RECOMMENDED Humanity Per Hour: Chad Burmeister on What AI Still Can't Sell

https://www.backtier.comBackTier | AI Visibility, SEO, and the Future of SearchChad Burmeister saw GPT before almost anyone was saying the letters out loud. He was working with a San Francisco company that kept mentioning a technology he heard as "RG3," and by the time he figured out they meant GPT, he had already watched it research faster and write better email than the reps he was training. That led to a book in 2019, a podcast that has now run more than five years and three hundred guests, and a decade of building outbound systems that most of the market is only now catching up to.This conversation is about the other half of that story: the part AI does not get. Chad crossed the word "artificial" out of his own show artwork and replaced it with "augmented," and he has since trademarked the phrase "humanity per hour" — a way of asking how much of your working hour is genuinely human value and how much is something a machine should have handled. His argument is not that automation fails. It is that companies who automate the human layer watch their conversion rates collapse and then quietly hire the callers back.Along the way: the LinkedIn outreach pattern that produced 350 replies from 580 connection requests, why he never leads with the ask, the AI agent that read six years of his inbox and built him a spreadsheet he didn't ask for, the sales floor experiment where one rep made 1,500 dials and booked 33 meetings in a single day, and the callback where remembering a driveway full of snow ninety days later opened the deal. Plus surveillance versus coaching, Flock cameras, and why the most useful question Chad asks every guest is simply what they're looking at next.TimestampsTime Segment00:00 Two podcast hosts, one mic — Chad's show at 5 years and 300+ guests00:45 The "RG3" story: hearing about GPT before ChatGPT made it public01:40 How he stays ahead — asking every guest what's hot; the operator running 52 agents for $20 a month02:40 The quadrant: repetitive, unwanted, high-value work is where AI belongs03:30 Turning AI loose on six years of inbox — and the guest-pitch spreadsheet it built unprompted04:40 LinkedIn as the highest-yield channel: LinkedIn Helper to GrowthX, 580 requests, ~350 replies06:00 Give, give, ask — why the uppercut never lands on the first message07:20 Career turn: Informatica, the Salesforce acquisition, and two months of a very green lawn08:15 The new role: capturing advisor conversations so one advisor can serve 1,000 clients, not 15009:00 Where the human stays — crossing out "artificial," writing in "augmented"10:00 "Humanity per hour," and the rep who only sells 30% of the day11:20 Relationship memory: SalesCard.ai, birthday prompts, and the CRM that should already do this13:20 The New Jersey callback — 14 inches of snow, 90 days later, perfect timing14:20 Hanging up on SDRs, and the trademark scammers who "are" the USPTO16:20 AI role-play so reps stop practicing on live customers17:00 The floor listen: six minutes, three objections, a million-dollar meeting18:40 Surveillance or coaching? Clari, Flock cameras, and teams that ask to be recorded20:50 Why 10X is an arbitrary number — the 10-cents-a-dial experiment, 1,500 dials, 33 meetings22:50 Where to find Chad: The AI for Sales Podcast, the new book, LinkedInChad Burmeister is the host of The AI for Sales Podcast, now past five years and 300 episodes, and the author of the AI for Sales book series. He has led sales and business development at Cisco-WebEx, RingCentral, ON24, ConnectAndSell, and Informatica, and founded ScaleX.ai and BDR.ai.His operating background runs through Cisco-WebEx, Riverbed, ON24, RingCentral, ConnectAndSell, and most recently Informatica, acquired by Salesforce. He founded ScaleX.ai and BDR.ai, was a Forbes NEXT 1000 honoree, and helped found the OutBound conference.