Club E Recap: AI for Sales and What’s Actually Working in 2026
In a recent event at the Minneapolis Club, Club E hosted a candid and practical panel on AI for Sales: What’s Actually Working in 2026, featuring three leaders who are putting AI to work in their own sales processes every day. The conversation, moderated by Rick Brimacomb, skipped the hype and stayed focused on one question: how do you use AI to sell more?
Meet the Panelists
Darin Lynch – Founder and CEO of Irish Titan, an ecommerce agency that has been building and growing ecommerce sites for 22 years, and a longtime Club E sponsor.
Ted Davies – President of TAG Creative Agency and a 45-year advertising veteran whose work spans data, direct response, and digital, now focused on AI sales agents.
Justin Grammens – Founder and CEO of Lab 651, Managing Partner of Recursive Awesome, and a driving force behind the Applied AI nonprofit community in the Twin Cities.
The panel got specific fast. Rather than talking about what AI might do someday, each speaker walked through what is running in their business right now. What made the discussion especially valuable was the mix of perspectives: Justin showed how a solo seller can automate the path from discovery call to statement of work, Ted made the numbers-driven case for AI sales agents, and Darin shared how Irish Titan has connected AI to nearly every tool its sales team touches.
Together, they painted a clear picture of what is working in AI-powered sales today: let AI handle the grunt work, keep a human in the loop, and keep your own voice front and center.
Key Takeaways
1. Turn Every Sales Call Into a Proposal
Justin Grammens records his discovery calls with Read AI, which transcribes each conversation and pushes it into HubSpot. From there, a custom skill he built in Claude combines the transcript with his proposal template, branding, and value proposition to draft a statement of work. A job that used to take hours now takes minutes. As he put it, “It’s taken a task that was literally at the bottom of my list, and now it’s just so easy to do that it actually gets done.”
2. You Don’t Need Engineers to Build
Justin built that workflow without writing a single line of code, on a $20 a month plan. His rule of thumb on buy versus build: buy the commodity pieces like transcription and CRM, and build around the way you uniquely sell. His advice: “Use the tools to help you build the tools.”
3. Give Your Salespeople More At-Bats
Ted Davies shared that the typical salesperson spends only about 5% of the week actually prospecting. It takes seven to twelve contacts to land a meeting, yet only 10% of salespeople make that many. At trade shows, 80% of attendees can make buying decisions, but only 15% of booth leads get followed up even once. AI agents that start working a lead the moment a badge is scanned close that gap. “Salespeople just don’t have enough at-bats.”
4. Never Miss Another Call
Ted’s proof point came from a large Twin Cities HVAC company that was reluctant to put AI on the phones. In a 30-day trial, running only during business hours, an AI agent booked four times more appointments than the customer service team. With an average job worth $6,500, the return was well over 100 to 1.
5. Let AI Do the Blue Collar Work
Darin Lynch wants AI to “do the blue collar work for our white collar workers.” Irish Titan has ChatGPT connected to Slack, Basecamp, and HubSpot, and uses Plaud to turn call recordings into summaries built on separate templates for discovery, pitch, and workshop calls. CRM hygiene, once a chore, now happens through a quick conversation with AI. The human role shifts from creating to verifying: less heavy lifting, but still a person confirming accuracy before anything goes out the door.
6. Stay Authentic or Get Ignored
AI-generated spam is getting worse, and buyers can spot it. Darin draws a line between marketing, which creates awareness, and sales, which converts it. AI produces about 90% of Irish Titan’s marketing assets, but sales outreach features personal videos and LinkedIn posts written by hand. He even signs off his posts: “It’s not AI, it’s IAI: Irish attitude infused.” Ted added that AI is only as good as the customer data and context you give it, and Justin noted that your mission and values still have to come from you.
7. Pick a Tool and Keep Farming
Darin’s closing advice: pick Claude or ChatGPT, connect it to every tool you can, and keep using it. “It’s more like farming than hunting.” Ted urged anyone still on the fence to evolve, just as the industry moved from the Yellow Pages to digital. And Justin reminded the room what stays human: knowing your pricing, keeping the promise you make to the customer, and picking up the phone when things go off the rails.
Why It Matters
This panel embodied what Club E delivers: practical insights, candid stories, and actionable strategies from leaders who’ve been in the trenches. Catch the full Club E panel on the Brimacomb YouTube channel.
Join us for the next Club E on October 1: Do More With Less: How to Operate in 2026.
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