Carly Crittenden, who is set to speak at Revenue Brew’s upcoming event, shared what she believes are the biggest opportunities in AI for sellers.

What’s the biggest misconception sellers have about AI?

One is that it slows them down, and the other is that it solves all their problems. I found that folks live in two camps, and I think a lot of people are actually really afraid of AI; not afraid that it’s going to take their job, but just don’t have the mental capacity to slow down and think differently to leverage it.

They’re scared to say they aren’t leaned in, and so they’re sort of faking it, or dabbling here and there, or using it in small use cases, but not using it in ways that really transform their business. I was speaking to someone this morning who said, “I don’t have time to use AI,”which is a bit ironic, but it’s a pretty consistent trend.

The other is that it is going to solve all of your problems, and the application then becomes a very lazy use. The number of times I’ve been prepping for a meeting, and a seller’s like, “Hey, here’s what I’m going to present.” I’m like, “This is obviously Claude. It is not branded; it has not been pre-read.” I have [interviews] with candidates who send me something that is clearly not edited. It requires thoughtfulness and intentionality, and both of those use cases don’t really appreciate the need for the extra work required in order to make it actually work for you.

Follow the conversation with Carly Crittenden with our longer Q&A and join us in New York on July 14.

With astronomical computing bills stacking up, a spendthrift era of “tokenmaxxing” is giving way to a more frugal mindset among companies building AI systems.

Taking a cue from this trend, workflow software platform Pegasystems will soon roll out a new pricing model that eliminates token-based rates in favor of a flat charge per resolved case.

• The company is one of a wave of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers rethinking per-seat and other traditional pricing models in favor of charging for actual results.

The shift comes as businesses worry that incentivizing AI adoption at all costs hasn’t necessarily led to higher ROI. Instead, they end up using costly, sophisticated AI for tasks that could be better served by cheaper, simpler tools, one analyst noted to Morning Brew.

Meanwhile, SaaS vendors are facing ongoing pressure as the rise of AI agents and coding threatens their own value propositions.

“We’ve been watching our clients struggle with and come to terms with the fact that leveraging some of this agent technology, especially in high volumes of production, can lead to pretty rapidly escalating and unpredictable costs,” Pega CTO Don Schuerman told us. “We felt we had a really strong approach in our architecture that allowed us to keep those costs much more sustainable.”

Think first: That approach centers on shifting the heavy reasoning workload to the design phase of the agentic workflows, Schuerman said. After agents develop the workflows and humans evaluate them, cheaper and lighter-weight AI models simply follow the script. Schuerman said this makes tasks both more efficient and more predictable for high-stakes applications.

Keep reading about how AI tools will be priced in a post-tokenmaxxing world.—PK

The first day of Amazon’s Prime Day sales event is in the books, and the early numbers look promising.

• Adobe reported that June 23 (Tuesday) became the biggest online shopping day of 2026 in the US.
• Shoppers spent $8.3 billion with retailers online, a 5.3% jump over the first day of Prime Day last year.
• Spending is already tracking ahead of Adobe’s forecast of $26.3 billion across the four-day event, which would mark a 9% increase from last July’s Prime Day.

Keep your friends close: Big-box retailers—including Walmart, Target, and Best Buy—are all stretching out their sales events alongside the early and extended version of Prime Day.

“I’m seeing Amazon sellers already breaking last year’s Prime Day record,” Jon Elder, CEO and founder at Black Label Advisor, wrote in a LinkedIn post. “This one is going to be historic. Stop listening to the haters online.”

Across the board: Sales for electronics more than doubled versus a typical June day (up 105%), Adobe data showed. Orders for appliances jumped 95% on Tuesday, and consumer spending for tools and home improvement rose 75%. Meanwhile, demand for home and garden equipment spiked 65%. Everyday essentials, like always, saw a serious bump, too, as orders for personal care items like shampoo, oral care, and antiperspirants surged 130%, while demand for grocery staples like trash bags, detergents, and paper products rose 65%, per Adobe.

Here’s the breakdown of Amazon’s Prime Day kickoff results.—VC

Old sales playbooks are officially retired. Ready for a new strategy? Join us at Revenue Rewired on July 14 for a fireside chat with Kenny Scannell, CRO of Otter.ai. He is breaking down exactly how he rewired his organization to sell, grow, and retain smarter. Grab your ticket now.

Inbound slowed down but your team doesn’t know how to build outbound?

Sales Team Six fixes that:

• Orchestrate multi-touch outbound campaigns that convert.
• Master intent signals to find ready buyers.
• Build repeatable pipeline systems through social, email, and phone.
• Transform sellers to be human-centric (not spam).

45 days to consistent pipeline without all the headaches.

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Why Coterie and Tecovas think stores matter more than ever (Retail Brew)

At Retail Brew’s event, Coterie and Tecovas shared how physical retail supports discovery, drives loyalty, and boosts customer lifetime value.

How interdepartmental connections benefit finance (CFO Brew)

When the CFO breaks down the walls that isolate finance, good things happen.