Beyond the Prompt: How AI Can Strengthen the Human Side of Sales
Why better AI adoption starts with context, critical thinking, and knowing what only people can bring to the sales process
AI is showing up everywhere.
It is built into the tools we already use, changing how quickly we can research, write, organize information, create visuals, and prepare for conversations. Platforms like ChatGPT have also made generative AI much more accessible, giving sales and marketing professionals a place to experiment with AI in their everyday work.
For teams across the interior design industry, that creates both opportunity and uncertainty.
The conversation often starts with a familiar question: Will AI replace what I do?
But during my conversation with Kate Rancourt, Director of Customer Insights and Growth at One Workplace, she offered a different question that I believe is much more useful:
“What part of my job is uniquely human?”
It is an important distinction.
AI can help draft an email. It can summarize information. It can help you think through an upcoming meeting or explore different ways to approach a sales conversation. But as Kate pointed out, it cannot build trust over lunch, recover from a misspecification, or read the tension in a room.
For an industry built around relationships, those differences matter.
The opportunity isn’t simply to figure out how much of our work AI can do. It is to understand where platforms like ChatGPT can support us so we have more capacity to do the work that still requires us.
AI Is Becoming Part of the Workflow
One of the things that stood out during my conversation with Kate was how naturally AI has moved from something teams had to intentionally seek out to something embedded in the tools they already use.
Kate and her colleagues at One Workplace began experimenting with AI early, including visual tools that demonstrated just how quickly ideas could be generated. Today, AI is increasingly integrated into email, CRM systems, design tools, sales workflows, and other platforms teams already rely on.
At the same time, conversational AI platforms such as ChatGPT give professionals another way to interact with the technology. Instead of needing specialized technical knowledge, you can begin with a question, provide context, review the response, and continue the conversation.
That accessibility changes the conversation.
The question is becoming less about whether professionals will encounter AI and more about how intentionally they will use it.
For interior product manufacturers, that matters across sales, marketing, leadership, and customer experience. Faster access to information can be valuable, but speed alone does not make a decision strategic.
Teams still need the judgment to determine what information matters, whether it is accurate and relevant, how it applies to the customer, and what to do with it.
Better AI Starts With Better Context
One of the most practical parts of my conversation with Kate centered on prompting.
We often approach AI platforms as though they are search boxes: type in a request and wait for an answer.
Kate suggested thinking about the interaction differently.
Instead of treating AI like something that simply does your bidding, approach it more like a colleague you are asking to help solve a problem.
Think about how you would brief a member of your team. You would likely explain what you are trying to accomplish, who you are trying to reach, why the task matters, and what you need from them.
The same principle can be applied when working with a platform like ChatGPT.
Kate demonstrated this through the example of a commercial product sales representative who wants to strengthen their LinkedIn presence. Rather than simply asking AI to “write a LinkedIn post,” she recommended defining the role AI should play, identifying the audience, explaining the objective, and specifying the desired output.
For example, a salesperson might explain that they want ChatGPT to act as a strategic LinkedIn content advisor, identify the specific type of decision-maker they want to reach, clarify that the goal is to become known as a trusted advisor rather than simply a product vendor, and then ask for several post ideas.
The difference is context.
And that process does more than improve the response AI gives you.
It forces you to become clearer about what you are trying to accomplish.
Why are you posting on LinkedIn? Who are you trying to reach? What do you want them to understand about you? What business objective should that activity ultimately support?
Those are strategic questions, with or without AI.
Where to Start With ChatGPT
If you haven’t incorporated AI into your sales workflow yet, you don’t need to begin with an elaborate system.
Start with a real task you already have to do.
Let’s say you have an upcoming meeting with a prospective account.
Instead of asking ChatGPT something broad like “Help me prepare for a sales meeting,” give it the information you would give a colleague helping you prepare.
Explain your role. Describe the type of company you are meeting with. Share the stakeholder’s role, what you know about the account, where you are in the relationship, what you are hoping to accomplish, and any concerns or objections you anticipate.
Then ask ChatGPT to help you identify questions to consider, possible stakeholder priorities, areas you may need to research further, or objections you should be prepared to address.
Kate also shared a question that can make this process more useful:
“What other context is missing that would be helpful for you to know as you craft this response?”
That small step turns prompting into more of a conversation.
Instead of assuming your first request contains everything the platform needs, you’re asking it to identify where additional information could improve the response.
And when you receive the output, the work isn’t finished.
Review it. Question it. Determine what applies to your situation and what doesn’t.
ChatGPT can help you explore possibilities and organize your thinking, but you are still responsible for bringing your knowledge of the customer, the account, the market, and the relationship to the process.
