The 10x programmer – engineers whose prodigious productivity and perspicacity change the arc of a business.

But what about a 10x AE? A salesperson who books 10x more business than their next closest peer.

10x engineers use their knowledge of technology to achieve astounding feats. Why wouldn’t the same idea apply to sales?

With AI, we will start to see sales outliers who meaningfully outperform & break quota expectations.

AI compresses prospect research time. AI writes emails. AI captures transcripts from sales conversations. All of this work is 50-80% automated.

If the typical AE saves 1 hour per day with these automations, they recoup 220 hours or about 15% of their time.

But there’s a nonlinear productivity gain that exceeds this simple calculation. AI enables salespeople to parallelize their work : software can research 10 different prospects simultaneously, rather than just 1 for a human.

Salespeople who leverage that parallelization will book 10x more. They will break quota plans as outliers, drive meaningful change within their organizations, & improve the overall efficiency of their business.

In the extreme cases, I wonder if it might shift more sales compensation to equity rather than cash, because retaining these 10x AEs will become a strategic imperative to the business.

Losing them could be catastrophic.