🇩🇪 How can AI help improve your sales?

In this episode, we’re speaking with Eric Krapf, former CEO of Atos and advisor on growth and transformation topics, as well as Florian Max Drummen, Head of Go-to-Market & AI at A11, about how realistic the current hype around AI in sales really is. Both bring perspectives from working with established companies and startups—and explain why many AI initiatives in sales start in the wrong places.

We discuss why the real challenge isn’t the tooling, but the lack of clarity around target customers, value propositions, and processes. It’s about common misconceptions in go-to-market strategies, the role of message-market fit, and why increased automation may expand the funnel but often hurts conversion rates. We also explore what modern sales systems need to look like—and why standardization is often an underestimated lever.

In addition, we look at concrete use cases across the entire sales journey: from ICP definition and lead generation to prioritization and outreach, all the way to customer development and retention. Which steps can be meaningfully automated today—and where does human interaction remain essential? What role do CRMs play as a “system of action”? And what might AI-powered sales look like in the coming years as agents increasingly take over operational tasks?

‍Guests:

Eric Krapf, former CEO of Atos and advisor for growth and transformation: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickrapf/

Florian Max Drummen, Head of Go-to-Market & AI at A11: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-max-drummen/

Host:

Frederik Görtelmeyer, Co-Founder of Zapdeck

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