Hey ,

This one’s dropping on Mother’s Day because nothing says “I Love You, Mom” like unpacking why your AI outbound strategy is built like a Pinterest craft project held together with duct tape and desperation.

Inside: Why most GTM AI efforts are just busywork at scale, and how do we swap noise for nuance and bots for belief?

Estimated reading time is 4 minutes. Feel free to hit reply and share your takeaways or questions.

On Deck:

• Everyone’s Building Bots. No One’s Building Belief.

• Marketing Tip of the Week - Powered by Decoded Strategies

• Episode #95 How AI Will Kill Bad CRMs

Everyone’s Building Bots. No One’s Building Belief.

GTM leaders are rushing to adopt AI. Everyone’s building agents, layering on automation, and expecting magic. But here’s what we’re seeing in the market: most of it isn’t working. Not because the tools are broken, but because the thinking is.

You’re not failing because of AI. You’re failing because you’re using it to scale bad decisions, lazy messaging, and duct-taped workflows.

In fact, a ZoomInfo survey shows 29% of companies cite lack of skilled personnel as their biggest challenge in adopting AI. Another 28% struggle with system integration. So, what are GTM teams doing instead? Automating broken systems and expecting different results.

Let’s talk about why the results aren’t showing up and what to do instead.

What the Humans are Doing Wrong

1. Delegating Without Thinking

   Too many teams expect AI to replace their thinking instead of augmenting it. You're asking AI to do the thinking for you, instead of with you. They treat it like a vending machine: insert prompt, expect magic. What they get is a steaming hot can of "meh." AI is most effective when it complements human judgment, not replaces it.

2. Prompting Without Intent

   Vague, lazy prompts beget vague, lazy output. If your prompt engineering is lazy, your output will be too. If you want quality from AI, you need to provide clarity, nuance, and specificity. Prompt engineering is a skill, and the majority of teams we’ve seen haven’t developed it yet.

3. Template Worship

   Everyone's chasing repeatability over resonance. Templates were once tools; now they're crutches. Many rely on stale formats and "fake personalization" tricks like referencing {enter funding round here} or {enter job title here}. That worked years ago. Now, it screams automation. The real issue? Templates today are evolving slower than the market. They should help you iterate, not imitate. Don't build templates to fake personalization. Build them to scaffold experimentation and speed to insight.

4. Automation Isn’t Strategy

   Just because tools like Smartlead or Instantly (both great tools) allow you to spin up multiple domains and blast thousands of emails daily, doesn't mean it's effective.

   AI didn't ruin outbound. Mediocrity did. We didn't replace humans with AI, we just scaled bad behavior with tools we don't understand.

   Much of what's being built isn't agentic intelligence; it's a brittle Rube Goldberg machine of Zapier logic and scheduling rules. These aren't agents; they're task-bots. If your messaging sucks, the task-bots will make them suck faster.

5. Personalization Without Context

   Adobe reports that 66% of B2B buyers expect mostly personalized content. But most AI efforts only deliver the illusion of personalization. If your relevance is lacking, you’re just building a factory that mass produces irrelevance.

What the Humans Should Be Doing Instead

Craft Is the New Moat

AI has commoditized output. Everyone can generate content. Differentiation now lies in craft, tone, and timing. Winners are those who wield AI without surrendering their voice. Don't let AI write your message.

Let it earn you the right to speak and tell your story.

1. AI is Your Scalpel, Not Your Surgeon - Let AI handle research, data enrichment, first-draft frameworks, and summarization. Let it unblock you. But don't hand it the steering wheel. You still need to decide what matters, why it matters, and how to say it. Creativity isn't optional.

   How:

   • Use AI to generate multiple variations of a point of view.

   • Use it to shorten feedback loops between idea and execution.

   • Let it surface angles you didn't think of, then make the call yourself.

2. Target Process Before Personalization

   Salesforce reports that AI-using reps are 1.3x more likely to grow revenue, but only when they use it to eliminate friction, not just generate content.

   How:

   • Identify where GTM motion is breaking before layering in AI

   • Use AI to fix workflow lag, not mask it with more volume

   • Measure process outcomes, not just message opens

3. Quality In = Quality Out

   Broken CRM data doesn't magically become useful when fed to an LLM. Good systems start with clean, verified, context-rich inputs.

