Sales isn’t only 
	 an art. It’s also 
	 	 	 a science.
BUSINESS GROWTH
T
here’s an old phrase from the 
early days of computing that 
we probably need to bring back. 
Garbage in, garbage out. Put bad 
information into a computer and 
you’ll get bad information back 
out. Somehow, in all the excite­
ment around AI, we’ve forgotten 
that rule.
Everybody wants to know 
how AI will change sales. I 
think there’s a more important 
question: What are you going to 
feed it? AI needs data. It needs 
history. It needs information to 
analyze. And when I look at a lot 
of aisn’t there.
For more than a decade, 
salespeople have been told to 
use a CRM. Record customer 
interactions. Track opportunities. 
Document what happened. And 
for more than a decade, a lot of 
them haven’t done it. Yet now we 
want AI to transform sales.
With what? If we haven’t 
collected the information, there 
isn’t anything meaningful for AI 
to amplify. 
Part of the problem is that we 
love saying sales is an art. Heck 
yes, it is. Connecting with people, 
listening, asking the right questions and knowing 
when to push and when to shut up are human 
skills. But sales isn’t only an art. It’s also a science.
You’d never run finance or R&D without clear 
processes. I regularly ask salespeople to explain 
their sales process. Most can’t. Sometimes their 
companies can’t either. And that matters 
because AI is incredibly good at working with 
whatever we give it.
Give it good information and it can iden­
tify patterns, improve processes and make 
people more productive. Give it garbage 
and it can organize your garbage, analyze 
your garbage and confidently hand the 
garbage back to you.
We keep hearing that AI will make busi­
nesses faster. Faster at what? A good 
process? Fantastic. A bad process? 
Congratulations. You can now 
execute it faster.
That’s why the biggest AI oppor­
tunity for many sales organizations 
isn’t actually AI, at least not yet. 
It’s building the foundation AI needs. 
Define your sales process, get serious about 
your CRM, and then decide what information mat­
ters and consistently collect it. Then bring in AI.
Because AI is spectacular at amplification. 
It can amplify good data, good processes and 
human expertise. The technology may be new, 
but the rule isn’t. Garbage in still means garbage 
out.
NOVEMBER 2026  SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADA   21
Shawn Brook 
President, Seed World Group

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