☕ AI stealing sales jobs?

Early-career impact. July 14, 2026 View Online | Sign Up | Shop Presented By It’s Tuesday. How quickly the tables turn. As theaters are enjoying the best summer in years, Netflix is on the hunt for new revenue streams as customer churn is putting a dent on its bottom line. Are theater-and-chill dates a sign that society is healing? In today’s edition: AI vs. the new guy Q&A with Perficient chief services officer When to walk away from revenue —Beck Salgado, Tricia Crimmins, Jamila Huxtable Revenue Strategy & Leadership AI the sales guy Tadamichi/Getty Images Is AI good or bad for early-career sales? That isn’t for Revenue Brew to say. There are, however, some big questions we need to ask around how it will undoubtedly impact the freshman salesperson. Over the last couple months, we spoke with three revenue leaders working on the front lines of the technology and (spoiler), they all had differing opinions on how it will change sales. Here’s why AI is a cause for hope, worry, and how it is fundamentally changing how humans do their jobs. The AI guy: In June, we spoke to Jon Studham, head of sales at inbound-focused GTM AI platform Spara. A highly experienced sales leader with previous roles at Outreach, Cisco, and Microsoft, he said he alone was using AI tools to do the work that companies would traditionally hire multiple employees to do. “I’m trained like your best [sales engineer], your best support person, and your best salesperson all-in-one…That gets rid of your receptionist, your low-level inbound SDRs that are 20 years old—that don’t know anything about the true technology or how to actually handle a sales call or an objection, talk about price, talk about a competitor,” Studham said. He said when building a rev org he would be looking to hire individuals that either have an effective Rolodex, or that are skilled with clients. “I would hire an outbound BDR, because that is still broken. You can get trained on it. You can call my tier three accounts until I feel comfortable with you,” Studham said. Replacing some early-career sales roles might mean less sellers waiting in the wings to learn the skills that would have once been the building blocks of a sales career, stoking concern over a potential talent gap. Studham suggested taking action now to get ahead of a changing landscape. Keep reading for the importance of the human touch.—BS        Sponsored By PwC Why people remain foundational in AI’s era AI expectations are high. The trust cliff feels higher. Most organizations can explain what their AI does, but far fewer can explain what their people do differently because of it. PwC shares that AI may bring transformation, but it’s people who define the breadth of it. Rethinking talent, development, and subsequent evolution will help teams reinvent workflows, make better decisions, and stay accountable for the rest. We asked PwC Principal Shebani Patel what she's seeing organizations struggle with, what investing in people actually looks like in practice, and why many AI initiatives struggle to move beyond productivity gains. Their teaching: Moving from experimentation to enterprise advantage doesn’t start with the tech. It starts with people steering the ship, and it starts with investing in their human ability. Read on to see what that can look like. Revenue Strategy & Leadership Go-to-market leaders Bryan Berumen Perficient, an AI services company, landed its chief services officer because of FOMO. Bryan Berumen had only recently left Accenture, where he worked for over 20 years, for Boston Consulting Group when he heard about a chief services officer role being created at Perficient. “I was afraid I would have FOMO if I didn’t take the chance to go back and really do something very unique in an industry that I had spent my entire professional career in,” Berumen told Morning Brew. He now leads Perficient’s go-to-market strategy alongside the company’s chief delivery officer, Abhishek Sinha, who lives abroad. Berumen talked with us about how he makes that partnership work, the changes he’s made to the company’s growth plan, and balancing AI opportunities and costs. What are some ways you and Perficient’s chief delivery officer approach your partnership that make it work? First off, it’s getting to know each other, good old-fashioned relationship and in-person collaboration. No technology will ever change that. I think we learned that during Covid—we can be more flexible, but at the end of the day, being together in person and conquering problems together really does have a multiplier effect. So I’ve spent some time in India, and he’s spent some time here in the US. I think we’re both very big believers in “follow your strengths” versus “trying to make up for your weaknesses,” and take advantage of that. And so the things that he’s exceptional at, I’m not very good at, and the things that I do very well, he knows that may not be a core strength of his. We don’t need a very prescriptive, racy matrix on who does what. There’s a lot of trust and belief in each other on the things that we know I’m going to get a better outcome for, or he’s going to get a better outcome for. We let each other operate, and we really show up together as a unified leadership team. Read on for the trade-offs when using AI.—TC        Growing Your Business Creator economy Amber Venz Box Most e-commerce companies dream of building a subscription model that generates meaningful recurring revenue. Fewer are willing to walk away from it once they do. That’s the bet Amber Venz Box is making. As co-founder of LikeToKnow.it or LTK, she built an online affiliate and commerce marketing company to monetize her work as a personal shopper and early online influencer on her own website and on social networks like Instagram. Now, as LTK focuses on its own social shopping platform featuring individual creators, her plan is to pivot away from charging brands and instead openly share the data her platform has collected about creators and product sales with them. The decision reflects her belief that the creator economy is entering a new phase—one where creators are increasingly building businesses around audiences they can reach directly. In a conversation with Founder Brew, Amber Venz Box gets candid about stepping away from a model that generated predictable revenue, where she thinks the creator economy is heading next, and what it’s like building a startup outside of Silicon Valley or New York. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You recently made LTK’s Brand Platform free for brands, walking away from a meaningful SaaS revenue stream. What drove that decision, and when did you realize the SaaS model wasn’t the right fit anymore? It was a very deliberate founder decision. This wasn’t something the team brought to us, certainly not the finance team...As of this summer, we’re 15 years into our business, and we’ve created a whole new category. Many times I realized that you have to put yourself out of business to grow into the next best version of yourself. Read more on how to turn your community into a business.—JH        Sponsored By Snapchat It’s about connection. Consumer behavior has fundamentally shifted from public broadcasting to more private, intentional communication. Endless scrolling is creating fatigue, while consumers increasingly seek authentic connection in private and trusted spaces. See how Snapchat is bridging the gap for brands and keeping users connected to those they most want to see. active pipeline Stat: 17%. That’s the revenue increase that Uniqlo’s parent company is expecting this year after successful store openings in US hubs like Boston, New York, and Chicago. (the Wall Street Journal) Quote: “The fact that there are lookalike products is a sign that Aperol is a very strong brand.”—Sandro Castaldo, professor of marketing at Bocconi University (Reuters) Read: The World Cup is triggering a massive economic boom. Here’s why some major business hubs are missing out. (Inc.) A new era: PwC shares that AI may bring transformation, but it’s people who define it. We asked PwC Principal Shebani Patel what investing in people actually looks like in practice.* *A message from our sponsor. This premium dog brand is in no hurry to be carried by pet retailers (Retail Brew) The co-founders of Lil Luv Dog both worked in the prestige beauty industry. So when the longtime friends and dog lovers decided to start a line of dog-grooming products, Lil Luv Dog, it would be understating it to say they took a page from beauty brands. How brands are embedding themselves in World Cup hype on Reddit (Marketing Brew) Reddit’s creatives are encouraging advertisers to adopt a “listening first…talking second” approach to win over soccer fans. Strategic dealmaking is driving a rebound in M&A (CFO Brew) The M&A market vibes were positive six months into 2026, and strategic transactions were a major factor behind dealmaking. 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 Beck Salgado, Tricia Crimmins, and Jamila Huxtable Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. 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