THE BUYER HAS CHANGED. HAS THE SALESPERSON?

 The customer is now in control, and while you're checking them out, they're checking you out too.

I sometimes wonder how many salespeople are still selling the way they were taught twenty years ago. They have their prospecting scripts, their presentations, their objection-handling techniques and their closing strategies. Some even believe that if they can just get in front of enough people and talk long enough, eventually somebody will buy something. Unfortunately, the customer has moved on, and in many cases the salesperson hasn't even noticed.

Years ago, the salesperson had a tremendous advantage. We controlled the information. If somebody wanted to know about our products, prices, features or competitors, they generally had to speak to us. We could arrange the appointment, turn up with our beautiful brochure, deliver our carefully rehearsed presentation and guide the customer through the sales process. We were the experts because we had the information. The customer had the questions, and hopefully we had the answers.

The Customer Has Taken Over

Then along came the internet, Google, social media, online reviews and now artificial intelligence. Suddenly, the customer didn't need us to explain everything. They could research our company, compare competitors, check prices, watch demonstrations and read what other customers thought about us. And they could do all of this at eleven o'clock at night, sitting on the sofa in their pajamas with a glass of wine. Not exactly the ideal environment for a salesperson to deliver their carefully rehearsed PowerPoint presentation.

Today, the buying journey often starts long before the salesperson knows there is a potential customer. Buyers can use ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini to research solutions, compare suppliers and prepare questions. They can ask AI to identify weaknesses in a proposal, evaluate alternatives and even suggest what they should negotiate. By the time they contact us, they may already have a shortlist of suppliers and a pretty good idea of what they want.

We used to think the salesperson was taking the customer on a journey. Now the customer is taking the journey, and we're hoping to be invited along for part of it. Sometimes we're invited in at the beginning, sometimes near the end, and occasionally we discover that the journey is over and somebody else has got the business.

And Here's Something I've Noticed in My Own Business

I spend a great deal of my time speaking at conferences, working with companies and training sales teams around the world. LinkedIn has become one of my most important business tools, and over the years I've noticed something rather interesting.

Before I've even spoken to a potential client, I can often see that they've been looking at my LinkedIn profile. Sometimes several people from the same organisation have been checking me out. I haven't delivered a presentation, sent a proposal or even had a conversation with them, but they're already doing their homework.

And it doesn't stop at LinkedIn. I regularly discover that people have been reading my articles and passing them around to colleagues and their teams. In some cases, my ideas are already circulating inside a company before I've had the opportunity to meet the people who might eventually book me.

Think about that for a moment. I'm being evaluated before I've even entered the room.

Fortunately, I enjoy writing articles and sharing ideas, and my LinkedIn profile gives people a pretty good idea of what I do, how I think and the subjects I'm passionate about. Hopefully, they also discover that I have a sense of humor and don't spend my entire life talking about artificial intelligence.

But it made me realise something important. While I was using LinkedIn to research potential clients, those same clients were using LinkedIn to research me. The salesperson was no longer the only one doing the investigating.

Would You Buy from You?

That's a question I increasingly ask people in my LinkedIn and sales training programs. Forget what you think your profile says about you. Look at it through the eyes of a potential customer who doesn't know you.

Imagine you've sent a beautifully written prospecting email. The customer is interested enough to look you up. Your LinkedIn photograph looks as though it was taken when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, your headline says 'Sales Executive at ABC Company', and the last thing you posted was a photograph of the Christmas party three years ago.

Your company website is full of photographs of people shaking hands, but there's very little evidence that you understand the customer's business or the problems they're trying to solve.

The customer hasn't met you, hasn't seen your presentation and hasn't discussed your prices. But they've already formed an opinion. And unfortunately for you, it might not be a particularly good one.

Now compare that with a salesperson whose profile clearly explains who they help, what problems they solve and the value they bring. They share useful ideas, customer stories, short videos and insights relevant to their industry. Which one would you be more inclined to meet?

And here's the irony. The first salesperson probably complains that nobody responds to prospecting emails anymore. They blame the economy, the competition, LinkedIn or perhaps the price of petrol. It never occurs to them that the customer may have rejected them before the sales conversation even started.

The New Salesperson Needs a Different Set of Skills

Does this mean salespeople are becoming irrelevant? Not at all. I think the opposite is true. But we have to stop believing our main job is simply to deliver information. AI can already do a remarkable amount of that.

