AI can draft your outreach, summarize your calls, and prep your next meeting. So what’s left for the rep to bring?
Quite a lot, as it turns out. Building tools for revenue teams means we think about this question all the time, so we put it to Stephanie Loewenstern, who recruits go-to-market roles for Airspeed across the US and London. Her answer: the skills that matter most are the ones AI can’t do for you.
Curiosity
This was the first thing on Stephanie’s list, and the logic is simple.
“AI can only do so much if you’re not asking good questions.”
The best tools in the world still depend on the person steering them. A curious rep digs into what a prospect actually needs, asks the follow-up question everyone else skips, and gets more out of every tool they touch. A rep without curiosity just gets faster at the surface-level stuff.
Telling your story clearly
Stephanie isn’t anti-AI, far from it. She thinks it’s genuinely useful for getting your thoughts onto the page and figuring out what value you bring. The problem starts when it’s obvious the human has left the building.
She sees this constantly in candidate outreach. Polished, generic, AI-written messages are everywhere, and they all sound the same. The people who stand out are the ones who can explain, in their own words, what they’ve done and why it matters. That skill doesn’t stop mattering once you’re hired. It’s the whole job when you’re in front of a buyer.
Building real connection
The next skills on her list are building connections and strong relationships, and being able to let a conversation develop naturally. Finding something you genuinely have in common with someone, so they relax and actually talk to you, is still one of the most valuable things a rep can do. No model is going to have that coffee for you.
Following up
Stephanie calls out follow-up as a super important sales skill, and it’s one we feel strongly about too. Most deals don’t stall because someone lacked insight, they stall because “I’ll get back to you on that” never turned into anything.
This is where AI and people work best together. Let the system catch the commitments, track the open questions, and handle the admin, so the rep can spend their energy on the conversation itself. That is the job Airspeed does for sales reps after every call. The follow-up still has to land with a human touch, but nobody should be relying on memory to make it happen.
A visible presence
Finally, Stephanie points to LinkedIn. Engaging there, sharing what you’re learning, and building a bit of a personal brand shows you’re active in the field and able to build connections at scale. It helps when you’re booking meetings, and it helps when you’re the one looking for the next role. In a feed full of automated content, a real voice stands out more than ever.
What this adds up to
The reps who’ll do well in the next few years aren’t the ones who avoid AI or the ones who hand everything over to it. They’re the ones who use it to clear the busywork, then double down on curiosity, communication, relationships, and follow-through. That’s the profile Stephanie is hiring for, and honestly, it’s the profile every revenue team should be building around.
Applying for a sales role yourself? Read Stephanie’s advice on how to get hired as an SDR or AE, and what Airspeed’s culture looks like from the recruiter’s chair.
Think that sounds like you? We’re hiring across go-to-market in the US and London. See our open roles
