{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The SalesHandicapper: Your Winning Edge","title":"SE01 E02 Why Most AI Sales Agents Fail Before They Even Start | Donna McCurley","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3632,"description":"If your sales team is drowning in admin work and you keep hearing about AI agents but have no idea where to actually begin, this episode is for you. Sales enablement veteran Donna McCurley joins Skip Balch to break down why most companies jump straight into complex AI workflows and end up with systems that hallucinate, break, and get abandoned - and what to do instead.Donna has spent over 20 years building dynamic sales enablement programs, taught AI agent-building at Microsoft, and now helps sales organizations cut through the noise by starting simple and building trust one agent at a time.In this episode, they get into the real difference between on-demand and autonomous agents, why your CRM data is probably not ready for what you think you want, how to actually calculate the ROI of bringing AI into your sales process, and what the sales org of 2026 looks like when humans and AI work side by side.If you're a CRO, sales leader, or enablement professional trying to figure out where AI fits without blowing up your team's trust or your budget, this is a conversation you need to hear.Key takeaways:Start with on-demand agents before you touch autonomous workflows. Build one, test it, make sure it works, then connect them. Skipping this step is why most AI implementations fail.AI is best deployed on non-revenue-producing tasks first. Research, follow-up emails, client onboarding questionnaires - these are where you win time back fast and build team buy-in.You don't need perfect data to get started. Think of it like kindergarten - you find out what you have, identify the gaps, and build a roadmap from there.Benchmark everything before you build. Donna won't deploy an agent without first measuring what the current process costs in time and headcount. That's how you prove ROI.Sellers need to trust the agent before it touches the CRM. Rushing integration before your team believes in the tool is one of the fastest ways to kill adoption.A proof of concept should always be...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/GxSgQ90DQxYxNaAST-EgZ2cOcQXM_fC0eoouyOqn-0A/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8xYTI0/MjdlZTMxYzJiZjA0/NTkyYzk5MjJjNDli/MjI0OS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}