Our real value comes from understanding customers, asking better questions, challenging assumptions, sharing experience, solving problems and building trust. The salesperson who turns up and repeats everything the customer has already read on the website is going to have a difficult time. The salesperson who brings fresh thinking and helps the customer make a better decision will always have an advantage.

We also need to recognise that our sales and marketing activities can no longer operate in separate little boxes. Our LinkedIn profiles, websites, videos, articles, customer testimonials and personal reputations are all contributing to the buying decision. Every one of them is either helping to build confidence or giving the customer another reason to look elsewhere.

The old sales process was largely about the salesperson controlling the conversation. The new one is about earning the right to be part of it.

So here's my question. We spend an enormous amount of time teaching salespeople how to find, research and approach customers. But how much time do we spend making sure that when customers research us, they like what they find?

The buyer has changed. Has your sales team changed with them?

---

Frank Furness
International Keynote Speaker | Sales, AI & LinkedIn Training

www.frankfurness.com
frank@frankfurness.com

 

The Biggest AI Mistake I See Salespeople Making

 

Are we becoming better at using AI — or simply better at collecting AI tools?

I spend a lot of my time speaking and training around AI, sales and LinkedIn, and I've noticed something interesting.

People love discovering new tools.

ChatGPT. Gemini. Claude. Grok. DeepSeek. Perplexity. Clay. Apollo. HeyGen. Gamma. Beautiful.ai. ElevenLabs.

Another one launches and suddenly we're signing up for another free trial and trying to remember which email address we used.

At some point, you have to ask:

Is any of this actually helping us sell?

That's why I've changed the way I think about AI.

I'm becoming much less interested in individual tools and much more interested in the journey.

Start with the sales problem

Suppose I want to win a new client.

I could use LinkedIn and Apollo to identify the right people.

Then Perplexity, Grok or Gemini could help me understand the company, market and what is happening around them.

I could take that information into ChatGPT, Claude or DeepSeek and ask the AI to challenge my thinking, identify potential problems and prepare intelligent questions.

If I need more information about the prospect, Clay can enrich it.

Now I have something worth saying.

That's when the creative tools become useful.

I could turn the idea into a presentation with Gamma or Beautiful.ai, create supporting graphics in Canva, produce a personalised video with HeyGen, or potentially use ElevenLabs where voice makes sense.

Suddenly we're not talking about AI tools anymore.

We're talking about a sales system.

And that's a much more interesting conversation.

But there's a catch

The more AI can do, the more important I think the human becomes.

AI can research somebody before I meet them.

It can't build the relationship for me.

AI can suggest five brilliant questions.

It can't look across the table and realise that question number three has just made the customer uncomfortable.

AI can draft a follow-up email in seconds.

It doesn't know whether I should pick up the phone instead.

AI can create a beautiful sales presentation.

It doesn't know when I should close the laptop and simply listen.

Those are human skills.

And they're becoming more valuable, not less.

Don't ask which AI is best

I'm also increasingly convinced that we're asking the wrong question.

People ask me whether ChatGPT is better than Gemini.

Or Claude.

Or Grok.

Or DeepSeek.

My answer?

For what?

Try giving the same genuine business problem to several of them.

Don't ask five AIs five different questions.

Give them exactly the same problem.

Then compare their thinking.

You may be surprised.

Take the strongest ideas, challenge the weak ones and add something none of those systems possesses:

Your experience.

That's where I think sales is heading

The winners won't necessarily be the companies with the most AI.

And they certainly won't be the salespeople with the most subscriptions.

The winners will be the people who understand where AI can remove friction, where it can improve decisions and where it should get out of the way.

My rule is becoming very simple:

Automate the admin.
Accelerate the thinking.
Protect the relationship.

Because the objective isn't to use more AI.

The objective is to spend less time doing things machines can do so we have more time doing the things humans do brilliantly.

Where in your sales process could AI save you the most time without damaging the human relationship?

#ArtificialIntelligence #AISales #Sales #LinkedIn #SalesLeadership #Marketing #ChatGPT #FutureOfSales

I deliver keynotes, training and consulting on AI, sales and LinkedIn.

Let’s talk — frankfurness.com email frank@frankfurness.com

call UK 07711672888

USA 407558 9714

The AI Presentation Wars: Has Gamma Lost Its Crown?