Don’t Use AI to Replace the Sales Conversation
Some of the most valuable applications of AI may happen before the sales conversation even begins.
Kate shared examples of using AI to prepare for conversations with unfamiliar stakeholders. A salesperson could provide context about an upcoming meeting, the type of organization, the person’s role, known objections, the product being discussed, and the stage of the relationship.
A platform like ChatGPT can then become a brainstorming partner for thinking through potential priorities, questions, or approaches.
But that preparation should never be mistaken for knowing the person sitting across from you.
As Kate pointed out, people are not monoliths. Two architecture firm principals may have the same title and work in the same market while caring about completely different things.
That is where the human side of sales comes back into the equation.
You still have to listen.
You still have to ask good questions.
You still have to notice when the conversation is going in a different direction than you anticipated.
And you still have to use your own experience and critical thinking to decide whether an AI-generated suggestion actually applies to the person in front of you.
AI can help you walk into the room better prepared.
It cannot build the relationship for you.
Preparation Can Make Difficult Conversations Better, Too
Sales prospecting isn’t the only place where AI can help you prepare.
Kate also shared how she uses AI to think through difficult conversations before they happen. Rather than asking for a script to repeat word for word, she provides context around the situation, the person involved, the potential reaction, and the outcome she hopes to achieve.
This is another practical way a conversational platform such as ChatGPT can be used.
You might ask it to help you anticipate questions, consider how someone could respond, or identify language that could unintentionally make the conversation more difficult.
I found this particularly useful because difficult conversations are part of leadership, sales, business development, and client relationships.
The value is not having AI tell you exactly what to say.
The value is having another way to prepare your thinking before entering a conversation where emotions, relationships, and outcomes matter.
You still have to walk into that conversation as yourself. But you may walk in having considered perspectives or possibilities you had not thought through before.
Critical Thinking Becomes More Important, Not Less
There is a temptation with any tool that makes work easier to assume that we can hand over more of the thinking.
AI makes that particularly tempting because the response can sound confident, polished, and complete.
But Kate and I kept coming back to the importance of critical thinking.
An AI-generated recommendation is not automatically the right recommendation. A suggested sales approach is not automatically right for your customer. And a polished piece of content is not automatically aligned with your positioning, your audience, or your goals.
You still have to evaluate the output.
Does this make sense for the situation? Is the information accurate? Does it reflect what we know about our customer? Does it sound like us? Is this the right approach based on our experience?
That responsibility becomes even more important as AI becomes more capable.
Kate shared that she once described AI as “just another tool,” but she no longer believes that comparison fully captures what is happening. AI can synthesize, generate, and respond to the context we provide in ways that require us to think differently about how we use it.
The goal is not to remove skepticism.
It is to pair curiosity with critical thinking.
As Kate put it:
“Stay critical and don’t let that keep you on the sidelines.”
The Human Advantage Is Still the Advantage
For sales teams in the interior design industry, AI creates an opportunity to work differently.
A platform like ChatGPT can help you prepare for a stakeholder meeting. It can help you think through an objection before you hear it. It can help you develop ideas for social selling, organize information, explore different perspectives, or prepare for a difficult conversation.
But none of those capabilities eliminate the importance of being human.
Our industry still depends on relationships. It depends on trust. It depends on understanding what someone means when they do not say it directly. It depends on knowing when to ask another question, when to listen, when to adjust the presentation, and when the solution you planned to discuss is not actually the solution the customer needs.
Those abilities are not separate from good sales.
They are good sales.
So instead of beginning with the question, What can AI do for me?, Kate’s question gives us a more meaningful place to start:
What part of my job is uniquely human?
Identify that first.
Then use AI intentionally to support everything around it.
Because the goal should not be to make sales less human in the pursuit of efficiency.
The goal is to create more capacity for the human work that moves relationships—and business—forward.
Start Your Journey
In my conversation with Kate Rancourt of One Workplace, we explored how AI is changing the way professionals across the design industry approach sales, leadership, customer conversations, and everyday work.
More importantly, we talked about how to experiment with platforms like ChatGPT and other AI tools without giving up the critical thinking, intuition, and relationships that make our work valuable.
As we revisit some of the most downloaded Thrive In Design Podcast conversations from the last six months, this episode is a reminder that adopting AI does not have to mean choosing between technology and human connection.
The opportunity is learning how to use both more intentionally.
🎧 Revisit my conversation with Kate Rancourt on the Thrive In Design Podcast.
And if your team is thinking about how sales, marketing, and customer insight work together to create stronger specification opportunities, SpecReady™ can help you identify where your strategy is aligned—and where there may still be gaps.
