When we look at the traditional sales practices we can be mistaken for thinking that we are talking about notepads and cold calls, this is not the case. While I embrace the “old school” practices like QDQ (Quantity, Direction and Quality) I embrace the fact that we have always needed to prepare and do research.
With AI the “old school” sales practices have become much easier to implement. So why call it “old school”? Because the fundamentals have not changed, people buy from people!
Sales has never been just about having the right script, the slickest presentation, or the most persistent follow-up sequence. Great selling has always been human. It depends on trust, timing, emotional intelligence, smart questioning, genuine listening, commercial confidence, and the ability to connect a customer’s real problem with a meaningful solution. That is why KONA Sales Training continues to matter in a marketplace that is becoming faster, noisier, and more technology-driven.
The arrival of artificial intelligence has not changed the fundamentals of selling. It has changed the tools available to salespeople. Used properly, AI does not replace the KONA process. It strengthens it. It gives sales professionals a sharper way to prepare, practise, personalise, reflect, and improve, while keeping the human conversation at the centre of every opportunity.
AI is not the new salesperson. It is the new sales assistant, coach, researcher, role-play partner, and productivity booster sitting beside the salesperson.
KONA’s approach has always focused on transformation rather than generic training. Its sales programs are tailored to the organisation, the industry, the team, and the business goals, with an emphasis on psychology, emotional intelligence, practical sales strategies, and repeatable processes that drive real revenue outcomes. The KONA Hearts & Minds methodology is especially relevant in the age of AI because it recognises that buyers make decisions through both emotional and rational filters.
That is exactly where AI becomes powerful. AI can support the rational side of selling by helping teams research faster, analyse information, prepare better questions, summarise calls, identify patterns, and draft personalised communication. But KONA develops the human side that AI cannot replace: confidence, empathy, judgement, influence, resilience, and the ability to build trust in a real conversation.
What KONA Sales Training Builds | What AI Can Enhance
• Emotional intelligence and trust-building
• Buyer research, persona insights, and communication preparation
• Better questioning and listening skills Call summaries, pattern recognition, and coaching prompts
• Confidence in handling objections
• AI role-play, scenario practice, and feedback loops
• Customer-centred selling
• Personalised messaging based on customer context
• Practical, repeatable sales process
• Workflow automation, next-step reminders, and CRM support
• Leadership alignment and coaching discipline
• Performance insights, coaching dashboards, and training reinforcement
This is the real opportunity: AI helps salespeople spend less time on low-value administration and more time doing what humans do best, selling, connecting, solving, and influencing. Harvard Business School research on AI and sales productivity makes this point clearly: AI creates value when it is attached to actionable use cases and frees people to focus on the work they do best.
For a KONA-trained sales team, that means AI can become part of the toolkit without becoming the process itself. A salesperson can use AI to prepare for a prospect meeting, but KONA teaches them how to conduct the conversation. AI can suggest possible objections, but KONA teaches the salesperson how to respond with confidence and emotional intelligence. AI can draft a follow-up email, but KONA teaches the salesperson how to make that follow-up meaningful, relevant, and commercially effective.
Gartner reports that AI use cases in sales now span prospecting, analytics, forecasting, enablement, and buyer research. Gartner also predicts that by 2027, 95% of seller research workflows will begin with AI, compared with less than 20% in 2024.5 That does not mean every salesperson will suddenly become better. It means every salesperson will soon have access to more information. The competitive advantage will belong to the teams who know how to use that information well.
This is why teaching sales teams how to use AI must sit alongside traditional sales training, not outside it. Without a strong sales methodology, AI can simply help people produce more average emails, more generic proposals, and more noise. With KONA’s methodology, AI becomes far more valuable because it is guided by a trained salesperson who knows what to ask, what to listen for, how to interpret buyer behaviour, and when to act.