 

The AI Presentation Wars Just Got Interesting

I was having dinner with a client in New Orleans last month, the kind of place with a jazz trio in the corner doing far more with three instruments than most speakers manage with sixty slides. Somewhere between the gumbo and the second round of drinks, she asked me which AI presentation tool she should be using.

I used to have a one-word answer for that. Gamma.

Not anymore.

When Gamma Was the Belle of the Ball

I've built well over a thousand presentations in my career, for rooms as small as twenty people and stages as big as four thousand. The lesson never changes. Your slides aren't there to say more. They're there to get out of the way and let you say it.

When Gamma turned up, I was properly excited. Here, finally, was a tool that could knock out a half-decent deck in minutes, rather than the usual half-day wrestling match with PowerPoint's alignment guides. I recommend it to clients. I demonstrated it on stage. I built it into my AI masterclasses like it was doing me a personal favour.

Lately, though, something's shifted. It wasn't one big falling-out. It was death by a thousand small ones.

More Features, Less Magic

The decks started looking a bit… samey. Same pastel gradients. Same stock-photo people gesturing enthusiastically at whiteboards. Same “AI made this” fingerprint that anyone who's seen more than three of them can spot from the back row.

Meanwhile, Gamma has been busy bolting on more of everything.

More AI. More image generation. More integrations. More collaboration tools that nobody in the room asked for.

It's turned into a Swiss Army knife problem. Twenty-three tools folded into one handle, and somewhere in all that engineering the actual knife stopped being sharp.

Then I Went Shopping

Curiosity got the better of me, as it usually does, so I spent a fortnight testing the competition properly rather than just reading the marketing emails.

Beautiful.ai was the one that made me sit up. The slides had something Gamma's had quietly lost: restraint.

Proper spacing, clean typography, charts that looked like an actual designer had been in the room rather than a very confident algorithm. Instead of dazzling me with a hundred clever tricks, it just helped me build something I'd be happy walking out on stage with. Which, last I checked, is the entire job.

Canva, meanwhile, has grown up when nobody was watching. I spent years filing it under “where people make Instagram posts,” and I was wrong to. Magic Design has come on enormously, the Brand Kits keep everything consistent without you having to think about it, and if you're already living in Canva for your marketing, there's now a genuine case for building your decks there too.

Presentations.ai is the one nobody's talking about, and I'm not sure why. Sharp AI, attractive layouts, and it understands business storytelling rather than just filling boxes with words. Quietly excellent. Put it on your shortlist.

Plus AI takes the opposite approach entirely; it doesn't ask you to leave PowerPoint at all, it just gets smarter inside it. This means you keep your animations, your master slides, your presenter notes, your corporate template, all of it. No mystery exports. No formatting meltdown five minutes before you're due on stage, frantically dragging a text box back into position while the AV guy pretends not to notice.

My Workflow Now

These days I don't marry one tool. I run the lot in relay.

Claude does the research. ChatGPT helps me shape and sharpen the ideas. Presentations.ai or Beautiful.ai builds the first draft. PowerPoint is where I finish it, because that's where I get full control over the last ten percent that actually matters.

And, crucially, at the end of it, it still looks like my presentation. Not the software's.

Frank's Quick Tip Before you rebuild your deck with yet another AI tool, ask whether the problem is the software or the story. Nine times out of ten, a beautifully generated slide still can't rescue a message nobody has thought through properly.

 

The Real Lesson Isn't About Gamma

This isn't really a Gamma pile-on, much as it might read like one. It's a pattern I've watched play out across thirty years of new technology landing on my desk.

Companies keep adding features because they can. Customers, on the other hand, generally want one thing done brilliantly, not eleven things done adequately. The businesses that last aren't the ones with the longest feature list. They're the ones that never forgot what they were good at.

My Current Favourites

●      Beautiful.ai — for polished executive presentations

●      Presentations.ai — for fast, sharp first drafts

●      Canva — for marketing and visual content

●      PowerPoint with AI tools — when you need total creative control

This market moves fast enough that today's leader could be next year's cautionary tale, and frankly that's the fun part. Our job as presenters was never to fall in love with the software. It's to find whatever helps us tell a better story and leave the room saying “that was brilliant.”

Because in thirty years on stage, I've never once had an audience member walk out and say, “the speaker was forgettable, but did you see those gradients on slide fourteen?”

Want help building presentations that actually land? Email frank@frankfurness.com or call +447711 672888

Google's Had a Midlife Crisis.

