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Key Takeaways

Claims are cheap now, and buyers treat them that way. In a 2026 survey of 1,862 technology buyers, 94% of those who used AI during their purchase fact-checked what it told them.

Personalization is cheap, too. When software writes the first line, a detail about the buyer no longer shows effort.

Real work the buyer can check beats a claim they can’t. Send a small piece of it, and make sure it is specific enough to prove a person looked.

Free work doesn’t scale. In my business, free trial conversion fell from 91.5% to 67% over three years. A small paid trial brought it back to around 87%.

Anyone can write a good pitch now. A decent cold email, a tidy case study, a landing page full of confident claims. It takes a tool and about 10 minutes. Software now sends the outreach too, in volumes no person could match. Even the personal touches are written by it.

Buyers know all of this, and they have adjusted.…