☕ Jobs this way

Hiring and training in the AI era.

June 18, 2026 View Online | Sign Up | Shop Presented By It’s Thursday. Selling Pizza Hut could net Yum! Brands an estimated $2.7 billion, finally ending the takeaway pizza war between the brand and rival Domino’s. According to some experts, the Hut was behind the curve in adapting to delivery-first models. Rest assured, hungry investors: Both Yum! and Domino’s Pizza were trading slightly up after hours. In today’s edition: AI readiness among revenue teams still a key challenge Hiring and coaching strategies for driving growth Walmart expands membership program Walmart+ to Canada —Patrick Kulp, Tricia Crimmins, Vidhi Choudhary SALES TECH People get ready Illustration: Shannon May, Photos: Unsplash, Adobe Stock Execs might harbor ambitions of winnowing sales staff and automating the entire deals pipeline with AI. But the reality inside revenue teams doesn’t quite measure up. That was a theme of two reports this month from sales tech companies. In one, revenue platform Gong analyzed B2B sales conversations and 33.5 million deals between February 2024 and February 2026, and concluded that the data doesn’t support the narrative that AI is replacing human jobs. Another survey by Conga of 250 senior leaders across legal, revenue, compliance, and procurement found that most (62%) didn’t characterize the maturity of AI in their contract lifecycle management (CLM) as “integrated,” and 67% said their companies didn’t have a formal policy governing AI use. (Human) help wanted: While myriad recent layoff announcements blamed AI for the downsizing, many experts say the technology is often a cover story for other business problems. Gong said its analysis of B2B sales conversations on its platform backs up the “scapegoat” theory. While conversation around agents has risen sharply (85% since early 2024), deals where hiring is discussed increased 1%. Keep reading about AI readiness.—PK Sponsored By Tracksuit x Ekimetrics Creator-led impact is real When creator marketing opportunities knock, brands should be ready to answer. But keep in mind, board members prefer growth and numbers to likes and links. To get a better roadmap, Morning Brew Inc. teamed up with Ekimetrics and Tracksuit to highlight how marketers can better track the success of creator campaigns to maximize budgets and impact. Understand what it takes to tell your brand’s story with the help of a creator, so you can create campaigns that count. From niche influencers to big names, learn more about maximizing your creator marketing’s potential for success. COACHING CULTURE DEVELOPMENT Owning your career Kyle Norton Where other companies zig, restaurant marketing company Owner.com zags. At a time when entry-level sales and revenue roles are being eliminated, CRO Kyle Norton told Morning Brew that the company is investing more in training new hires—most of whom are recent college graduates—while still automating some of the work that might have traditionally fallen to low-level sales development and business development representatives. Norton explained why Owner always tries to do the hard work up front—and why that leads to a larger payoff later. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. First, tell me a little bit about Owner. Owner is a vertical AI company that supports independent restaurants. You can think of us as HubSpot plus Shopify for the little pizza or Thai or Japanese place that you order from on a Friday, Saturday. We give them everything they need to compete and win online—website, online ordering, email/text message marketing, custom branded app, review management, business listening management, AI phone ordering, point of sale—all in this one solution. What are some of the specific revenue and sales strategies that you’ve used to get Owner from five employees to over 250? We’re most famous for our application of AI in go-to-market. We were extremely early: We were building machine learning models for lead scoring and predicting customer success in mid-2022. When the ChatGPT moment happened that year, we just went all-in really fast. There’s a biz ops and data leader, my rev ops leader, myself all being really aggressive in adopting these tools. We’ve got a whole applied AI team building internal infrastructure and optimizing customer and sales rep journeys. The numbers that catch most people’s attention? Our comp-to-close ratio is 20x—a sales rep getting paid $150,000 is bringing $3 million ARR per year. We’re just hyper, hyper efficient. We’ve stripped out as many non-revenue-generating activities as possible from the team. They don’t do their own list research and list building; we’ve automated CRM enrichment and writing their notes for them and passing deals off to the onboarding team. We’ve automated a lot of this stuff so that the sales reps can be doing a small number of things, like making tiles and building pipelines on the XDR [extended detection and response] side, and running demos and closing deals on the AE [account executive] side. Read more about Owner’s talent development strategy and workflow.—TC E-COMMERCE STRATEGY Local discounts Sopa Images/Getty Images Walmart’s paid membership program, Walmart+, is officially available in Canada. Last week, the retailer made its $89 annual subscription delivery service, which offers same-day delivery and free shipping, live to shoppers in Canada. It’s the first international expansion for Walmart+, which rolled out in the US in September 2020. “This expansion shows that the value proposition of Walmart+ is not limited to one country or location,” Deepak Maini, SVP of Walmart+, told reporters during Walmart Associates Week in Bentonville, Arkansas. “The underlying need is universal.” Benefits include unlimited free same-day delivery on orders over $35, discount on express delivery, free shipping with no order minimum, and access to Canadian streaming service Crave’s ad-supported tier. At a high level, Walmart sits in the middle of serving customers both in stores and online and at scale. This overseas expansion of one of its tech-driven shopping experiences ties in with Walmart’s larger mission of serving and interacting with customers everywhere across physical and digital channels. Read more about Walmart’s membership expansion.—VC ACTIVE PIPELINE Stat: $85.7 billion. That’s how much SpaceX raised in its IPO, as underwriters exercised their overallotment of shares. (CNBC) Quote: “More than three months into the war in the Middle East, the global economy appears to be holding up. ⁠Commodity ​prices, inflation and expectations for it, ​and financial conditions have all been impacted—but not yet in ways that signal a ​global slowdown.”—IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva (Reuters) Read: Everyone wants to tax AI. The big disagreement: How? (the New York Times) Maximize, strategize: Creator-led storytelling can be an untapped gold mine—largely because many brands aren’t leveraging it effectively. Morning Brew Inc. teamed up with Ekimetrics and Tracksuit to outline how marketers can maximize impact and budgets.* *A message from our sponsor. How boutique fitness founders build for balance (Founder Brew) Fitness club founders and operators are navigating a growing tension between pricing, models, and accessibility. T-Mobile is going all-in on customer rewards (Marketing Brew) As some brands pull back on freebies for customers, the telco—which is celebrating 10 years of its T-Mobile Tuesday discount program—is leaning in even further. Walmart is securing a new cohort of AI builders (IT Brew) “Right now, we have as many non-technical associates who are now able to do things that require technology as we have engineers,” Global CTO Suresh Kumar said during Walmart Associates Week. Forget sifting through endless listings. Revenue Brew and CollabWORK highlight only a handful of roles each week, chosen for your interests and industry. Click here to view the full job board. VP, Chief Revenue Officer – DMS at Deluxe Chief Growth Officer at The Foth Companies Chief Growth Officer at ERP International National Director of Business Development Operations at ARCO Director, Sales Operations at Integra LifeSciences SHARE THE BREW Share the Brew, watch your referral count climb, and unlock brag-worthy swag. Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win. Your referral count: 0 Click to Share Or copy & paste your referral link to others: revenuebrew.com/r/?kid=953893c8 Written by Patrick Kulp, Tricia Crimmins, Vidhi Choudhary, and Layla Ilchi Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. Get smarter in just 5 minutes Business News: Morning Brew Tech & AI News: Tech Brew Markets News: Brew Markets Real Estate News: The Playbook Money & Career: Bossy   Take The Brew to work Marketing Brew CFO Brew HR Brew IT Brew Retail Brew Healthcare Brew Founder Brew Interested in podcasts? 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