Zuzana Kudelová, founder of Salesmic and a sales leader with a background in terrorism studies, views sales as a discipline of “structured clarity” rooted in psychological negotiation. Drawing parallels between strategy analysis and the SaaS industry, she argues that the salesperson’s value has shifted from providing information to helping buyers navigate overwhelming complexity and internal misalignment. For Zuzana, sales is a deeply human endeavor of reducing uncertainty at the moment of decision, particularly in high-stakes environments where AI cannot account for political or emotional nuances.
What originally drew you into sales, and what keeps you passionate about it today—even though you could work anywhere in the world?
I studied terrorism, which involved a lot of negotiation and strategy analysis as well as psychological understanding of the ‘party’ on the other side. There is always some form of problem or pain that can be solved by the ‘right’ approach. When I graduated and saw the SaaS boom, I started seeing parallels which drew me rapidly to the business side.
What keeps me passionate is not ‘helping’ in a generic sense. It is the moment where something is unclear, slightly tense, or misaligned—and you can see it before others do.
Sales, at its best, is about stepping into that moment and making it clearer. Sometimes that solves a problem. Sometimes it exposes that the problem was wrong in the first place.
Anywhere in the world is an interesting statement – I consider myself extremely lucky for being exposed and interested in various cultures, but fundamentally coming to an understanding that the basic drives or human needs are the same no matter where so I can literally be anywhere and have that impact. At this stage of my life, I am location agnostic.
If you had to explain the true value of sales to someone outside the industry, what would you say the role of a salesperson really is?
Sales is not persuasion—it is structured clarity. A great salesperson helps someone:
● understand their problem more precisely
● see the cost of not solving it
● and feel confident making a decision
So the role is not to push—it is to reduce uncertainty at the moment of decision.
In early-stage companies, especially, sales is also how you discover whether your business even makes sense. It is not downstream of strategy—it is strategy.
Sales skills are transferable across industries and geographies. If you could relocate anywhere tomorrow, what market or region would excite you the most and why?
I deliberately put myself in environments where I am not fluent—linguistically, culturally, or contextually. Because that removes shortcuts. You cannot rely on pattern recognition—you actually have to understand what is happening.
Currently, such a region could be Asia in general.
Iti s also important to say that more than the geography per se, the ecosystem matters; high velocity and high ambiguity, because that is where sales becomes most interesting.
How do you think the role of a salesperson will evolve over the next 5–10 years?
Sales is moving from information advantage → decision advantage.
Historically, salespeople won because they had more information than the buyer.
Now buyers are often better informed than ever. So the value shifts to:
● helping them prioritize
● helping them navigate trade-offs
● and helping them commit
The salesperson becomes less of a ‘source of answers’ and more of a high-quality thinking partner in high-stakes decisions.
That begs for a whole set of highly honed skills, such as high emotional intelligence, product knowledge, in case of enterprise sales, ‘clockspeed’ to understand the buyer’s internal hierarchies and business realities and communication skills to be able to put this all in front of the different stakeholders in a way they will resonate with.
The biggest shift is that the bottleneck is no longer access to information. It is alignment and decision-making inside the buyer’s organization.
And most sales teams are not equipped to handle that.
What skills will separate top-performing sales professionals from average ones in the future?
1. Clarity creation The ability to simplify complex situations into actionable decisions.
2. Commercial judgment Understanding what actually drives revenue—not just activity metrics.
3. Emotional precision Reading what is really happening in the room—uncertainty, resistance, misalignment—and addressing it directly.
Most people will get better tools. Very few will get better at thinking. And even fewer will be comfortable naming what is actually happening in a room when it is slightly uncomfortable.
With AI automating more parts of the sales process, which parts of selling do you believe will always require a human touch?
AI can optimise the process, but it does not take responsibility for the decision.
Let’s unpack this a bit – AI will take over everything that is mechanical, repeatable, and low-stakes.
What it will not replace is the moment where someone has to make a decision that actually matters.
