The first in a series of three articles to help you plan for SKO by NVSI Founder and CEO, Walter Santiago
The Call
I want to tell you about a call I heard about a few months back. This wasn’t my call. But it stuck with me because I think it says something about where we all are right now. A rep walked into a discovery call with the usual opener: “So, tell me about the problem you’re trying to solve.” Standard stuff. Except the buyer on the other end had already met with AI. In fact, they spent the weekend with it. They had already built out a comparison of five vendors, a rough budget, and a list of questions for each one. The rep’s opening question didn’t land as curious. It landed as behind.
I’ve been doing this work—sales enablement, channel strategy, watching sellers try to keep up with a moving market—for over thirty-five years now. I don’t say this lightly: this is one of the fastest shifts I’ve seen in how buyers show up.
Prior Messaging
Last year, when I stood on stage at a few of our clients’ SKOs, the message I gave sales teams was simple: customers buy outcomes, not features. I still believe that completely. If anything, I believe it more now. But I’ve watched enough of these conversations to know that the path to proving you understand someone’s outcome has gotten a lot shorter. It’s also far more competitive, because the buyer isn’t starting from zero anymore.
Here’s what I mean. The old model assumed the seller was the one doing the research and the buyer was the one waiting to be informed. That model is quietly breaking. AI has made it trivial for anyone to generate what looks like a well-researched shortlist in an afternoon. “Looks researched,” though, isn’t the same as “is informed.” That gap is what matters. It’s the space between what a customer thinks they know and what’s actually true for their specific situation. This is exactly where I think sellers still have enormous room to add value.
Recognition
I’m not writing this to tell you AI is coming for your job. I’m writing it because I think the sellers and sales teams who recognize this shift early-those who stop assuming they’re the first stop on a buyer’s journey-are going to have a noticeable advantage heading into 2027 and beyond.
This is the first in a short series I’m putting together on what I’m seeing change in how buyers show up, and what it means for how we prepare sales teams this year. Next up: what a seller’s job actually looks like now that the buyer’s already done their homework. I’d love to hear if any of this rings true for what you’re seeing out there too.
