AI isn’t killing sales; it’s killing the way sales used to be done. The problem is nobody’s sure which changes are going to be stickiest. This might encourage a scattergun approach to deployment: throwing everything at the wall and hoping for the best (from what we’ve learned at Revenue Brew, this way leads to confusion, chaos, and—worse yet—slop). The sentiment among employees tends to range from enthusiastic to reluctant, as organizations navigate this changing landscape. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the generational divide is also a barrier.

So how do the people expected to get the best out of AI actually feel about it? In the spirit of reimagining revenue, we took a closer look with a new audience poll.

Eyes on the prize: Revenue Brew asked our readers if AI had made their day-to-day jobs easier or harder. Nearly half (47%) said the tools made their jobs easier and saved them time. However a combined 34% are either not using it yet (22%), or find it adds more noise than value (12%). As we’ve been covering for some time, much of the debate around AI isn’t necessarily about what it could do in a perfect world, but whether it’s being deployed in the right way in your organization.

According to a December report from Gong, teams using AI are 65% more likely to increase win rates and saw 77% more revenue generation per sales rep. While that’s encouraging for sellers at large, there’s a lot of AI out there and a lot of teams that could benefit from it: An organization might optimize for real-time guidance, or instead focus on the burgeoning multiplayer capabilities. Use cases are becoming more and more idiosyncratic, and often teams have to consider the wider implications of adopting a tool or platform (training and change management come to mind).

Let’s make a deal: While AI can no doubt help revenue teams get over hurdles, we asked our audience what they think is most to blame overall when a deal stalls?

Most respondents (40%) said pricing or budget conversations were the biggest reason. This was followed by the buyer going quiet mid-journey (28%), too many stakeholders and no clear decision-maker (20%), and internal misalignment (7%). Using AI in a more deliberate manner to solve some of these problems could be a good starting point for rev orgs to consider.

Read on for the most underrated part of getting the account signed, sealed, and delivered.—LI

Personalization is becoming increasingly crucial to building customer rapport and can extend far beyond scribbling a name on the side of a cup. Organizations, like ethically-sourced fine jewelry retailer Brilliant Earth, are curating entire experiences with a giddy customer at the core: It opened its Beverly Hills “Showroom of the Future” earlier this year.

Chief brand officer Pamela Catlett described the new store concept as the “fullest physical expression of our brand.” The space showcases its full lineup of fine jewelry and offers personalization stations where customers can customize pendants, charms, and other details. There’s also a “Date Night” consultation for couples looking for all-encompassing experiences while shopping for engagement rings or wedding bands.

“That’s just a very clear expression of how the bridal experience has evolved for couples,” Catlett said about the “Date Night” concept.

Stay a while: Catlett said the showroom turns a potentially overwhelming visit into something fun. The goal seems to be creating an immersive brand-building experience, rather than a speedy sale.

“People are just getting to know us in some cases,” said Catlett. “Fine jewelry has really been growing as a piece of our total business portfolio. This is the first time many people are being introduced to us, so we’re really thrilled with the early reception.”

Catlett said there are plans to open more of these showrooms in the near future, with the next location opening in San Antonio, Texas; they join Brilliant Earth’s fleet of by-appointment bridal studios across the country.

The business seems to be adapting to a fundamentally changed buyer journey: Customers have access to sophisticated research tools and often show up to appointments informed and motivated. While we focus on the B2B side of life at Revenue Brew, this trend appears to translate to a variety of industries.

“We’ve really paid attention to how consumers are shopping and how the engagement experience has changed for couples. We know they arrive together. We know they’ve done their research,” said Catlett.

Keep reading for more on Brilliant Earth’s bottom-line growth.—LI

Failed login attempts, constantly crashing apps, glacial loading times: These are just some of the small but—when multiplied across years and organizations—consequential friction points that too often define digital workers’ professional lives.

The results? Lower productivity; frustrated workers; greater attrition; security issues; headaches for IT, HR, and the C-suite—and ultimately, a less satisfying consumer experience.

“There’s immense productivity loss. You have frustrated users,” Michael Lovewell, a solution consulting team lead at digital employee experience company Nexthink, told us. “Your applications aren’t being leveraged that you’re spending significant amounts of money on. That leads to a lot of these problems.”

So what’s an IT pro to do? Instead of responding to tech friction fallout after the fact, our sources emphasized the importance of reevaluating outdated protocols, gathering feedback on existing problems, implementing processes to identify issues before tickets start trickling in, and creating tighter feedback loops.

“No. 1: Stay close to the problems and the actual work,” Tom Totenberg, head of release automation at runtime control platform LaunchDarkly, told Morning Brew, “and No. 2, structurally build in the time to take that feedback and start to actually fix some of those things that otherwise would not have the attention and resources devoted to them.”

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470,000 hours: that’s the average productivity loss enterprise orgs see every year thanks to digital friction, Nexthink found in a workplace productivity report. Yet IT leaders estimated the losses at less than half that—underscoring the fact that those responsible for solving the problem don’t fully understand it.

“If you’re introducing this friction and people don’t have the power to change it, even if they’re the ones experiencing it every day, that inevitably will lead to people quiet quitting, and there will be turnover…All of those things compound into a personnel problem, which is a self-reinforcing loop of degrading performance for the organization.”—Tom Totenberg, head of release automation at LaunchDarkly

Check out why tech friction isn’t just an IT problem.—JG

‘The tide has turned’: Why the era of the Madison Avenue holding company is on its way out (Marketing Brew)

Is it time to ring the death knell for the holding company model?

It’d be easy to think so. Last month, as WPP revealed restructuring plans, CEO Cindy Rose stated that WPP was “no longer a holding company.”

Curative CEO Fred Turner explains why his alternative health plan is valued at $1.3b (Healthcare Brew)

Trust in health insurers is sinking and healthcare costs are soaring. Amid this turmoil, startups are trying to provide alternative models.

Nike, Pink, and Apple Pay top latest Teen Cool Brands list (Retail Brew)

It’s hard not to sound like a geezer talking about what the kids think is cool when you are a geezer talking about what the kids think is cool…but this reporter comes bearing data.