Sales performance expert says AI won’t fix your sales team if you skip the fundamentals

Mike Kunkle has spent 35+ years focused on sales performance and improvement. He works directly with CROs, helping them to drive change and achieve revenue objectives. He's also the author of The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement and the creator of a popular LinkedIn newsletter.

We sat down with Mike to get his thoughts on AI in revenue. He said the focus should be on humans, not AI.

35+ years in sales performance and improvement

I'm Mike Kunkle. I've spent 35+ years in the sales performance improvement profession. I spent about two-thirds of that time inside companies, building functions from the ground up or evolving them to the next level. I spent the other third on the consulting and vendor side.

I'm not a CRO. I'm the leader who sits at their right hand, either as an employee or consultant, to help them drive change and achieve objectives. I provide frameworks, systems, processes, methodologies, training, content, and tools to help sales teams maximize their performance.

I've led teams of 3–30, managed budgets of up to $4.6 million, and supported sales organizations of 5,000–6,000 sellers for employers and up to 12,500 sellers for clients. My employers and clients have ranged from startups, scale-ups, and SMBs to mid-market and enterprise organizations, including Fortune 10 companies.

I've delivered results across diverse markets: high tech, SaaS, healthcare IT, financial services and FinTech, manufacturing, hospitality, entertainment, pharmaceutical and MedTech, advertising specialties, meetings and conventions, document management, packaging and assembly, telecommunications, office equipment, and industrial B2B, both manufacturing and wholesale distribution. It's been a wild ride.

Right now, I run Transforming Sales Results, my own advisory, consulting, and sales training practice. I'm also a part-time contractor with SPARXiQ, where I help clients implement the sales training I developed for SPARXiQ.

I'm the author of The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement, and I'm working on a book series and training courses for my CoNavigator Method, including B2B Sales Mastery, Sales Management Mastery, and Sales Coaching Mastery. I also write a LinkedIn newsletter with about 34,000 subscribers, sharing what I've learned about moving the needle on the most important metrics.

Mike Shares

Good instructional design principles, empathy, curiosity, problem-solving in selling, and real manager coaching still make reps better. AI is simply a faster, sometimes better, way to deliver on those fundamentals…Firms getting this wrong use AI to skip the fundamentals instead of accelerating them.

Revenue leaders shouldn't use AI to skip the fundamentals

I'm an early adopter by nature; I like to experiment and look for new ways to get better results. When AI role-play platforms and coaching tools appeared, I experimented to separate hype from reality.

I recently wrapped up a project for an IT giant, helping SDRs set more, better-qualified appointments. For over six months now, I've used AI daily to speed up curriculum design, research, and other work that previously took hours.

Through all of this, I've remained grounded because the fundamentals haven't changed. Good instructional design principles, empathy, curiosity, problem-solving in selling, and real manager coaching still make reps better. AI is simply a faster, sometimes better, way to deliver on those fundamentals.

Firms getting this wrong use AI to skip the fundamentals instead of accelerating them.

Why revenue leaders should double down on human differentiators

I don't use AI alone to drive revenue impact, nor do I expect it to do so.

Even with all the advancements in AI, I've doubled down on the human side. It's more important to ensure that sellers engage more effectively with buyers and managers engage more effectively with their teams. I achieve this in multiple ways, emphasizing what I call the "Human Differentiators":

• Empathy
• Listening
• Judgment
• Critical thinking
• Problem solving
• Decision making
• Insight
• Ethical persuasion
• Kindness
• And connecting the dots

Why? Because these things build trust, respect, and value. Humans are highly effective at them. And they've become differentiators.

Perhaps most importantly, AI can't do them.

So for now, I use AI to support sellers and managers — prep, research, and other tasks — in ways that enable them to focus on high-value interactions.

For the foreseeable future, it's AI + humans for the win. This might change as AI evolves — it will never be worse than it is right now — but I am not ready to unleash agentic AI bots on live, human buyers.

Where AI should be used in revenue, and where hard lines should be drawn

With all that said, here are some excellent use cases for AI in revenue:

• Researching, preparing, and creating content. This includes buyer research, market and competitive intelligence, and presentation customization. This is a good focus for AI-assisted work.
• Setting account objectives based on data-driven analysis of past, current, and best-case future account performance. Revenue leaders can use that data to set a logical account objective. There are only five: acquire, grow, retain, reactivate, and retire.

• Processing large datasets and identifying purchasing patterns, pricing irregularities, profitability trends, and more for account and territory managers with large bases. AI provides prescriptive recommendations that would take a human weeks to develop. This is a smart use of the technology. Remember, though, the rep still decides what to act on and must have the skills to execute it effectively with the customer. That's AI and humans working together for the win.
• Role playing. AI is also central to the role-play work I do, building scenarios reps practice before they meet a real buyer.

I draw a hard line at manager coaching and performance diagnosis. AI can help a manager prepare for a coaching conversation, summarize a call, analyze results, and flag a pattern, but it cannot replace the manager sitting with a rep, diagnosing why a specific deal or skill gap occurs, and working through it with them. I've seen leaders use AI tools to skip that work, which is exactly backwards. Technology should make managers better at coaching and free up more time for it, not give them an excuse to coach less.

The same logic applies to AI SDRs or automated outbound. If your targeting and messaging are already broken, AI doesn't fix that; it just runs the mistake faster and at higher volume.

I've seen this play out before. So, I assign AI tasks involving speed and scale, research, analysis, drafting, and practice. Human tasks are those that involve judgment: Is this rep improving, is this deal real, is this message right for this buyer? AI can inform all of that, but it shouldn't decide any of it.

Why revenue leaders must focus on human performance

Here's my advice: Focus on human performance.

As Kurt Lewin's famous equation says, behavior is a function of both the person and the environment.

To change sales performance, we must change human behavior. That means hiring the right people for the right roles, and building systems, processes, methodologies, tools, and environments around them to support high performance.

Most organizations have so much untapped performance potential that they could double revenue without adding anybody (or any AI). Get effective first. Then, consider where AI can help reps and managers do more effective things, even faster, without losing quality.

That is how we will make the most of AI in the short term, until Skynet takes over.

Mike Shares

Here’s my advice: Focus on human performance…To change sales performance, we must change human behavior…That is how we will make the most of AI in the short term, until Skynet takes over.

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To explore more of Mike Kunkle's work, check out his blog, book, LinkedIn newsletter, services, and Revenue Acceleration Sprints.

More expert interviews to come on The CRO Club!