I was reading an article recently by Avi Sahi, CEO of SpikedAI, titled “What Separates Your Best Rep from Everyone Else? It’s Not What You Think.” It got me thinking.

He argues that top salespeople aren’t necessarily smarter or more charismatic. They’ve simply developed the ability to process enormous amounts of information in real time. They listen, recall, prioritize, interpret, and respond while the conversation is still unfolding.

I think he’s onto something.

One of the comments I hear all the time during coaching calls is:

“How did you come up with that talk track so quickly?”

Sometimes we’ll be discussing a commercial printer. The next call is a payroll company. Then a legal services firm. Then a sign company. Someone inevitably says, “How can you possibly come up with messaging for all these different industries?”

The answer is actually pretty simple.

The 10,000-hour rule.

I’ve spent well over 10,000 hours selling, coaching salespeople, listening to calls, and helping reps think through conversations. At some point, your brain starts recognizing patterns instead of memorizing scripts.

That’s why I rarely think about what to say anymore.

I’m thinking about where the conversation should go.

I often describe sales conversations as a series of zigs and zags.

The buyer says something unexpected.

You zig.

They mention another problem.

You zag.

A new stakeholder joins the conversation.

You adjust again.

No two conversations are identical, yet experienced salespeople somehow seem to know where to take them.

From the outside, it can look like they’re naturally gifted.

They’re usually not.

They’ve simply seen enough situations that they recognize the patterns almost instantly.

But I think there’s another piece that often gets overlooked.

The best salespeople don’t just have better answers.

They have better questions.

Experienced reps know which questions uncover operational friction, business risk, wasted time, missed revenue, or customer frustration. More importantly, they know which question should come next based on the answer they just heard.

That’s what moves a conversation from product features to business problems.

Most average sales calls are reactive.

The buyer asks a question.

The rep answers it.

The buyer asks another.

The rep answers that one too.

The conversation becomes a game of customer-led Q&A.

Top performers don’t let that happen.

They answer the question, but then they ask one that redirects the conversation toward understanding why the issue matters in the first place.

That’s where discovery lives.

And that’s where value gets created.

As sales has become more complex—with more stakeholders, longer buying cycles, and greater scrutiny—this ability has become even more important.

Can AI help reduce some of the cognitive load Avi describes?

Absolutely.

It can surface information faster, organize context, summarize meetings, and even suggest ideas.

But AI still doesn’t replace the judgment that comes from thousands of conversations.

It doesn’t instinctively know when to press, when to pause, when to challenge an assumption, or when to abandon a perfectly good talk track because the buyer just revealed something more important.

Those decisions come from experience.

The encouraging part is that experience doesn’t only come from years in the field anymore.

Great coaching accelerates it.

Every role play, every call review, every difficult conversation, and every “Why did you ask that?” discussion helps salespeople build the mental pathways that experienced reps rely on every day.

Eventually, they stop trying to remember the right thing to say.

They simply learn how to think.

And once that happens, the zigs and zags start feeling a lot more natural.