• Sales Activity
• Traditional KONA Skill
• AI-Enhanced Application
• Prospect preparation
• Understanding the buyer, industry, and commercial context
• Summarise company news, identify likely priorities, and prepare tailored discovery questions
• Discovery conversations
• Asking better questions and listening between the lines
• Generate pre-call hypotheses and post-call summaries for reflection and coaching
• Objection handling
• Staying calm, confident, and customer-centred
• Practise difficult scenarios through AI role-play before meeting the customer
• Follow-up
• Creating value after the conversation
• Draft clear, personalised follow-ups that reflect the customer’s language and priorities
• Coaching
• Reinforcing behaviours and improving performance
• Identify patterns in calls, emails, and pipeline activity to guide manager coaching
• Pipeline management
• Maintaining discipline and commercial focus
• Highlight next actions, stalled opportunities, and missing information
Salesforce describes AI sales enablement as training, content, and coaching powered in part by artificial intelligence. It notes that AI can accelerate the creation of enablement content and personalise how support is delivered to each salesperson, including simulations, role-play, real-time guidance, and coaching based on insights. This aligns naturally with the KONA philosophy because training should not be a one-off event. It should become a practical, repeatable capability embedded into how the team sells every day.
The key phrase is “powered in part.” AI should not take over the salesperson’s thinking. It should sharpen it. It should not remove accountability. It should make accountability clearer. It should not make communication robotic. It should help the salesperson become more relevant, more prepared, and more valuable to the customer.
Bain has also highlighted that sales has trailed other business functions in adopting AI, even though the opportunity is significant. Its 2025 technology report notes that AI can free sellers to spend more time with customers and that early successes show substantial improvements in win rates when AI is used thoughtfully.7 However, the same principle applies here: technology alone is not the strategy. The process, behaviours, leadership, coaching, and customer focus still determine whether AI creates a genuine performance lift.
That is where KONA Sales Training becomes even more important, not less. As AI becomes more common, customers will be flooded with automated messages and templated outreach. The teams that win will not be the teams that simply use AI. They will be the teams that use AI with discipline, humanity, and commercial intelligence.
A KONA-trained salesperson using AI well can walk into a meeting better prepared, ask sharper questions, understand the customer’s world faster, and follow up with greater relevance. A KONA-trained manager using AI well can coach more specifically, identify skill gaps sooner, and reinforce training long after the workshop has finished. A KONA-trained organisation using AI well can build a sales culture that is both more human and more productive.
The danger is assuming AI is a shortcut around training. It is not. If anything, AI raises the standard. When every competitor can access similar tools, the differentiator becomes the quality of the person using them. AI may help write the email, but it cannot build the relationship. AI may suggest a question, but it cannot read the room. AI may summarise the meeting, but it cannot create trust. AI may provide insights, but it cannot replace judgement.
The future of selling is not human versus machine. It is trained humans using smart machines better than everyone else.
For sales leaders, the practical path forward is not to throw out proven training and chase every new AI platform. The smarter move is to integrate AI into the existing sales process in a controlled, useful, and customer-centred way. Teach the team when to use AI, how to check its outputs, how to protect customer confidentiality, how to personalise rather than automate blindly, and how to keep the human relationship at the centre of the sale.
That is the enhanced version of KONA Sales Training: the same commitment to mindset, skillset, emotional intelligence, practical frameworks, and customer-centred selling — now strengthened by AI tools that help teams prepare faster, practise more often, and perform with greater confidence.
AI will not replace the KONA process. It will reward the teams who have one.
And for organisations serious about building modern sales capability, that may be the real unfair advantage. To read more about the future of AI in sales, click here.
All References:
[1]: https://www.kona.com.au/ “KONA Group | Sales Training & Coaching Australia”
[2]: https://www.kona.com.au/sales-training “KONA Sales Training”
[3]: https://www.kona.com.au/why-the-kona-hearts-minds-sales-methodology-is-the-best-approach “Why The KONA Hearts & Minds Sales Methodology is the Best Approach”
[4]: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=66099 “Harvard Business School: AI, ROI, and Sales Productivity”
[5]: https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/topics/sales-ai “Gartner: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Sales”
[6]: https://www.salesforce.com/ap/sales/ai/ai-sales-enablement/ “Salesforce: How Is AI Transforming Sales Enablement?”
[7]: https://www.bain.com/insights/ai-transforming-productivity-sales-remains-new-frontier-technology-report-2025/ “Bain: AI Is Transforming Productivity, but Sales Remains a New Frontier”
Contact KONA Training today to discuss our tailored training programs and how they can benefit your team.
Call 1300 611 288 or Email info@kona.com.au
Author – Garret Norris – https://www.linkedin.com/in/garretnorris/
