Hello Friend,

In this issue, we have:

• RESEARCH: Why the sales org was built around the seller's hours, and how the 3X Seller breaks that limit
  

• IN PRACTICE: The three-stage path from 1X to 3X
• EVENTS: Jacco unveils the 3X Seller live, Oct. 28 + Europe Roadshow recap
  
• GROWTH INSIGHTS QUESTION OF THE MONTH: When AI saves your sellers time, where do those hours go today?
• REVENUE ACADEMY COURSES: Enroll in upcoming courses across the Bowtie

RESEARCH: Meet the 3X Seller

A seller has about 1,600 commercial hours a year. Less than 30% of that time is spent selling with customers. The rest goes to research, proposals, CRM updates, and internal work: the work around the conversation.

AI can now take that work over. Once agents prepare the day, the meetings, and the follow-up, a seller gets back about 650 hours a year.

The question is where those hours go. Most organizations will pour them into more outreach: more emails, more connection requests, now at machine speed. That is the trap.

The 3X Seller puts them with the customers already won. As pricing moves toward usage and outcomes, revenue is earned after the close, not at it. A seller who stays through Impact, renewal, and expansion keeps each year’s customers instead of handing them off. New business holds at 10 to 12 customers a year, but three years of customers stay with the seller. Even at 100% net revenue retention, that is 3x the recurring revenue one seller carries.

Why 3X and not 10X? Code can be tested a thousand times. A deal runs through a buying group with its own priorities and timing. AI can prepare every step, but it cannot make the buyer decide. 

– Bottom Line –
AI frees the hours. Where you put them decides whether you get a faster seller or a 3X Seller.

These insights are adapted from an Executive Brief authored by Jacco van der Kooij, Founder & CEO of Winning by Design.

Table 1: How a seller’s time moves as AI takes over more of the work. From Winning by Design analysis (today) and projections (1X to 3X).

IN PRACTICE: The Path from 1X to 3X

Most sales teams already use AI. Few use it to change where their sellers’ time goes. The 3X Seller Program gets there in three stages, each building on the last, with people, process, and technology moving together.

1X: Skills. The whole team starts from the same baseline: AI connected to email, calendar, and CRM, and the first AI skills, such as summarizing a call, drafting the recap, and researching a prospect. Sellers also learn to diagnose the Impact the buyer wants, not just the pain. In an analysis of 57,826 opportunities, only about 1 in 5 deals captured the Impact, and those deals were tied to 44% more revenue.

2X: Agents. AI takes over the routine: a daily brief, meeting prep, follow-up drafts, and overnight account monitoring. The seller gets more than 10 hours a week back to spend with customers.

3X: Agent Workflows. Agents work around the clock across the customer journey. One agent per account sits in the team’s deal channel, watches the account and every call, and flags new white space each week. The seller becomes full-cycle, owning the account through Impact, renewal, and expansion.

The goal: the whole team at 2X in 16 weeks, with top performers working as 3X Sellers in 32.

– Bottom Line –
Getting to 3X is not about adding tools. It is about moving the whole team, not just the top performers. Process first. AI second.

These insights are adapted from an Executive Brief authored by Jacco van der Kooij, Founder & CEO of Winning by Design.

Figure 1: The seller track: training and implementation at each stage, then keeping pace with AI for 12 months. 

EVENTS: Big October Webinar + Reflections from European Tour

>> LIVE WEBINAR: THE 3X SELLER: HOW AI MOVES THE CONSTRAINT IN SALES | OCTOBER 28, 2026 | VIA ZOOM / AI can take the work between meetings off every seller's plate. Most organizations will pour the time it frees into more outreach. Jacco makes the case for a better answer: put sellers where only a human creates value. In front of customers. Diagnosing the Impact. Staying through delivery. Built for CROs, sales leaders, and the enablement and RevOps teams who support them. 

REGISTER HERE.

>> IMPACT ROADSHOW EUROPE | OCTOBER, 2026 / Over the last week plus, Jacco and the Winning by Design Growth Institute took the WbD Impact Roadshow across Europe: Amsterdam, Ghent, London, and Stockholm. Four cities. Packed rooms. Real conversations about where AI in GTM is actually headed. A few themes came up everywhere. Tools are not being replaced by AI; they are being stitched together. Sellers are not being replaced; they are being augmented. GTM is roughly two years behind where product and engineering already are. And as software continues to converge, how you go to market is becoming the real differentiator.

>> PRIOR WEBINAR: SECRETS FROM THE STAGE: 350 KICKOFFS IN, HERE'S WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS | WATCH THE RECORDING ON-DEMAND / If a 2027 kickoff is on your calendar, catch up on last month’s webinar where three WbD kickoff experts went deep on what separates the ones people just remember from the ones that move revenue. Melissa Huggett on building content your team actually cares about. Antoine Mandy on making it stick in the room. Patrick McGrann on the 90 days after, where adoption is won or lost. Plus, customer insights from Jeff Austin of Mediaocean. 

WATCH THE RECORDING HERE.

GROWTH INSIGHTS QUESTION OF THE MONTH

When AI saves your sellers time, where do those hours go today?

RESULTS FROM LAST MONTH'S QUESTION

In your opinion, what's the biggest driver of rising CAC in SaaS right now?

1. Buying committees have gotten bigger and slower, deals just take longer to close - 26%
2. Churn and contraction are quietly eating net new ARR, inflating the ratio - 24%
3. Companies kept spending on S&M without adjusting to slower growth - 28%
4.  Too many overlapping channels/tools, nobody's consolidated the stack - 25%

REVENUE ACADEMY COURSES: Uplevel Your Skills Across the GTM

Sign up for Revenue Academy Open Courses —  the next cohort kicks off on October 19th (with cohorts scheduled throughout Q4).

Here's to a great month ahead. Remember, the 3X Seller isn't a future role. Your top performers are already becoming one. Your middle performers need to.

To Impact!

The crew @ Winning by Design