Because most important buying decisions are not just rational—they are:
● political
● emotional
● tied to identity
● and often slightly uncomfortable
No AI is going to sit in a room where:
● a founder is unsure if this is the right direction
● a VP is worried about how this decision reflects on them
● or a team is misaligned but not saying it out loud
That is where selling actually happens.
And that requires someone who can:
● read what is not being said
● name it without creating resistance
● and help people move forward anyway
I think of sales as holding the moment where uncertainty turns into commitment and that is deeply human.
Where do you see AI delivering the biggest impact in sales today—prospecting, personalization, forecasting, or something else?
The biggest impact is not in one isolated area—it is in compression of the entire sales cycle.
But if I had to pick:
● Pre-call intelligence & synthesis (understanding accounts instantly)
● Post-call structuring (turning conversations into clear next steps)
AI is best at removing cognitive load around preparation and follow-through.
That allows salespeople to spend more time where they actually create value: → in the conversation itself.
If I extrapolate to a team level, most teams will use AI to do more activity. The best teams will use it to remove unnecessary activity.
There’s increasing discussion about AI replacing sales roles. Do you think AI will replace salespeople, or simply change what they focus on?
AI will not replace salespeople—but it will replace low-quality selling.
Anything that is scripted, repetitive or just moving information from A to B will disappear.
What remains are situations where:
● the problem is still unclear
● the stakes are real
● and people are not fully aligned—even if they say they are
This is where sales actually happen.
Buyers are not making perfect decisions. They are making ‘good enough’ decisions under pressure, with incomplete information and internal constraints. That creates friction. AI works very well when the decision is already structured but most important decisions are not.
So the role of the salesperson shifts from explaining the product to helping people navigate what is actually going on in their situation.
That means:
● making the problem clearer
● surfacing misalignment
● and helping people move toward a decision they can stand behind
That is a very different job and it is not going away—it is just moving up in altitude.
How do you think AI and digital tools are changing buyer expectations and how sales teams need to engage them?
Most people think buyers have become more rational because they have more information. The opposite is true. They are dealing with more complexity than they can realistically process. There is a lot of work from Steven Pinker around how humans struggle with complexity and abstraction—and how much we rely on clear language and structure to actually understand something.
That is exactly what is happening in buying today.
Buyers are:
● exposed to a huge amount of information
● but lacking a clear way to structure it
● and often unable to articulate what is actually going on in their situation
So what looks like ‘more informed buyers’ is often just more informed, but less clear and that creates friction. They do not need more content.
They need:
● someone who can structure the problem
● make the trade-offs visible
● and give them language for what they are already sensing but cannot express
So the shift for sales is not ‘Let me explain what we do’. It is ‘Let me make your situation understandable enough so you can decide.’
The real value is not information. It is making complexity usable and that is where most sales teams are still behind. A lot of buyers do not lack information. They lack a way to hold the problem in their head.
If someone were entering sales today in an AI-driven world, what mindset or approach would you recommend they develop first?
Most people entering sales today are over-optimising for tools.
That is a mistake. It is not about the tools. It is about how you use them to create more clarity and more trust.
If you are not careful, the tools will quietly make you worse. AI makes it very easy to sound sharp without actually understanding anything. You can generate better emails, better summaries, better narratives—but if you did not do the thinking yourself, you are just rearranging words.
Over time, that erodes the exact thing that makes you valuable: → your ability to think → to structure messy situations → and to see what actually matters
That is the real risk so you have to be intentional.
Force yourself to:
● sit with the problem before reaching for a tool
● make sense of it in your own words
● and articulate it clearly
Because the real job is not execution. The real job is judgment under uncertainty. AI can accelerate your output. It cannot build your judgment. And if you outsource that too early, you will become very efficient—but not very effective.
So use the tools—but do not let them use you. Stay close to real conversations, real decisions, real consequences. That is where your thinking gets shaped.
Most people will become faster. Very few will stay sharp.
In the long run, sharp beats fast.
