In partnership with
Invest in Popsmith, the Future of Popcorn
Popsmith is reimagining popcorn for a new generation.
With more than 100,000 customers, $20M+ in lifetime revenue, and retail partnerships with Williams Sonoma, Costco, and Sur La Table, Popsmith is building a premium brand in one of America’s most iconic snack categories.
Revenue is projected to reach $9M in 2026, with a nationwide Williams Sonoma rollout coming this holiday season.
Now, for a limited time, you can own a piece of the company and participate in what comes next.
See the Popsmith investment opportunity.
GM to the Top 1% ☕
For two years, buying an AI sales tool needed almost no justification. "It's AI" was the business case. That era ended this quarter.
Finance teams at large companies are now running line-by-line audits of AI spend across go-to-market orgs, and the backlash has a name in the press already: tokenmaxxing, the habit of burning budget on usage volume with no attached outcome. The tools getting cut are not the unpopular ones. They are the ones nobody can defend with a number.
If you cannot answer "what did this tool make us that we would not have made without it," your renewal is at risk regardless of how much your team likes the tool.
💡 THE AUDIT MOST TOOLS WON'T SURVIVE
Here is the uncomfortable truth about the last two years of AI tool buying in sales orgs: adoption ran way ahead of measurement. Teams bought agents, copilots, and automation layers on the promise of the category, not on a specific, attributable result. That was fine when budgets were loose. It is not fine now.
The audits underway this quarter ask one blunt question per tool: what pipeline, revenue, or hours did this produce, in a number a CFO would accept. Tools that were bought on vibes and adopted for convenience are failing that question, even when reps genuinely like using them.
This changes what "winning" with AI in sales looks like going forward. It is no longer enough to be an early adopter. You have to be able to point at a specific dollar figure or hour count and say, this came from this tool, here is the before and after.
The sellers and managers who survive this round of cuts are the ones who tracked outcomes from day one, not the ones with the most tools in their stack.
🔧 THE SURVIVE-THE-AUDIT CHECKLIST
Four moves to make your own AI usage defensible before finance asks.
1. Name one metric per tool, today: For every AI tool you personally use, write the one number it is supposed to move (hours saved, meetings booked, deal velocity). If you cannot name it, that is the first sign it survives on habit, not proof.
2. Track a before-and-after, not a vibe: Pull your own numbers from four weeks before you started using the tool and four weeks after. "It feels faster" does not survive an audit. A number does.
3. Kill your own dead weight first: If a tool in your stack has no attributable number after real effort to measure it, drop it before finance drops it for you. Self-audits protect your credibility.
4. Bundle the story for your manager: Package your defensible tools into one sentence per tool your manager can repeat upward without translation. Make their job of protecting the budget easy.
🎯 THIS WEEK'S HOMEWORK
List every AI tool touching your workflow right now. Next to each, write the specific number it is supposed to move and whether you actually have that number on hand. Anywhere you draw a blank is a tool you cannot currently defend.
❓ QUESTION OF THE DAY
If finance audited your AI tool stack tomorrow, which tool would you struggle to defend with a real number?
Reply with the tool. That's the one to measure or drop this week.
See you tomorrow.
Edward
Founder, Morning Sales
P.S. Proving a tool's value starts with knowing what to measure and how to frame it for someone who controls budget, not just someone who likes the demo. The 500 AI Sales Prompts manual has the exact prompts for building that case. 27 dollars: https://store.edwardgorbis.com