer term. That is not a personality trait. It is a practice.
The implication for sales reps is direct. Waiting until you need something from your network is the wrong way to build one. The reps with strong networks built them during quieter periods, when the pressure was off and conversations could be genuine. What you do between the high-stakes moments determines how strong your network is when you need it.
For GTM leaders, this means treating networking as a skill that can be developed, coached, and measured. Onsites, events, and personal touches are not soft investments. They are infrastructure.
Referrals only matter when trust sits behind them
The referral has been degraded. When every sales process ends with a request for three names, the word loses its meaning. A name passed along without genuine conviction behind it is not a referral. It is a warm introduction, and the difference matters.
Referrals only work when real trust sits behind them. The person making the introduction has to believe in what they are introducing you to, and that belief only comes from a track record of real value delivered. Reps who chase referrals as a tactic end up with a list of names that do not convert. Reps who earn them by consistently doing right by people end up with something much more durable.
The practical implication: stop asking for referrals at the end of a sales process. Start building the kind of relationships that generate them without asking. That requires delivering enough genuine value that the other person wants to tell someone else about you.
How you use AI reveals more than what you produce
Everyone on a modern GTM team has access to roughly the same AI tools. What separates reps is not which tools they use. It is how they use them. Katrin’s observation: AI use reveals ownership, curiosity, and judgment in ways that are hard to fake.
A rep who uses AI to get something out the door faster and moves on is using it as a shortcut. A rep who uses AI to produce a first draft, then interrogates it, adds specific context, and thinks critically about what it missed is using it as a thinking partner. The output might look similar in the short term. The difference compounds over time.
This matters for hiring too. In a world where AI can produce polished-sounding work instantly, the signals that reveal real quality have shifted. Evaluating AI-assisted work means going deeper on the reasoning behind the output, not just the output itself.
What human connection in sales actually looks like in GTM
Human connection in sales is not about being warm or personable, though those things help. It is about showing up in ways that are specific to the person in front of you. An onsite visit, a follow-up that references something specific from the last conversation, a personal touch at a key moment: these are what separate a vendor relationship from a real one.
Katrin’s experience spanning the strategy-to-execution gap means she sees where relationships break down in GTM motions. The pattern is consistent. Teams that invest in personal touches at key moments outperform teams that treat every interaction as a transaction. Not because the personal touches close more deals in isolation, but because they build the kind of trust that survives hard conversations about pricing, timelines, and scope.
Buyers who trust you give you the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong. That is worth more than any feature advantage.
Using AI-given time to get sharper, not faster
The promise of AI in sales is time back. Fewer hours on research, note-taking, and administrative work means more hours for the conversations that actually move deals forward. The problem is that time does not automatically translate into better performance. It has to be directed somewhere.
Reps who use AI-given time to get sharper will pull away from reps who use it to get off the phone faster. Getting sharper means using the time for better discovery conversations, learning more about the industries and businesses they sell into, and building the judgment that AI cannot replicate. Getting faster just means doing more of the same thing in less time.
The reps who win in an AI-accelerated GTM world are not the ones with the best prompts. They are the ones who know what to do with the insight AI surfaces. That requires the human curiosity and genuine connection that has always mattered in sales.
Frequently asked questions
What is human connection in sales and why does it still matter?
Human connection in sales is what moves trust forward between a rep and a buyer. In an environment where AI can generate personalized outreach, surface intent signals, and draft follow-up emails, the thing that still cannot be automated is genuine interest in the person on the other side. Buyers who feel that a rep actually understands their situation and cares about getting them to the right outcome engage differently than buyers who feel like they are being processed through a sequence.
How do you build networking as a skill in sales?
You build it through repetition and consistency rather than waiting until you need something. Show up at events, follow up specifically and promptly, and invest in relationships during periods when there is no immediate deal on the table. The reps who have strong networks built them steadily over time, not in a sprint when their pipeline was thin. Treating every interaction as a potential long-term relationship rather than a transaction is the practice that compounds.
Why are referrals in sales losing their value?
Referrals lose value when they become a box to check rather than a genuine transfer of trust. When every sales process ends with a request for three names, the word stops meaning anything because people pass names along without real conviction behind the introduction. A referral that carries weight comes from someone who received enough genuine value that they want to tell someone else about it without being asked.
How should sales reps use AI without losing human connection in sales?
Use AI to handle the work that does not require judgment: research, first drafts, call preparation, note-taking. Then invest the time it gives back into the parts of the job that require presence: better discovery conversations, more specific follow-up, genuine curiosity about the buyer’s business. The rep who uses AI to get something done faster and moves on will get left behind by the rep who uses it to get sharper. The tool cannot replace the judgment, curiosity, and connection that make a rep worth talking to.
What should GTM teams protect as AI becomes more common in sales?
Protect the skills that require human judgment: asking questions that actually help buyers think, being honest about fit, navigating internal complexity in a deal, and building the kind of trust that survives difficult conversations. These are the things AI cannot replicate and the things most at risk of being deprioritized when teams chase efficiency. The teams that use AI to free up time for these skills will outperform the teams that use it to reduce headcount and call it a day.
John Barrows helps sales leaders decide whether to replace or rebuild their teams for the AI era. For 25+ years he has worked with the world’s most demanding sales organizations, including Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and Okta, building the frameworks that became Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. He is the host of Make It Happen Mondays, author of I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up, and an LP at GTMfund.
Get John’s weekly insights: subscribe to the JB Sales Learning Lab Newsletter.