   How:

   • Prioritize data integrity before scaling output

   • Build feedback loops into every AI-assisted workflow

   • Set validation gates, not just auto send triggers

4. Stop Selling to Personas. Start Speaking to People.

   Scraping job titles off LinkedIn and plugging them into a boilerplate doesn't count as relevance. Buyers can discern the difference between context and copy-paste.

   How:

   • Use AI to cross-reference role, company size, content consumed, hiring signals, and public sentiment.

   • Build dynamic messaging pillars, not static ICP scripts.

   • Create modular frameworks where personalization is layered on top of the story, not as a replacement for it.

5. Agents Aren’t Strategy. They’re Accelerators.

   Don't mistake workflows for wisdom. Agents should support your process, not define it. They're here to help you move faster after you've put in the work to understand your buyer, diagnose their business and technical problems, help them identify impact, and how to message your relevance as the solution to get to their desired future state.

   Tactical How:

   • Use AI agents for handoffs, timing, and status updates.

   • Let agents help map territory. Don't ask them to win the war.

   • Use agents to operationalize craft, not replace it.

The Bottom Line: Build Craft AI, Not Hype AI

This isn't about rejecting AI. It's about rejecting lazy AI investments.

If you want to win in this next GTM cycle, you need more than tools. You need resonance. You need discipline. You need a mindset that centers on craft, with AI as a force multiplier, not a crutch.

The winners won't be the loudest on LinkedIn. They'll be the ones who make AI work in service of strategy, creativity, and craft.

Let's start building belief.

Ready to make Craft AI your competitive edge? Let's talk.

Thanks ZoomInfo for Keeping This Newsletter Free!

ZoomInfo is the Go-To-Market intelligence platform that empowers businesses to grow faster with AI-ready insights, trusted data, and advanced automation. Our solutions provide a complete view of your customers, making every seller your best seller.

Marketing Tip of the Week - Powered by Decoded Strategies

Nailing your Founder-Led Thought Leadership Strategy is an incredibly powerful way to amplify your brand marketing. But when it comes to marketing and communications, founders tend to swing to either end of this spectrum:

They make everything about them. The brand rests on their shoulders alone. Their voice is the only one we hear from the brand.

They invisibilize themselves. They stand back because they aren't sure of the place their voice has in the market.

Neither of these extremes is great, but both are solvable. A founder's voice must be out there, loud and clear, but your approach and what you say matter. It's all about the right positioning.

The key is Founder-Led Thought Leadership. With intention and focus.

Founders need to:

→ Identify 3-4 of their core beliefs, unique perspectives or areas of expertise

→ Create valuable thought leadership content that anchors on these pillars

→ Anchor your thought leadership content in the problem it solves for your customers and communicate empathy throughout

Episode #95 How AI Will Kill Bad CRMs (and Save Your Sales Team) | Doug Camplejohn of Coffee.ai

What happens when a serial founder leaves LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Apple to create the next generation of AI-powered CRM? Meet Doug Camplejohn, CEO of Coffee.ai, as he joins us to reveal the biggest go-to-market mistakes founders make, the truth about data quality, why most CRMs are broken, and how AI is rewriting the playbook.

→ Why LinkedIn’s early Sales Navigator almost failed

→ The real reason startups lose at go-to-market

→ How Coffee.ai will replace your reps’ admin work forever

Plus: the future of buyer-led growth, why your data sucks, and when to pivot vs. persevere.

Give Doug a follow - https://www.linkedin.com/in/camplejohn/

Shoutout to Pursuit for Keeping This Newsletter Free!

Finding A-Players who actually drive revenue in an ever-changing market is tough. Our partners at Pursuit hire for hundreds of companies and know what it takes to engage passive talent. If you need to hire top sales or marketing talent, we encourage you to reach out to our friend Jake at Pursuit.

Agree? Disagree? Have Questions?

We love engaging with our community—reply to this email with your thoughts, and let’s chat!

Talk soon,

Adam, Dale, & Jake
Helping companies bridge the GTM Gap™.