The Math Professor Who Solved Sales Tools

Po-Shen Loh, US Math Olympiad coach, watched Google's AI solve four Olympiad problems in seconds. Problems designed to require creativity, not just computation. His insight changes everything for sales tools.

The Cognitive Fitness Problem

Loh's analogy is sharp: using AI to do your thinking is like driving your car one mile and calling it exercise. You get from point A to point B. But your muscles atrophy.

The same thing happens in sales. Your team uses scripts for discovery calls. They follow playbooks that tell them which questions to ask. They lean on AI-generated emails for follow-up. They hit their activity metrics and move deals through stages. But their thinking muscles weaken.

When a customer asks an unexpected question, they fumble. When the conversation reveals complexity that doesn't fit the qualification framework, they retreat to the script. When a competitor positions differently than the battlecard predicted, they lack the cognitive agility to respond.

This isn't a motivation problem. It's not even a knowledge problem. Sales tools focus on what to say, not how to think. They provide templates instead of developing analytical capability. They offer efficiency, not insight.

What AI Can't Replace

82% of consumers want more human interaction as technology improves. But only when they perceive value. They want salespeople who understand their specific business context, ask questions that reveal hidden challenges, and adapt their approach based on what they discover in the conversation.

AI can generate a compelling pitch deck. It can analyse win/loss data and suggest messaging. It can draft follow-up emails that sound personalised.

But AI can't read the room when the CFO's body language shifts during your ROI discussion. It can't detect the unspoken concern behind a procurement officer's carefully worded question about implementation timelines. It can't pivot the conversation when you discover the customer's real problem isn't what they described in the brief.

These moments separate good salespeople from exceptional ones. They require pattern recognition across diverse business situations. They demand the ability to synthesise information on the fly and adapt your approach mid-conversation. Those capabilities require thinking skills that become second nature—the kind you can't fake with a script or outsource to a tool.

The Tools Gap

McKinsey projects critical thinking demand will grow by 19% through 2030. Yet employers consistently report it as a top skill gap.

Most sales tools treat thinking as a given. They assume your team already knows how to analyse a customer's business context—their competitive pressures, strategic priorities, and operational constraints. They assume your reps can ask probing questions that go beyond surface-level pain points to uncover real business issues. They assume the framework will tell them what to do.

That assumption costs you deals. Your competitor wins because their rep understood the customer's industry consolidation pressure and positioned differently. You lose velocity because your team can't articulate value in terms that resonate with the customer's specific situation. Your deals stall because your reps pitch features instead of addressing the business outcomes the customer actually cares about.

The Bureaucracy Trap

Historian Yuval Noah Harari identifies another culprit in Nexus. Bureaucracy sacrifices truth for order by imposing artificial frameworks on reality.

Your sales organisation runs on these systems. MEDDIC or BANT qualification. Mandatory discovery call templates. Stage gate criteria that must be met before advancing deals. Value calculators with prescribed inputs. Champion identification checklists. CRM fields that must be completed before the system allows progression.

These frameworks provide useful structure. But they also sort infinite customer complexity into finite "drawers." A customer's buying process doesn't actually move linearly through your stages. Their business challenges don't fit neatly into your qualification criteria. Their decision-making dynamics are more nuanced than "champion identified: yes/no."

The result? Your team stops thinking and starts complying. They ask the prescribed discovery questions but don't listen deeply enough to adapt their approach. They fill out MEDDIC fields to satisfy the forecast call instead of genuinely understanding the customer's decision process. They force deals into stages to meet pipeline metrics instead of acknowledging where the customer actually is in their journey.

Bureaucracy produces order and predictability for management. But it produces zero truth about the customer and zero wisdom about how to advance the deal. You're not just fighting cognitive atrophy from scripts and automation. You're fighting entire technology stacks designed to reward compliance over critical thinking.

Building Cognitive Fitness

You can't outsource thinking and expect your team to get stronger. You build thinking skills the same way you build physical fitness: through consistent practice with real resistance.

We focus exclusively on live deals. Not role-plays with fabricated scenarios. Not case studies from other industries. The actual deals in your pipeline right now, with all their messy complexity and unique characteristics.

Your team learns to think by working through real customer contexts. What pressures is this customer's industry facing? How does their business model create specific operational challenges? What does their organisational structure tell us about decision-making dynamics? Which strategic initiatives are competing for the same budget?

They develop the habit of questioning their assumptions. "We think the CTO is the economic buyer, but what if procurement controls this decision?" "The customer says speed to value matters most, but their evaluation timeline suggests otherwise—what's really driving their urgency?"

They practice crafting solutions for unique challenges that don't fit standard templates. This customer needs a phased approach because of budget cycles. That customer requires a proof of concept because of internal scepticism. Another needs executive alignment before technical evaluation makes sense.

These thinking skills become intrinsic. Your team stops relying on scripts and starts navigating conversations with genuine insight. That's what keeps them in customer conversations longer and positions them as trusted advisors instead of vendors.

The Forward Path

Your competition is investing in AI tools. Smart move. But tools don't replace thinking—they amplify it. The most dangerous assumption in sales leadership right now is that better technology will compensate for weaker thinking.

The sales professionals who thrive in the next decade will combine AI efficiency with human cognitive fitness. They'll use AI to handle research, draft initial outreach, and analyse patterns across deals. But they'll apply distinctly human capabilities to navigate complex customer relationships, read subtle signals, and adapt their approach based on what they discover in real time.

That combination creates competitive advantage AI can't replicate. It keeps them in meaningful conversations longer because customers recognise they're speaking with someone who genuinely understands their business. It positions them as trusted advisors who provide insight, not just vendors who pitch products.

The choice is yours. You can equip your team with more tools, better battlecards, and additional automation. Or you can develop their ability to think through unique customer situations with clarity and precision.

One approach atrophies their capabilities while creating the illusion of progress. The other builds the cognitive fitness that separates exceptional performers from the rest—and keeps your team relevant as AI handles everything else.