Make It Happen Mondays | Episode 471 | May 25, 2026
What AI knows about your buyer is already more than most reps do. Before your first call, the buyer’s AI-assisted research has evaluated your solution, mapped their own decision-making structure, and formed an initial opinion. The reps who understand that are the ones who will stay relevant. In this episode, Scott Gillum, Founder and CEO of Carbon Design, shares seven years of research on how buyers actually make decisions and what sellers need to do differently right now.
Listen on Captivate | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
About Scott Gillum
Scott Gillum is Founder and CEO of Carbon Design and one of the leading researchers on how B2B buyers actually make decisions. His work on sales and marketing integration was turned into a Harvard Business School case study and is taught at leading business schools. Prior to Carbon Design, he was President of the DC office for gyro, the world’s largest B2B agency. He writes regularly for MediaPost and has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, and Adage.
- Website: carbondesign.com
- LinkedIn: Scott Gillum
What you’ll learn
- Why corporate culture predicts deal velocity better than any sales methodology
- How to use personality profiling tools to adapt your approach to any buyer
- Why 85% of the people who influence your deals are not in your CRM
- What the hidden buyer journey is and why most reps never see it
- Why Return on Effort is replacing ROI as the real measure of AI in sales
- The one thing AI still cannot replicate and why it is your biggest competitive advantage
What AI knows about your buyer: The key insight
The buyer is further along than you think. AI has already done the research, profiled the stakeholders, and formed opinions about your solution before you ever get on the phone. The reps who show up without understanding that are selling against a process they cannot see.
Why this matters for your pipeline
If 85% of the people who influence your deals are invisible to your CRM, your pipeline math is wrong. Scott’s research gives sellers a framework for understanding who is actually in the room, how decisions really get made, and where AI can help you catch up to a buyer who started without you.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean that AI already knows your buyer?
Before your buyer takes your call, their AI-assisted research has already evaluated your solution, compared it to competitors, and formed an initial impression. Sales reps who show up without understanding the buyer’s personality type, company culture, and real decision-making structure are selling against a buyer who is already further along in the process than they realize.
What is the hidden buyer journey?
The hidden buyer journey is the research and evaluation a buyer goes through before they ever engage with a vendor. Scott Gillum’s research shows that 85% of the people who influence a purchase are never in the CRM. They evaluate, recommend, or block deals without sales ever knowing they exist.
How does corporate culture affect sales deal velocity?
Corporate culture shapes how decisions get made: who has real authority, how risk is evaluated, how fast organizations move. Reps who can read the culture quickly and adapt their approach to it close faster and with less friction than those who run the same playbook in every account.
What is Return on Effort and why does it matter for AI in sales?
Return on Effort measures whether the time and energy a rep invests in AI-assisted selling actually produces better outcomes. Gillum’s argument is that ROI is the wrong metric for AI adoption in sales because it misses the cost side: if a tool takes significant effort to use correctly and only produces marginal improvement, the real return is negative. The better question is whether the effort required is proportional to the result.
What can human sellers do that AI cannot?
Genuine human judgment and relationship depth. AI can profile, research, and predict. It cannot build trust through shared experience, read a room in real time, or make the kind of judgment call that comes from years of pattern recognition in actual selling situations. That is still the human advantage, and it is the one worth investing in.
Make It Happen Mondays is hosted by John Barrows, sales trainer to Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and Okta. New episodes drop every Monday. Subscribe and listen on all platforms.
Get John’s weekly sales insights in your inbox: subscribe to the JB Sales Learning Lab Newsletter.r.
