Signals In. Leads Routed. Then… Nothing

When scheduling lives outside orchestration, handoffs slow down, visibility drops, and opportunities stall before meetings even happen.

It’s a common ops gap that quietly impacts pipeline.

Download The Complete Guide to Scheduling and Orchestration to see how modern GTM teams connect signals, routing, and scheduling to keep deals moving.

Real GTM still happens in airports

Everyone keeps asking me some version of the same question: “Scott, what happens to sales when AI can do everything?” My honest answer is I have no idea and I find it unhealthy to speculate because it can get scary and depressing real quickly.

I run GTM for a living. Nearly 200 companies, startups from zero to 100M ARR, a dozen unicorn valuations in the mix. I’m knee deep in AI tools every day. We use them at Scott Leese Consulting. We use them at Surf and Sales. We use them at The GoodDog. I’m not anti-AI. But here’s what I’m seeing in 2026: We no longer want to work. 

The problem is, AI can do almost everything except the parts that actually close deals. And yes, someday it probably will. Hell, at least one former client of mine has proven that it does work for the right ICP already. I fully expect them to become a massive success.

But for the masses? Maybe 2030. Maybe sooner than we’re comfortable admitting. Maybe later. But right now, the teams winning deals are the ones doing things machines still can’t fake.

Let’s call it the “Real-World Pipeline.”

It starts with showing up. At conferences we pick prospects up at the airport. Not for theatrics. Because the drive from arrivals to the hotel is where people tell you the truth. The CEO who says the runway is down to six months. The VP who admits their CRM rollout failed. The sales leader who confesses their top rep is about to quit. You don’t get that from a transcript. You get it when someone is tired, honest, and sitting next to you.

That’s Finding the Pain.

Then we Build the Value in rooms, not decks.

Prospect dinners. Small customer roundtables. Surf & Sales style events where three customers argue about the same problem until the truth shows up. When a peer says “we lost two quarters because we didn’t fix this,” it lands harder than anything I can put in a slide. AI can summarize case studies. It can’t recreate shared experience and emotions.

Then we bring Urgency by documenting reality. 

One of my favorite plays is sending a clip of a prospect explaining their own priorities. When procurement later says the budget disappeared, we send the video. “Here’s you saying churn is killing us and this has to be fixed this quarter.” Not aggressive. Just memory. People don’t like contradicting themselves when it’s on video. It usually gets a “well-played” laugh and increases their determination to make it happen. It has yet to backfire on me or a client of mine.

Only then do we Discuss the Solution.

Pain. Value. Urgency. Solution. In that order, every time. Addiction Selling still works. Because right now every inbox sounds the same. Every rep is using the same AI to write polite follow ups. Every sequence looks optimized and forgettable. Prospects are drowning in synthetic attention. So the teams winning are doing analog things. Thoughtful gifting instead of blasting swag. Small dinners instead of big webinars. Flying out when a deal stalls. Introducing customers to each other. Creating experiences people remember. Messy. Expensive. Effective.

I attended a dinner here in Austin last week. 20 Founders and Revenue leaders on a school night watched a CEO discuss a deal stalled for seven months. 20 people tried to help with everything they could think of. That CEO turned to me before leaving and said: “Can you help me host one of these for us? This was awesome.” 

A month ago a client of mine hosted a four person dinner. Two customers told stories about failing to align their exec teams. The prospect CEO went quiet. Two days later we closed. No prompt did that.

Another client ran a Midnight-to-Millions push back in November of 2025 when we hosted the event with Sell Better. We mapped their top 50 prospects, got in front of them physically, tied every conversation to board deadlines, and documented their goals. The pipeline doubled in less than 45 days. Not better automation. Better reality.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: At some point, AI probably will be able to do all of this. Robots will pick people up at airports. Digital twins will recreate dinners. Voice agents will remember every promise better than we do. Emotion models will read hesitation before we notice it. When that happens, the job called salesperson might evolve into something else. Or disappear.

That’s not crazy. That’s just history. Farmers became factory workers. Typists became knowledge workers. SDRs are already becoming AI orchestrators. But that world is still a little sci-fi to people outside of our cute little SaaS and Tech bubble we live in.

Between now and then, we have maybe a decade where human trust still decides seven figure deals. Where presence still matters. Where memory still matters. Where relationships still matter. So if you’re a sales leader reading this, don’t ask what tool to buy next. Ask where you can create real experiences with your best prospects. Ask where you can get physically closer to the problem. Ask where you can document their truth so urgency is real. Ask where you can stop hiding behind automation.

Use AI for the first pass. Let humans make the final call. Because until 2030 or whenever the robots finally learn to surf, laugh, argue, and care, the Real-World Pipeline is still the fastest way I know to win deals.

—Scott Leese, CEO and Founder of “Surf and Sales” & “Scott Leese Consulting” (Guest Contributor to Revenue Creator)