The Math Professor Who Solved Sales Training
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 training.
The Cognitive Fitness Problem
He says “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.
Your team uses scripts, follows playbooks, and leans on AI-generated emails. They get from prospecting to close. But their thinking muscles weaken. Sales training focuses on what to say, not how to think. It offers stimulation, not transformation.
What AI Can't Replace
Customers want more human interaction as technology improves, but only when they perceive value. They want salespeople who understand context, ask questions that reveal hidden challenges, and adapt based on what they discover.
AI can generate a pitch. It can't read a room, detect the unspoken concern behind a question, or pivot when the conversation reveals unexpected complexity. Those capabilities require thinking skills that become second nature.
The Training Gap
McKinsey projects critical thinking demand will grow by 19% through 2030. Yet employers consistently report it as a top skill gap.
Most sales training treats thinking as a given, assuming your team knows how to analyse customer context and develop tailored solutions. That assumption costs you deals.
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. CRM fields. Stage gates. Qualification frameworks. Playbooks prescribing each step. These systems sort the world into conceptual "drawers," but this imposed order fails to match reality's complexity.
The result? Your team stops thinking and starts complying. They focus on filling out Salesforce correctly instead of understanding the customer. Bureaucracy produces order but zero truth and zero wisdom.
You're not just fighting cognitive atrophy. You're fighting organisational systems 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 through consistent practice with real resistance.
We focus on live deals. Real customer situations. The deals in your pipeline right now. That's where thinking skills develop—when your team works through specific customer contexts, questions their assumptions, and crafts solutions for unique challenges.
The Forward Path
Your competition is investing in AI tools. Smart move. But tools don't replace thinking—they amplify it.
Sales professionals who thrive will combine AI efficiency with human insight, using technology for routine tasks while developing cognitive fitness for complex customer relationships. That combination keeps them in conversations longer and positions them as trusted advisors.
You can train your team on more scripts and techniques. Or you can develop their ability to think through unique customer situations. One approach atrophies their capabilities. The other builds the cognitive fitness that separates exceptional performers from the rest.