A demo can produce an impressive account summary. A sales development rep preparing for a real call needs more than that. The reason to reach out must be current, the product claim defensible and the proof relevant to that account. And the result has to land in the CRM in a form the rep can use.
Start with an ordinary employee’s access.
Run the task with the access the team has today. Ask your company’s AI lead and the head of sales development to watch the same run. At each stop, write down what was missing. A model that cannot do the reasoning, a source the rep cannot open and a CRM that is not connected are three different pieces of work.
A briefing or campaign task · Q12
Where approved AI hands the job back.
Writes the answer
People check it and move it into work systems.
Finds approved information
People still perform the action in another system.
Prepares work for approval
People approve work the assistant has prepared inside the work systems.
Completes permitted steps
People handle exceptions and higher-risk decisions.
It is also a practical way to settle marketing’s role in the company’s AI plan. The CMO names the priority task, the functional head says what a usable result looks like, and your company’s AI lead commits to delivering it. Put those three names, the date and the test for done on one page and bring that page to the planning meeting rather than a slide. A platform someone else pays for becomes useful to marketing when those three sign the same page.
Match the permission to the action.
Take the three categories to legal in a particular order. Start with internal preparation, where nothing leaves the building and the approval is easy to give. Use that agreement as the template for external publication, where product marketing and a named approver sign off. Leave spending decisions for last, with the budget owner’s limit written in. Legal says yes to narrow permissions faster than to broad ones, and the order matters more than the wording.
Q13
The most recent delay in AI-supported marketing work
A suggested approval design
Internal account brief
AI preparesRetrieve approved sources and prepare a cited brief.
People decideAccount owner checks missing or conflicting facts. No buyer contact.
Public competitive claim
AI preparesDraft a comparison using current product evidence.
People decideProduct marketing and a named approver sign off before it goes out.
Campaign spend change
AI preparesAnalyze results and recommend a budget adjustment.
People decideThe budget owner approves the amount before anything changes.
Software teams call the setup around an assistant a harness. In marketing it is the approved sources, the written instructions, the connected tools, a record of what the assistant did, the quality checks and the person who handles exceptions. It is also the part you keep when the model or the vendor changes, which is why chapter 2 asks you to keep it outside any one tool. The engineering write-up below explains why the pieces matter for AI assistants that write software; the judgment about accuracy, brand and permission is marketing’s own.
Agree what “done” means before anyone builds.
For the account brief, require a usable record in the CRM, a source for every claim that matters and a clear flag where information is missing. Let the rep and the account owner judge whether it helps the next call. Count how many times a person had to step in or correct something, then compare with how the brief gets made today.
Set the date now. Ask for the finished brief within thirty days, made with a normal employee login, and put that brief in front of the sales team instead of a demo. What the rep does with it on the next call is the only acceptance test that counts.
Bring this discussion to your GTM team.
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