POWERED BY WE HAVE A MEETING - THE MOST RELIABLE SALES AGENCY IN THE UK
TOGETHER WITH PROSPEO
If your outbound bounces more than it should, the problem is usually the data. In an independent test of 8 providers, Clay ranked Prospeo first for accuracy. Prospeo's 300M-contact database triple-verifies every email, so your messages actually land. Try it for free here →
THE INTERVIEW
WEDNESDAY
STATE
OF SALES
The State of Sales right now….
IN THE HOT SEAT
Grant Evans
Head of Sales (Integrated & Platforms) UK & EMEA
We're in a really transitional phase. The best sellers have started using video, creative messaging and AI in a way that makes them stand out from the crowd, while the traditional SDR is turning into a demand generation manager. And different sectors are at completely different stages of letting their teams do any of it.
THE SETUP
Grant Evans is Head of Sales (Integrated & Platforms) UK & EMEA at Global Payments, one of the world's largest payment technology providers, where he sells complex, multi-country deals in an industry famous for moving carefully. That vantage point gave us something rare: a look at how AI is changing enterprise selling inside a regulated sector, on both sides of the table.
THE 60-SECOND VERSION
Run the slow sell on LinkedIn: comments and familiarity before any pitch.
Buyers now use AI as their lawyer. Expect 37 redlines where you used to see three.
Kill the corporate deck and the gated PDF. Lead with a problem question instead.
Give reps a monthly AI budget and let them show you what they build.
3 THINGS YOU'LL STEAL FROM THIS
The slow-sell LinkedIn motion that warms decision makers without a single pitch
Why your next contract negotiation will have ten times the redlines, and how to prepare
The case for handing every rep a personal AI budget
01 · The slow sell: comments before connection requests pay off
Grant would scrap InMail tomorrow.
I think InMail is a dying beast. I would sack it off right now if I was LinkedIn.
What his team runs instead is patient and personal:
Connect on LinkedIn.
Message once. It'll probably be ignored. That's fine.
Comment on their posts. Genuinely, where they're active. They see your name repeatedly.
Follow up referencing their content. By now you're familiar, and familiarity opens doors.
The other channel roaring back in his industry is events, with a twist in how the calendar gets built: his team now asks existing customers which events their whole industry attends. Two of this year's best events came from gym-software customers naming conferences his team had never heard of.
DO THIS THIS WEEK
Email three happy customers one question: "What's the one event where everyone in your industry shows up?" Build next year's calendar from the answers.
02 · Your buyer's lawyer is now a language model
Grant's most striking field report is from the contract stage. Buyers are feeding agreements into AI tools and asking one question: show me everything weighted against me.
Where you might have had three redlines, you're now having 37, because AI is taking every minute detail, almost to an excruciating point. It's hindering deals that previously wouldn't have been hindered.
He's already taken it to his legal team with a simple instruction: prepare as if everyone we deal with is now a lawyer. The flip side is that long pre-RFP relationships matter more than ever. One 18-month courtship of a buying team, built patiently between cycles, has left his team so trusted the eventual RFP feels like a formality.
STEAL THIS
Run your own standard contract through an AI tool with the buyer's prompt: "show me everything weighted against the customer." Fix or pre-explain the worst of it before your next negotiation.
03 · Kill the corporate deck, the gated PDF and the lazy connect
Grant's list of dying outbound assets is long and specific. The ten-page corporate brochure attached to a fresh connection request. The gated content that generates marketing "leads" out of people a seller already spoke to. The carousel everyone scrolls past.
Don't connect with someone and say "great to connect, here's our corporate deck." That's lazy. Talk about a problem they may face and find out whether they've actually had that challenge.
His hiring lens has shifted the same way: he now looks for technically minded sellers, people comfortable with AI tools, who bridge salesperson and solutions engineer.
I would be concerned for individuals that aren't upskilling themselves for the next phase of selling.
TRY THIS THIS WEEK
Delete the attachment from your connection-request template and replace it with one problem-led question. Watch what happens to reply quality.
04 · Give every rep an AI budget and open the floodgates
Financial services locks AI down hard, and Grant has watched the result: people building things on personal laptops and emailing them to their work machines anyway. His conclusion is refreshingly commercial.
We might as well let the floodgates open. Here's your monthly AI budget, go and use the ten or twelve tools that make you better at your job, and have at it. If they're using it in the right way, it could make them the best seller you've got, because they're getting more creative than anyone else.
His final prediction ties it together: the SDR and AE worlds converge, with hybrid reps part-selling the deals they open. Get that function right and you've built something better than pipeline.
You've got your incubator hub for the best sellers you'll ever have.
THE MOVE
Pilot a monthly AI allowance with three reps this quarter, on one condition: each must demo what they built to the team every month.
THE ONE THING
Prepare every deal as if the buyer's lawyer is an AI, because it probably is.
WHERE TO FIND GRANT
Grant Evans is Head of Sales (Integrated & Platforms) UK & EMEA at Global Payments, the worldwide payment technology company powering commerce for millions of businesses across more than 100 countries. Find him on LinkedIn or visit globalpayments.com.
Got a take on this one? Hit reply. We read every single one.
Every week we sit down with the operators actually moving revenue.