Kevin Popovich explains the HI × AI framework: human insight leads, AI provides speed and scale. Sales teams rush to use AI for drafts and scripts, but miss deeper problem understanding. The real loop is human framing, AI expansion, human reflection, AI refinement.
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Hi, my name is Gerhard Schwartner and welcome to SellingPowerTV. Today we have a very special guest from California, Kevin Popovich. He is the author of a brand new book called Amplified.
Good to see you, Gerhard, as always. It's been a while.
What made you decide to work on something that needs amplifying?
As more teams are moving faster and faster towards AI, I think that it's a good time for them to kind of stop and think about what they're going to do before they actually go do it. So that was the reason that I wrote the book.
What are people getting wrong right now?
I think they're using tools like ChatGPT to create email scripts, proposals, Grammar for Decks, even custom GPTs for follow-ups. And those are all very, very helpful. But what they're not doing is using AI to think more deeply about the problem they're actually trying to solve for the prospect. Sales by nature is a problem solutions business, just like design. And if you don't understand the real problem, how will you ever solve it? And no amount of AI-generated output is going to help. Most teams aren't using AI to learn from it. They're using it to produce emails, decks, scripts, instead of using AI to explore buyer intent, decision risk, or what's actually blocking progress.
You came up with a very cute-sounding formula, which is human insight times artificial intelligence. Explain, what does that mean?
So human insights includes things like judgment, experience, empathy, pattern recognition, right? All of the things that great sellers rely on. AI brings speed, scale, and synthesis. So, HI, human insights, times AI, artificial intelligence, means humans lead the thinking and AI multiplies it. So when sales teams use AI to produce emails, deck scripts without leading with insight performance, then that suffers. But when humans remain and frame the right questions first, AI becomes a powerful way to explore buyer intent, decision risk, and what's actually blocking progress.
What can salespeople do to identify the real pain that customers are experiencing. It seems that in the discovery phase, salespeople are not finding the right problem.
When they try to solve the problem before they really understand the problem, that's where the disconnect really happens. So when we amplify our thinking, we always start with the human. Seller says, this is what I'm seeing, this is where I feel the deal's stuck, this is what I need to understand. That framing matters. And then, AI comes in to expand that exploration. Buyer concerns, decision risk, missing information, other perspectives that the seller might not see. As you move in this loop from human to AI to human to AI, you're really kind of changing from the way you're thinking about it, and eventually you stop doing it. So I think most sellers are skipping that important loop and jump straight into answers, relying on experience instead of understanding. And I think that's what differentiates great sellers, right? They use AI to learn, expand, and pressure test their thinking before they Persuade, confirm understanding, and then sell solutions that actually fit.
How does Amplify help solve the problem for the salesperson or the sales leader?
Amplify, first of all, is not a sales methodology. It's a thinking framework underneath every methodology. So for reps, AI becomes an always available thinking partner. All right, between calls, I see reps stopping and saying, hey, this is what the buyer said. What do you think? It helps them reflect before reacting. And at the same time, it acts as a sales assistant, right? Find this, summarize this, generate a report, draft an email. So they spend less time on assembling and more time thinking and selling. For leaders, the value compels. Instead of only seeing the activity and outcomes, you start seeing how decisions are being made. That coaching shifts from enforcing playbooks to developing judgment. Patterns emerge across deals, and the best thinking starts to scale across the organization when AI is applied productively. So AI done right just doesn't help reps do the work. It helps leaders see how decisions are being made, and, and that's where performance actually scales.
Can you share a specific, simple example on how Salespeople can use HI times AI to get better results.
Right. Think of a stalled enterprise deal. First, the human step back and frames the challenge, right? The rep can ask, what decision is the buyer actually avoiding? And this framing matters. It sets the direction for everything else to follow. So then second, as you move from HI to AI, AI expands that exploration. It looks across industry news, stakeholder perspectives, risk concerns, language signals from past emails and calls, surfacing patterns and scenarios the rep might not have seen on their their own. Third, then back into HI, the human reflects on the findings to reframe the problem based on what they've learned, and then they select the scenario most likely to change that conversation, right? What assumptions to challenge, what risks to address. At the fourth step, AI comes back again to help refine that, that next move. So the deal doesn't move forward because of pressure, it moves because clarity replaced confusion.
Who is Amplified for?
I think Amplified is for sales leaders who want to leverage, not micromanage. For top reps who want sharper judgment, learning how to do that leads to bigger outcomes, and for enablement teams trying to keep human thinking relevant in AI-first organizations. And it's important to also say, I think, what Amplified isn't, Gerhard. It does not replace Challenger. It does not replace SPIN or Sandler or any other sales methodology. It strengthens the thinking underneath them all.
What is your vision for Amplified? What's next?
The book comes out in May of 2026 on CRC Press, but there's work that's already happening. Right now, we're delivering Amplified workshops, trainings, consulting, certifications inside Fortune 1000 organizations that are charged with trying to figure out what everybody else is trying to figure out, right? How to adopt AI. We're working with their leadership and sales team to build a practical human-led AI roadmap by engaging their own people in the process.
Can people still reach you at theideaguy.us?
theideaguy.us/amplified if you'd like to learn more about the book.