 

I was in Manchester last month, having dinner with a group of CEO’s. Someone asked: "When did you last actually click on a Google result?" Silence. Cutlery clinking. A sheepish look around the table.

The honest answer? Barely ever. Because Google — and every AI assistant after it — now just tells you the answer. No clicking required.

That single change has quietly dismantled 20 years of SEO strategy. And most businesses haven't noticed yet.

 

1. What on Earth is SEO?

SEO — Search Engine Optimization — is the game of making your website show up when someone types something into Google. You stuff in the right keywords, get other sites to link to yours, and pray to the algorithm gods. If it works, you appear on page one. If it doesn't, you're on page two — which, as the joke goes, is the best place to hide a dead body.

It's been the backbone of digital marketing since the late 1990s.

 

Otherwise, you get into the paid game where the highest bidder gets seen. It could be the worst product, but because they have paid the most for the ad, they appear at the top of the search page. Companies have spent fortunes on it. Some still do.

But the internet has moved on. And it's taking your customers with it.

 

2. Enter AEO — Answer Engine Optimization

Here's what's changed. When someone types "best CRM for a 50-person sales team" into Google today, they often don't see ten blue links. They see a direct answer — right there at the top. No clicking. No visiting your site. Just the answer.

That answer comes from somewhere. And if it doesn't come from your content — if your website isn't written in a way that answers real questions clearly (or you have paid a ton of money for the ad space) you're invisible. Completely.

AEO is about structuring your content so that search engines pick you as the answer. Think about FAQs. Think 'What is...?' pages.

Think content that directly answers the questions your ideal customer is actually asking.

Frank's Quick Tip  Write one page on your website that answers your single most-asked customer question, in plain English. No jargon. No waffle. Just: question at the top, clear answer underneath. That's AEO in action.

 

3. Now Meet GEO — Generative Engine Optimization

If AEO changed the game, GEO has rewritten the rulebook entirely.

When your customers ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any AI assistant a question “who are the best sales trainers in the UK?" or "what should I look for in a keynote speaker?" — the AI doesn't search Google. It draws on everything it's been trained on, plus real-time browsing. And it gives one authoritative answer. Maybe two or three names. Maybe mine. Maybe not.

Do a Google search for ‘Sales Technology Speaker’ and see what comes up…

GEO is about making sure that when AI talks about your industry, it talks about you.

That means being mentioned in credible online articles. My next article will be sharing my 7 point system for creating articles and blogs….

Getting quoted by respected publications. Having clear, authoritative content that AI systems can cite confidently. Building a digital reputation that AI trusts.

It's not quick. But neither was SEO in 2003. The businesses investing in it now will be the ones AI recommends in 2026 and beyond.

 

4. SEO vs AEO vs GEO — The Simple Version

 

SEO	AEO	GEO
Keywords	Questions & answers	AI-ready content
Clicks to your site	Direct answers given	Your content IN the answer
Google rankings	Voice & chat results	AI model citations
Rank higher	Be the answer	Be quoted by AI

 

5. What This Means For Your Business Right Now

You don't need to panic, but you do need to act. Here's what I tell every CEO and sales director I work with:

▪      Write like a person. Stop writing for Google bots. Start writing for human beings asking real questions.

▪      Answer the questions. Your website should answer the top five questions a prospect asks before they buy from you. Make those pages exceptional.

▪      Build your authority. Get your name and expertise into industry articles, trade publications, podcasts and news sites. That's what AI reads.

▪      Don't ditch SEO entirely. Don't abandon SEO overnight — it still matters. But treat it as one leg of a three-legged stool, not the whole chair.

▪      Test it yourself. Ask ChatGPT right now: 'Who are the top [companies] in [your sector] in [your country]?' If your name isn't there, you have work to do.

 

Quick Tip  Try this today: open ChatGPT and type 'What should I look for when hiring a [your type of service] provider?' If your expertise, your company, or your name doesn't appear in any form — that's your gap. Now go fill it.

 

The Bottom Line

The businesses that dominated Google in 2010 weren't the ones who got lucky. They were the ones who understood how search worked before their competitors did and moved first.

We're at the same moment again. The rules have changed and the question is whether you're one of the businesses shaping the new game — or one of the ones about to be left wondering where all their leads went.

Brutal truth: if an AI assistant can't find you, endorse you, or cite you — you're as invisible to a whole generation of buyers as if your website didn't exist.

Time to get found.

 

Want to make sure AI finds — and recommends — your business? Let's talk.