Embrace Change
Or go the way of the dinosaur
Hey, it’s Vince — welcome to Red Zone Selling, edition #95. Every week — one idea from the field. Something I coached, lived, or learned the hard way. No theory. Just what works.
These next few weeks are going to be hectic and anxiety-ridden. Two big moves. A new job (announcement Tuesday). Our youngest is heading off to college. And leaving behind the home our family has lived in for the last 17 years.
That’s a lot. I’m feeling it.
A hundred emotions running through my head, plus a to-do list that won’t quit. But the one thing my wife and I have always been good at — together — is facing tough challenges head-on. That’s what’s carrying us through this stretch. Having a partner who helps you through the hard parts and celebrates the wins with you, that’s not optional. That’s the whole game.
Here’s what I’ve noticed after 25+ years in sales and a few life-altering leaps of my own: you either embrace change, or you resist it. There’s no neutral. And the people who resist it don’t just stay still - they fall behind.
The Leap That Changed Everything
Early in my career, I walked away from AT&T. At the time, it was one of the biggest companies in the world. Stability, structure, a name everyone recognized. I left it to join LivePerson, a 10-person startup in NYC that most people had never heard of.
That wasn’t a safe move. It was a bet on myself.
I could’ve stayed at AT&T and coasted on the name. Instead, I bet that growth lives outside your comfort zone, not inside it. That decision put me on a path that eventually touched CheetahMail, Amadesa, True Fit, Kustomer and Meta along with five exits, over $1B in revenue generated along the way.
None of that happens if I play it safe at AT&T.
Why This Matters in Sales Right Now
Here’s the uncomfortable truth for sellers and sales leaders in 2026: AI isn’t coming for your job. It’s already here. And the reps and leaders who resist it, who treat it like a threat instead of a tool, are the ones who’ll get left on the bench.
The best sellers I’ve ever coached don’t cling to “the way we’ve always done it.” They adapt. They test. They adjust the play based on what the game is telling them. That’s not new — buyers have always changed, markets have always shifted. AI is just the biggest shift we’ve seen in a generation.
You can resist it and get run over. Or you can treat it the same way I treated LivePerson as a bet on where the game is going, not where it’s been.
How to Actually Overcome the Fear
Change is easy to talk about and hard to do. Here’s what’s worked for me:
Treat it as an experiment, not a verdict. You’re not signing a life sentence, you’re testing a hypothesis. If it doesn’t work, you adjust. If it does, you scale it. Either way, you learn something you didn’t know yesterday.
Frame it as moving forward, not leaving something behind. Selling the house isn’t losing something, it’s making room for what’s next. Same with a new job, a new tool, a new way of running your pipeline. You’re not walking away from something. You’re walking toward something better.
Don’t run it alone. My wife and I have never faced a hard season solo, and I’ve never coached a rep to a big win in isolation either. Find your person, a partner, a mentor, a coach, someone who helps you take the next step when the whole picture feels like too much.
Pick one AI tool and run it on one real deal this week. Not a company-wide rollout. Not “someday I’ll learn it.” One tool - Claude, a call-recording AI, a prospecting tool, whatever’s already sitting in your stack unused. Run it against one live deal. Use it to prep for a call, summarize a stakeholder map, draft a follow-up. See what it gives you back. That’s the experiment. You don’t need to overhaul your process to embrace change, you need one rep. One data point. Then you decide if it earns a second look.
You don’t have to solve the entire season in one play. You just have to run the next one.
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