Why old-school sales work still wins in the AI era | Graham Moreno (Head of GTM, Parallel)

He argues that even in AI tools, customers often don’t succeed by simply getting access; they succeed when the vendor invests time in discovery, training, workflow redesign, and ongoing enablement so adoption becomes measurable and repeatable.

He describes elite enterprise selling as simultaneously engaging engineers (via hands-on workflow understanding and developer community) and executives (who control budgets and need clear productivity/ROI narratives), with the vendor acting as a conduit between layers of the org.

He says AI-native buyers often have high baseline fluency, prefer constant async communication (Slack/text), and compress what would be a 6–8 week enterprise motion into roughly 5–8 business days due to continuous context sharing.

He claims that in many AI categories the top vendors’ tech is often close enough that trust and vendor presence become key differentiators, including willingness to go onsite, help with trainings, and participate in customer milestones like hackathons.

He advocates for a minimal, measurable process that “raises the floor” (clear stages and a few required criteria) without restricting sellers from doing unusual, relationship-building actions that create outsized outcomes.