Rich Strom has been in enterprise SaaS sales for over 15 years—from cold calling off the Yellow Pages to closing six-figure deals in maritime shipping at Sedna. In this episode, we dig into how the day-to-day of an enterprise AE has fundamentally changed. The uncomfortable truth? Most sales tools over the past decade weren't built for reps. They were built for executives to track what reps were doing. CRM, forecasting, analytics—all of it was a tax on selling, not an accelerant. Rich breaks down what's actually different now: AI tools that pull insights from call recordings and emails without requiring manual entry, cutting his exec briefing prep from hours to 20 minutes.

We also get into Rich's decision to step out of sales management and back into an IC role—and why he thinks he's 50x more prepared for leadership now than when he actually had the title. Plus, we talk about how an old-school industry like maritime is starting to ask about AI in sales conversations, and why the answer is never "let me inspire you with what's possible." It's still the same question it's always been: what problem are you trying to solve? The tools changed. The job didn't.