It's scary. Your buyer already knows what you're going to say.
By the time you get the meeting, they've already asked ChatGPT to rank you against your competitors and formed opinions about whether you're worth their time.
This is the new reality. Buyers don't need to read as much of your content to be educated or sit through calls to learn about product basics. The time you used to have for building relationships and differentiation? Shrinking.
Here is what today's buyers actually do:
Today's Buyers
This isn't just a shift in buyer behavior. It's a fundamental restructuring of when and how trust gets built.
The window where you used to demonstrate value, build rapport, and differentiate your solution has compressed into a fraction of what it once was.
Before we explore what works, we need to understand exactly how deep this change runs.
AI is Reducing Your Actual Selling Time
Your buyers are doing in minutes what used to take them months, and they're doing it without you. They're building shortlists, forming opinions, and making decisions before you even know they're in-market. The research phase that once gave you multiple touchpoints to build relationships? It's gone.
The Shrinking Window
When buyers finally show up, they don't want your overview. They want proof you understand their situation better than the AI that got them this far. Every conversation now carries the weight that used to be spread across an entire sales cycle. That makes it more important than ever to communicate in ways that are meaningful and relevant to your buyers.
Pre-AI Buyer Journey
8-12 weeks- • Google searches
- • Industry blogs
- • Download whitepapers
- • Fill out forms
- • Intro call with AE
- • Needs assessment
- • Product demos
- • Technical deep dives
- • Reference calls
- • Final negotiations
Post-AI Buyer Journey
Hours to Days- • Ask ChatGPT to compare vendors
- • Get instant comparison
- • AI generates shortlist
- • One-shot vendor recommendations
- • Deep research via AI
- • G2 reviews (no form fill)
- • Already deep in evaluation
- • Shortlist already built
Three Forces Working Against You
AI didn't create these problems. It accelerated them. Three forces have been quietly eroding your advantage for years. Now they're hitting at once:
The Invisible Evaluation
Buyers haven't just moved ahead of you. They've moved around you. They've been dubbed "invisible buyers" because their entire research journey happens under the radar. AI tools let them learn about your product via summaries, third-party sites, and chatbot conversations, without ever triggering a form fill, website visit, or intent signal in your analytics.
Your future customer could be researching you right now without triggering any intent signal in your analytics.
They one-shot their shortlist, asking ChatGPT for three CRM options and getting an instant, definitive answer.
What used to be a multi-month discovery process involving demos and analyst reports now happens in hours.
The Crisis of Sameness
Answers are a commodity. When everyone has access to ChatGPT and Gemini, the same frameworks, the same "best practices," the same AI-generated emails, what's left to differentiate you? Sellers need to go above and beyond to separate from the pack.
You become a human Xerox machine, reproducing content that sounds exactly like your competitors.
If an AI could have written your email, given your pitch, or prepared your demo, why do they need you?
Forgettable doesn't close. And right now, most sellers are indistinguishable from everyone else.
The Engagement Deficit
Zoom didn't just change where we sell. It changed how people listen. Humans learn by doing. Video calls optimize for watching. That's the gap. You talk, they listen (maybe), their brain categorizes it as low priority.
The brain needs emotion to tag experiences as meaningful. Screens create distance that dilutes emotional impact.
When people aren't emotionally engaged, they process faster but retain less. They evaluate but don't commit.
You're competing with the medium itself: a format that turns every conversation into a low-engagement lecture.
The Cost of Staying the Same
The cost of being generic is no longer gradual. It's immediate. Enterprise deals are now won or lost in fewer moments. Buyers arrive to your first conversation with AI-generated competitor comparisons and zero patience for generic positioning. Most reps respond with decks, feature tours, and "personalized" messaging that still sounds like everyone else. That creates three predictable failure modes:
First calls don't build trust
"Sounds interesting" becomes "we'll circle back"
Champions can't retell your story
Momentum dies between meetings
Deals stall
No one can articulate the next best move
Your alternatives are limited, and none of them work:
The market has fundamentally changed. The sellers who recognize this and change with it will win. The ones who don't will watch their win rates decline quarter after quarter, missing the real problem: they're no longer worth talking about.
Ready to Burn the Deck?
Burning the Deck means one thing: replacing forgettable content with stories that cut through the vendor fog. Stories buyers recognize as their own. Stories champions can retell in 30 seconds flat.
First calls shift from feature dumps to memorable stories, earning the next conversation and laying the groundwork for a lasting relationship.
The next two chapters show you what's changed and how sellers must adapt. Five shifts in buyer behavior and five seller shifts you must make to exceed buyer expectations and demonstrate value as a partner. Master them, and you become the vendor buyers remember when every other name blurs together.
References
Behavioral science research supporting this chapter