“Put. That coffee. Down.” (Until you’ve read the below!) From objection handling, to prospecting tools and pipeline coverage, we’ll be covering all things sales right here…

Sales is changing. A seller that once met a client at the beginning of their buying journey is now often meeting them at a much later stage. Salespeople still have to close the deal, but to use a football analogy, they’re not so much the quarterback anymore, but the wide receiver in the end zone.

If that comparison stands, then some old plays might not be fit for purpose anymore. MEDDPICC, the sales qualification that has long been the standard checklist for sales teams to evaluate if a deal is worth pursuing, was once the gold standard. Is it still relevant in today’s fast-changing, AI-fueled ecosystem? Standing for metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, identify pain, champion, and competition, the system originated in 1996 as MEDDIC. So, should it now be banished to room 101 of the sales world? We asked two business leaders what they think.

Old sales charm: “MEDDPICC is still a good structure because it holds to the universal aspects of persuasive salesmanship,” said Edward Moore, co-founder of Olelo, an AI platform that analyzes phone calls, in an email statement to Revenue Brew. “You will always need robust discovery to understand your prospect’s deepest pain points, discover who the decision-maker is, communicate how your product delivers relief or adds value, and within large organizations, secure multiple internal buy-ins.”

However, some sales leaders think the qualification needs to evolve as customer behavior and AI automation have shifted processes and priorities.

“Parts of it are still relevant, but not the way that it’s used as a checklist,” said Joshua Nuu-Steele, co-founder and CRO of research platform Ideally. “Some of the letters are still definitely right, but what’s changed is some of those letters carry the deal…The discipline behind MEDDPICC is what’s most important. Instead of going through a checklist and just making sure you’ve ticked the boxes, it’s actually understanding which stage you’re at within the acronym to then decide the next step, because that’s the most impactful way of using it.”

Read about the impact of AI automation on MEDDPICC.—LI

REVENUE STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP

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AI’s impact is making its way to small businesses, and the reported impact is positive.

According to new data from Homebase, an AI-powered operator for small businesses, 89% of small businesses using AI report a positive impact. Small business owners are also more than two times as likely to expect AI to help their business grow (49%) rather than have it reduce head count (22%). The report shows that small businesses have been swift at adopting AI:

• Nearly three-quarters (74%) of surveyed small businesses are using or piloting AI tools, which is up from 64% in 2025.
• AI usage ranges from 54% among businesses making under $500,000 in revenue to 81% among businesses earning more than $5 million.
• Businesses using AI for scheduling and payroll see an estimated 7.7 hours and $343 saved a month.

“When local businesses have a scheduling mix-up or a payroll error, their time and money go out the door. Both are real costs to small businesses,” said John Waldmann, founder and CEO of Homebase, in a press release. “Over one in 10 small business decision-makers we surveyed said these errors cost them $2,000 or more a month.”

Mind the gap: While previous reports have indicated an AI generational gap, Homebase says this is not the case for small businesses. The report shows that AI adoption among business owners aged 18 to 59 is flat, ranging from 70–80%.

Homebase sees a distrust of AI technologies as one gap, with 62% of nonadopters saying they’re interested in AI, but are concerned about privacy (38%) and mistakes (31%).

This distrust is nothing new, as previous reports have indicated hesitations across industries and employees of all ages adopting AI. According to a Gong report, some ways to address the lack of trust are explainability, the ability to articulate AI model guardrails to protect data, security guarantees built into solutions, and transparent model logic.—LI

      

Sponsored By Chargebee

Your sales team quotes a certain number in the deal, but then the math gets weird. That’s because your customers are actually getting billed a completely different price.

Here’s what’s happening: The CPQ and billing system aren’t on the same page, so your sales team might promise one number while finance has a whole different number based on actual usage.

When those systems disagree on a customer’s plan, consumption of credits, or contract status, your entire pipeline can get messy.

Chargebee is built to change that. Their CPQ pulls from the same product catalog as metering, billing, and entitlements. That means your revenue, operations, and finance teams are working off the same number.

See how Chargebee can help you get your quoting and billing systems on the same wavelength.

IT STRATEGY

Illustration: Shannon May, Photos: Adobe Stock, Unsplash

Forget the kids…the employees are not alright, and a poor AI culture may be to blame.

According to a September report from IT software company GoTo, 83% of knowledge workers and IT leaders are scared of being blamed, or even fired, for an AI-related mistake, with 31% saying they hesitate to use AI for that reason.

The fear doesn’t stop there: about one-third (31%) of employees feel an “unspoken pressure” at work to keep quiet about AI-related mistakes. Another 14% said they have reported AI errors to a leader, but were told to keep it under wraps.

What’s all the fuss about? Peter Mahoney, chief commercial officer at GoTo, told IT Brew the reluctance to hold AI accountable for its mistakes is likely driven by a desire to reap productivity gains from the technology—a frequent talking point among executives.

“We’re not seeing a lot of companies say, ‘It’s a bad idea to out AI for making mistakes.’ There’s a lot of pressure from employees to help support the idea that AI is delivering business results because companies want to be seen as being forward-looking, so that’s where [the pressure is] coming from in general,” Mahoney said.

Read more on building a healthy AI culture.—BM

      

Sponsored By Apollo.io

Say goodbye to tab switching. With Apollo, teams can work from inside Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity in one tab. How? It replaces a stack of tools with one platform, allowing you to find prospects, enrich contacts, and run multichannel sequences from a single system. See what it’s like with Apollo’s free plan.

active pipeline

Stat: $8.2 billion. That’s how much Advanced Micro Devices is acquiring AI startup World Labs for in an all-stock deal. (TechCrunch)

Quote: “We aim to deliver an extraordinary IPO for our employees and investors and we have the luxury of choosing our moment. In the meantime, we will execute against the opportunities ahead.”—Oura CEO Tom Hale on the company’s postponed IPO (CNBC)

Read: Every household in this rural town receives $10,000 if a data center gets built. (the Wall Street Journal)

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TikTok Shop adds big names like Best Buy in push to become a mainstream marketplace (Retail Brew)

In July, TikTok Shop rolled out a paid membership program called TikTok Shop Plus that’s similar to Amazon Prime, with price tiers ranging from $6 to $15 a month.

Nearly half of workers say they’re exaggerating their AI use at work (HR Brew)

The survey of 1,000 full-time US employees found that 48% exaggerate their AI usage or expertise to colleagues or company leadership at least some of the time.

How to define an AI agent—and make sure it’s the real deal (IT Brew)

“What does that agent have access to, how was it built?” asks CTO.

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.

• Account Executive at FirstLight
• Enterprise Account Executive at Transloop Logistics
• Account Executive at Fooda
• Sales Director at We Care Centers of Burlington
• VP of Sales at Logic20/20 Inc.