Let me cut straight to the chase: reading another article on “10 ChatGPT Prompts Every Sales Rep Needs” is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

Here’s my simple advice that I’m telling every single rep and leader in my network:

Block two hours a week for hands-on AI time. Period.

Not to read articles. Not to watch YouTube tutorials. Not to attend webinars where some “AI expert” who discovered ChatGPT last Tuesday tells you how to “revolutionize your pipeline.”

No. Block time to actually BUILD something. BREAK something. LEARN by doing.

The “AI Gym Membership” Problem

Most sales reps approach AI like January gym memberships. They get excited, sign up for all the tools, watch the demos, and then… nothing happens. They’re back to their same workflows by February 1st.

It’s the difference between watching cooking shows and actually burning something in your kitchen. One makes you feel productive. The other actually teaches you something.

What “Hands-On AI Time” Actually Looks Like

Your first AI experiments will be hilariously bad:

Week 1: Try to create a lead scoring system using AI. It’ll probably suck. Good.
Week 2: Build a competitor analysis tool that scrapes their website. Watch it completely miss the point. Perfect.
Week 3: Attempt to create a pipeline forecasting model. It’ll be wildly inaccurate. You’re learning.

That’s the whole point. When you break things, you learn:

  • What AI can ACTUALLY do (vs. what the marketing says)
  • Where it fails spectacularly
  • How to work WITH it rather than expecting magic

The Memory Muscle Problem

I wonder if AI assistants are going to do to selling what Google Maps did to remembering directions.

We can still sell. We just might lose the ability to craft certain messages from scratch because we have the AI doing it for us all the time.

That’s why hands-on time matters – so you understand the engine under the hood, not just how to press the gas pedal.

Start Breaking Things

  1. Block two hours.
  2. Pick ONE sales problem you want to solve.
  3. Try to build a solution using whatever AI tool you prefer.
  4. When (not if) it breaks or gives you garbage, figure out why and try again.

Don’t tell me about it. Don’t post about it on LinkedIn. Just DO it. Repeat weekly.

Let the content creators keep creating content about AI. Meanwhile, you’ll actually know how to use it!