Let’s be honest: there are a lot of AI articles out there written by people who have never sold a damn thing.
They throw around words like “predictive modeling” and “machine learning” and “GPT-enhanced engagement frameworks” as if the buzzwords themselves are doing the heavy lifting.
Meanwhile, your sales reps are ghosted by buyers, your CRM is a graveyard of dead leads, and your quoting process still depends on spreadsheets with cell-shaded confidence scores and filenames like “Q4_2023_Updated_Final_USETHIS_ONE.xlsx”
So let’s cut through it. This isn’t about what AI can do. This is about how manufacturers can implement AI in a way that actually moves the needle—in your sales pipeline, in your team’s effectiveness, and in the way your brand shows up in front of buyers who don’t have time for fluff.
Why Most AI Strategies Fail (and What Makes This One Different)
A lot of AI rollouts fail for the same reason ERP implementations do: bad inputs, no clear owner, and a team that doesn’t know why they’re being asked to change their workflow for a technology that doesn’t seem to help them.
But when AI works? It feels like magic. Reps stop guessing what to say. Sales leaders know which deals are likely to close. Content feels like it was written by someone who’s been on the factory floor. And customers? They actually feel seen.
Let’s walk through what that looks like.
Step 1: Clean Up the Junk Drawer (aka Your Sales Data)
Before you buy a single AI tool, you need to face the painful truth: your data probably sucks.
Your CRM is bloated with contacts who changed jobs three years ago. Notes are sparse or nonexistent. Lead statuses mean different things to different reps. And you’re logging demo requests in six different places. Sound familiar?
AI can’t read minds. It can only work with what you give it.
What to fix first:
- Align your sales stages. Everyone needs to be playing the same game.
- Standardize account tags (industry, revenue band, strategic fit)
- Run a hygiene pass on contacts and companies (last activity date, email status, job title)
- Train your team to actually log information in the CRM—and make it easy to do so
It doesn’t have to be perfect. But you need to create a sales source of truth. Otherwise, your AI insights will be hallucinations in a suit.
Step 2: Pick One Problem. Fix It First.
Don’t buy a $40K AI-powered sales assistant to solve a $4K problem. Start with something simple. Something annoying. Something your reps are already frustrated by.
Here are a few:
- "I don’t know which leads to follow up with first."
- "I hate writing emails from scratch."
- "I can never find the right product sheet when a buyer asks."
Start there. Then test:
- Can AI tools enrich those leads with relevant insights from your website or past sales?
- Can you prompt GPT with your product catalog and get usable, brand-safe email drafts?
- Can your call summaries auto-generate with next steps and sync to the CRM?
And here’s one that’s fast becoming a no-brainer: using AI instead of vanilla sales email templates.
Rather than pulling from the same tired messaging that’s been collecting dust in your CRM for five years, modern AI tools can write sales emails that actually sound like you understand the buyer. You feed the model with CRM data—past call notes, opportunity stage, deal size, product interest—and it crafts an email that reflects where the prospect is in the process. Add in the buyer’s recent website behavior, their company’s own news or product updates, and a reference to the last part you quoted, and suddenly you’ve got an email that feels like it was written by a senior rep who actually did their homework.
That’s the difference between being ignored and getting a reply.
One small win builds trust. And that’s how you get buy-in for broader adoption.
Step 3: Make It Work for Humans (Not Just the Slide Deck)
If your AI strategy lives in a deck somewhere between a digital transformation roadmap and a QBR report, it’s already dead.
AI needs to be embedded. But don’t confuse that with expensive or complicated. You don’t need a six-figure budget. You don’t need a team of data scientists writing custom prompts in a back room. You just need to look at the tools your team is already using—and unlock the features that are probably sitting dormant.
Microsoft Copilot can sit in Outlook and quietly draft follow-ups based on call notes. ChatGPT can be prompted with anonymized sales notes to write personalized outreach that sounds like it came from someone who’s done the research. Salesforce’s built-in Einstein tools can flag stuck deals, suggest next steps, and recommend content—all without a single new subscription.
This is about speed. Momentum. Confidence.
Start with low-friction use cases. Ask ChatGPT to outline a proposal. Have Copilot clean up a sales summary. See how your CRM’s AI can help reps spot which deals are dragging.
Forget custom integrations for now. Find small ways to help your team save time and sound smarter.
That’s not just intelligent. That’s progress that scales.
Step 4: Ground Your AI With Your BrandScript
If you want AI to represent your company well, don’t just toss it generic prompts. Feed it a system prompt built from your StoryBrand BrandScript.
Think of it like training a new team member. Would you hand them a PDF from five years ago and hope they figure it out? Or would you give them a short, powerful explanation of how your company helps customers survive and thrive, what tone to use, what pain points to lean into, and what kinds of promises to make (and not make)? That’s what a good BrandScript does for your AI.
When you embed your BrandScript into a system prompt for tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Salesforce's AI assistant, you're giving those tools guardrails. You're telling them, "This is who we are. This is who we serve. This is how we talk."
The result? A unified voice across touchpoints. Sales emails that reinforce your positioning. Proposal language that feels aligned with what marketing promised. Internal documentation that matches what reps are telling customers. Even onboarding materials that help new hires speak the language faster.
AI becomes the connective tissue between departments that have historically worked in silos. It doesn’t just create consistency. It creates coherence.
And when your buyers, engineers, customer service reps, and field sales team are all hearing (and saying) the same story, the result is clarity. Internally. Externally. Everywhere.
This isn’t a branding exercise. It’s operational alignment, delivered at scale.
Step 5: Measure What Matters
Nobody wants another dashboard. They want fewer surprises.
- Track lead-to-close time.
- Monitor email response rates.
- Flag rep adoption metrics (who’s using the tool? Are they actually seeing results?)
- Monitor average deal size: are we enabling smarter, more strategic deals?
- Track sales productivity: can reps reach out to more leads, follow up on more quotes, or handle more accounts without compromising quality?
AI isn’t just about doing things faster. It’s about enabling your sales team to do more of the right things, more often. If your reps are spending less time typing and formatting and more time actually selling, you’re doing it right. That might look like more calls made per week, more quotes followed up on, or a broader territory covered without hiring another rep.
That’s how you build leverage without burning people out.
Tie all of this back to revenue and rep confidence.
Because here’s the thing: if AI makes your salespeople feel stronger, faster, and more focused—they’ll keep using it. If it makes them feel micromanaged or confused, they’ll find the off switch.
Closing Thought: Make It Real, Not Theoretical
If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: AI doesn't need to be a moonshot. It needs to be useful.
Start by solving one real problem for your sales team. Write one email faster. Save ten minutes on a follow-up. Make your rep sound like they actually understand the buyer's world.
Then build from there.
Look for friction in your sales process and ask: could AI help reduce it without making things weird? If the answer is yes, try it. Measure it. Improve it.
You don’t need a budget line called “AI initiative.” You need a team that’s empowered to try new tools, reflect honestly on what’s working, and stay focused on helping real people make better decisions.
Keep it simple. Keep it human. Make it valuable.
That’s the path forward.
And if you want a partner to walk it with you—we’re here.
