You Lost Your Instinct. And AI Is Exposing It

If you feel like you’re working harder and somehow getting blinder, you’re not alone.

Your tools got better.
Your systems got tighter.
Your dashboards got cleaner.

But somewhere along the way, something important slipped out of your hands:

Your instinct.

And as Saad said in our conversation:
“Most people don’t know if something worked because of them… or in spite of them.”

That line should shake every seller reading this.

We’re in a new era where everyone has the same enrichment, same sequences, same LinkedIn playbooks, same AI assistants.

Homogeneity has become the default.

That means your only real differentiator now is the thing no tool can automate:

your ability to read the market before the market speaks.

Saad put it this way:
“People think they have a GTM problem. What they really have is a clarity problem.”

And when clarity disappears, instinct dies with it.

The most brutal insight Saad dropped — and the one that punched me in the chest — was this:

“You can run the right playbook… on the wrong terrain.”

You can have:

And still fail spectacularly.

Why?

Because you don’t know why your motion works.
You don’t know how your buyer makes decisions.
You don’t know what signal actually means something.

And Saad didn’t sugarcoat it:
“Outbound isn’t broken. Your understanding of the world is.”

That’s the emotional heart of this episode.

This is the part no one talks about.

When reps don’t understand why something worked, they lose confidence.
When leaders can’t trust the inputs, they lose conviction.
When RevOps tries to fix problems built on false assumptions, they lose sanity.

Your notes captured it perfectly:

That’s not a sales problem.
That’s an identity crisis.

Saad’s summary line:
“Activity is the easiest thing to fake. Understanding is the hardest thing to build.”

You’re drowning in signals you don’t understand.
Everything looks urgent.
Nothing feels meaningful.

“Not every signal is a green light — some are just noise dressed as opportunity.”

You know a deal is slipping before the CRM updates.
But you can’t articulate why.
So you ignore it.
And you lose it.

“If you can’t explain why a deal moved forward, you weren’t controlling it.”

Your team is busy.
Really busy.
But your forecast becomes fiction the moment you present it.

You maintain perfect systems built on incorrect assumptions.

Saad again:
“A perfect system sitting on the wrong logic is still wrong.”

We built reps who follow instructions instead of reading reality.

Saad warning:
“You can’t operationalize your way out of misunderstanding reality.”

Everything is labeled “intent” now.
Almost none of it is real.

Reps don’t see enough volume.
Leaders don’t zoom out enough.
Teams never compare notes.

And without patterns, instinct dies.

You’re not broken.
Your feedback loop is.

Stop asking “Is this a good account?”
Start asking Saad’s question:
“Why did this account respond when others didn’t?”

Write down every emotional deviation on a call.
That’s where deals move.

Stop optimizing activity.
Start optimizing interpretation.

Highlight anomalies — not averages.

Because:
“Instinct lives in deviations, not dashboards.”

AI didn’t make reps worse.
AI simply made it impossible to hide from what reps never understood.

And the reps who survive the next decade won't be the ones who master AI.
They’ll be the ones who master interpretation.

Instinct is not a luxury anymore.
It’s survival.

Saad said it clearest:
“Tools won’t save you from misunderstanding your buyer.”

Forward this to the rep who keeps asking,
“Is this account worth my time?”

They already know the answer.
They just don’t trust themselves yet.

If you’ve been feeling the quiet panic of “I don’t know why this is working anymore,” this episode is your reset button.

— Rahul