Humans in the Loop
My husband was cold-called proverbially speaking and the email outreach was so good one simply had no choice but to take notice. The Subject line: I’m Done Waiting for Approvals. Let’s Talk.
Is this email real? Fake person? Fake LinkedIn profile? Too good to be true? In a world awash with AI-created slop, and outreach from the likes of TRMan and GartGuy & Gal, this stood out for all the right reasons.
Ms. Marketer’s note went like this:
I’m Susie. I did my Master’s at Duke, went straight into big tech, and have been running global marketing at ABCTech. Here, the work is real. But the pace isn’t. Every campaign, every idea, every experiment goes through layers of approval before it moves. I keep hitting ceilings I didn’t need to hit. So I’m making a shift to SF and into startups, where I can actually build.
I’d love to join Outsell, Inc.’s Growth team, and thought you’d appreciate knowing how this email reached you: I built this outreach automation in Claude, sourced your contact with Apollo, and triggered this note in Instantly.
Why I’d be a strong addition to your team:
- Fluent in Claude, Clay, Luma, Customer.io, and modern AI tools
- Built AI-Native Marketing OS: full GTM breakdown from one URL
- Organized 15+ events: exec summits, community meetups, industry expos
- Wrote and scaled newsletter + microsite from scratch
- Judged an AI agent hackathon hosted by Google and Exa
I know your time is valuable, so I’ll keep this short: I’d love to chat about joining Outsell, Inc. as a marketer. Or if you could point me to the right person on your team, that would be amazing.
Best,
Ms. Marketer
Full linked in profile
Now this is what you call a human in the loop. It is the reason we hear the common refrain: you won’t lose your job to AI; you’ll lose your job to the person who knows how to use it.
LinkedIn is abuzz about the irony of OpenAI hiring SDRs, and about how every white-collar job on the planet is going to be done by AI. In the hysteria lies the reality that for some jobs machines will just be fine. But for many others good luck taking a person out of the system.
GenAI still hallucinates. It is still too predicated on the machines having the same undifferentiated content. The pendulum is going to swing back to wanting to work with people. After the machines have their day and take us through horrific customer service experiences, questions that go unanswered, chatbots that have no idea how to solve our problem no matter what the hype will have us believe. Maybe OpenAI knows what it’s doing after all.
The Outsell Accelerate A! Benchmark™ is reinforcing these themes. Respondents are telling us:
· AI agents are augmenting recurring work.
· There is a shift toward hybrid human + AI operating models.
· AI roles are becoming more formalized.
· There is greater focus on workforce productivity and operational capacity (c/o AI assistance.)
The data is also showing us the two biggest factors addressing AI readiness in the workforce?
- Building AI literacy across leadership and management
- Providing internal or external training, upskilling, or certification programs
And there is work to be done. Only 17% of respondents have trained the majority of employees and a third have no formal training. AI native talent will be in demand. Ms. Marketer will be too.
Let’s give a shout for her and anyone who can Sell as a Service vs. the SaaD experiences big tech would have us believe is the way to go, augmented by AI. The magic still happens when a human is in the loop.
Haven’t participated in the Outsell Accelerate A! Benchmark ™ yet? Contact Michael.