Tommy Barlow: AI Won't Eliminate Salespeople. It Will Change Where We Need Them

AI can prospect. It can analyze signals. It can orchestrate campaigns. It can help determine which accounts deserve attention. So where does the salesperson belong? In this episode of the Go-To-Market Podcast, Fullcast CMO and co-founder Dr. Amy Osmond Cook sits down with Tommy Barlow, Vice President of Global Revenue at LearnUpon, to talk about what happens to sales, RevOps and revenue leadership as AI takes over more of the traditional GTM motion. Barlow has spent much of his career thinking about revenue through an operator's lens. Long before he knew the term "RevOps," he was studying funnel math while helping his father reshape a plumbing business by tracking calls, conversion rates and opportunities to expand customer relationships. That mindset followed him into SaaS, including leadership roles at Pluralsight and AWS, and eventually to LearnUpon, where he saw firsthand what a strong RevOps function could do for a growing revenue organization. Barlow boils growth down to three pillars: clarity, coverage and operational excellence. But AI is changing how teams deliver against those pillars. Tommy believes the traditional boundaries separating prospecting, selling, marketing and revenue operations are beginning to collapse. Tomorrow's account executives may need to orchestrate their own signals, agents and campaigns while knowing exactly when a human should enter the buying journey. And that human moment still matters. In this episode: Why Barlow was practicing RevOps before he knew what to call it The three pillars he uses to think about revenue growth How RevOps helped support SaaS growth and scale What AI changes — and doesn't change — about B2B buying Where humans should remain in the revenue loop Why the traditional SDR-to-AE model may be changing How the go-to-market engineer could reshape revenue teams Why tomorrow's AEs may need to run the entire funnel Why domain expertise becomes more valuable as AI improves What sales leaders need to understand about finance and RevOps Why RevOps is becoming the connective tissue between sales, finance and the rest of the business Barlow argues that people ultimately make major buying decisions emotionally and justify them logically. AI can improve the machinery surrounding a deal, but complex purchases still require confidence, expertise and trust. That means the future salesperson may actually need to become more skilled, not less. Account executives will need deeper domain expertise. Sales leaders will need to understand finance, capacity, territories, quotas and customer acquisition costs. And RevOps will increasingly serve as the connective tissue bringing those functions together. Listen to the interview here.