A new book by Pete Sanidas · Coming January 8, 2027
The Sales Survivor
Will you survive? A guide to navigating your sales career in the age of AI.
Your buyer sent their AI first. It built the shortlist before you knew the deal existed. So where do you fit now? This book answers that question chair by chair, for SDRs, AEs, CS, managers, revenue leaders and CEOs.
AI is logical. Your buyer isn't.
AI in sales has mostly been aimed at volume: more emails, more sequences, more activity. Volume saturates, and buyers stopped answering it a while ago.
The sellers who keep their jobs will be the ones who are best at the part AI can't do... reading the specific humans making a decision. What they fear, how they decide, and what they need before they'll move. Every chapter names one predictable way people aren't logical, a principle from psychology behind it, and a real deal it decided.
Three parts, seven chairs
The New Buyer
Predictable revenue got automated. Your buyer sends their AI first. The buying committee has AI too.
The Seven Chairs
One chapter each for the SDR, the AE, customer success and account management, the manager, sales enablement and ops, the revenue leader and the CEO. What changes, what doesn't, and what to do about it.
The Human Layer
The Freeze, where deals die to fear instead of price, and the human layer no agent can read for you.
If you carry a number, or run people who do
Quota carriers asking where they fit. The managers and revenue leaders deciding how many of them to keep. The CEOs signing off on that decision. And anyone else whose job just got a lot more interesting because an agent can do the first half of it.
Pete Sanidas
Pete has sold, built and run software sales teams for 25 years, across SMB inside sales and large enterprise. He was one of the first customers of an AI SDR company and ran it for nine months, which taught him more about this book than he wanted to learn. He's the founder of GTM Heroes, which helps sellers read how the specific buyer in front of them decides.
Read chapter one before anyone else
It starts with a book I almost wrote ten years ago and the trap even good reps still fall into. AI just made it faster.