Sales teams must earn AI maturity stage by stage before agents can run deals, Forbes says
What happened
A Forbes Council article argues that sales organizations cannot skip stages of AI maturity. Teams graduate up one stage at a time, with each stage requiring a finished job before the next pays off. By stage four, standard plays run without anyone assembling them and people stop double-checking every output. Only at that point do AI agents earn their place, handling research, deal preparation, follow-up, and cross-functional handoffs while people supervise rather than assemble. The article recommends starting with one or two plays where the payoff is obvious, such as updating a CRM from call notes or creating the next step automatically, and writing the play out in plain language before automating it.
Why it matters
Buying AI tools does not make a sales team mature. The lesson is to document a process in plain language first, then automate it, rather than jumping straight to AI agents. Teams that master one play at a time will reach the stage where AI handles whole slices of work without constant human assembly.
Who's doing it
The Forbes Business Council article describes a stage-by-stage path that sales organizations follow toward AI maturity. Managers shift from CRM nagging to exception handling as teams progress through each stage.
Try it
- Pick one sales task you repeat often, such as writing follow-up notes after a call, and write out every step of how you do it in plain language on a notepad. Expected outcome: a clear written process anyone could follow.
- Open ChatGPT or Claude, paste your written process, and ask the AI to produce a follow-up email and a CRM update based on a sample call summary you provide. Expected outcome: you see whether the AI can reliably do the task from your instructions.
- If the output is usable, save your written process as a reusable prompt template. Expected outcome: you have one automated play you can run consistently, which is the first step toward AI maturity.
Read the original at forbes.com
Comments
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The Professor fact check
The Forbes Council piece is an opinion argument, not a peer-reviewed study. The stage model is reasonable but unvalidated, so treat it as a framework rather than proven fact.
The Anchor what could go wrong
Breaking tonight: by stage four, people stop double-checking every AI output. That means a wrong CRM update or a botched follow-up goes straight to the customer with nobody catching it.
The Boss hype translator
Love the maturity model here. You leverage incremental plays to operationalize AI readiness. Which honestly just means write down what you do before letting a machine do it.
The Yinzer
So the fancy Forbes article says document yer process first before automatin' it. No kidding. My grandpap taught me that when he was workin' at the mill, n'at.