AI adoption isn’t optional anymore. It’s here, it’s accelerating, and whether or not we’ve prepared our teams, they’re already experimenting with it. Some reps are all-in, others are avoiding it, and many are quietly “shadow learning” with personal accounts.
The result? A growing fluency gap that creates risk, inconsistency, and lost opportunity.
If we want our teams to use AI confidently, safely, and at scale, we need to treat AI fluency like digital literacy. That doesn’t mean turning every rep into an AI expert, it means building a practical baseline so teams can engage responsibly, experiment productively, and apply AI where it matters most.
What the data tells us about the state of AI
The numbers make the urgency clear:
- 70% of Gen Z is already using AI, often without guidance or oversight, yet 68% of non-users are Gen X or Baby Boomers.” (Salesforce, Generative AI Statistics).
- 90% of employees use personal chatbot accounts for work tasks, while only 40% of companies provide official AI subscriptions (MIT’s Project NANDA, State of AI in Business 2025).
- 70% of non-users say they’d use AI more if they had training (Salesforce, Generative AI Statistics).
- Over 1/3 of teams list “insufficient employee training” as a top roadblock to adoption (Salesforce, State of Sales).
The takeaway? Teams want to use AI. Many already are. But most don’t feel equipped, and few companies are providing the training to close that gap.
Training must-haves: A structure for AI fluency
Early in my role at Spekit, I came across a Pro Tip in Melanie Fellay’s book, “Just-In-Time: The Future of Enablement in a World of AI.” She outlines a structure for AI training that became the backbone of our own approach:
- Identify Key Steps in your sales process that benefit from AI
- AI 101 Enablement
- Encourage practice by making it fun
- Build a prompt library
- Promote ongoing adoption
These five must-haves offer a roadmap that any enablement leader or front-line manager can adapt immediately. Let’s break them down.
Step 1: Identify relevant use cases
Start by mapping where AI can deliver immediate value, because when training feels directly tied to real workflows, it sticks.
Step 2: AI 101 Enablement
Foundations matter. We broke our AI 101 program into three short sessions:
Session 1: Foundations of AI
Keep it simple with focus only on the essentials. Give your teams a shared language and baseline understanding of AI so they aren’t learning in isolation or relying on assumptions.
Intended Outcome: Reps walk away able to explain what AI is (and isn’t), spot common myths, and understand at a high level how AI shows up in their day-to-day.
Impact: Establishing this foundation reduces fear, builds confidence, and ensures that when reps use AI tools, they use them to their fullest capability and know enough to apply them responsibly instead of blindly.
Session 2: Prompting
Prompting is one of the most practical, transferable skills in the AI era: how to ask for what you actually need.
Intended Outcome: Reps develop prompting habits that make outputs more accurate, useful, and aligned with business goals. They also understand that prompting is iterative — success comes from refining, not “one and done.”
Impact: Strong prompting directly affects deal execution. Better prompts mean faster research, stronger messaging, and more reliable outputs that reps can trust and use with customers. This closes the gap between “dabbling” with AI and integrating it into everyday workflows.
Session 3: Impact
Connect AI training to what matters most in your business. This session should shift the conversation from concepts and theory to impact by showing where AI can be useful, where it’s already influencing your environment, and where reps can apply their new and improved AI skills.
You may want to try something different, but in our case, we focused on topics like:
- How it impacts conversations with customers
- Why IT is back in the deal cycle
- How AI is reshaping product development and competitive positioning
Intended Outcome: Reps and managers see AI not just as a tool for productivity, but as a driver of customer trust, competitive advantage, and internal alignment. They walk away with clear ideas for how AI can be applied in their own roles.
Impact: Teams learn to use AI responsibly in customer-facing scenarios, build confidence in handling IT and compliance conversations, and start spotting opportunities to apply AI in ways that directly improve pipeline health, adoption, and revenue outcomes.
The goal here isn’t expertise, it’s practical confidence in using AI when and where it matters most.
Step 3: Make it fun
Reps learn best when they’re engaged. Try light activities that reinforce prompting and iteration without feeling like a lecture:
- Executive Summary: Have reps take a recent call transcript and prompt AI to generate a concise executive summary. This saves time on call prep, reinforces how AI can structure complex conversations into simple insights, and shows reps the value of clear prompting.
- Mutual Action Plan: Ask reps to use a call transcript and prompt to draft a mutual action plan with next steps, milestones, and responsibilities. This demonstrates how AI can accelerate follow-up, reduce admin work, and produce relevant customer-facing artifacts.
- AI Mad Libs: Give reps a skeleton prompt like, “Write a [length] email to a [persona] in the [industry] highlighting [benefit] with a [tone]”). Reps fill in blanks, share results, and vote on the best one.
- Prompt Detective: Show two AI outputs — one from a vague prompt, one from a strong one. Have the team guess which is which and discuss why.
- Personal Coach: Have reps ask AI to provide coaching based on a transcript with a prompt like, “Highlight two strengths in my approach and two areas I could improve.” Teams can compare outputs, refine their prompts, and discuss how AI can supplement (not replace) manager-led coaching.
These exercises make prompting practical, contextual, and immediately useful. Reps see firsthand that small adjustments to a prompt can transform outputs from “generic” to “deal-changing.”
Fun accelerates practice, and practice builds fluency.
Step 4: Build a prompt library
A prompt library isn’t just a “nice to have.” It’s an essential that ensures everyone on your team has an effective starting point—driving consistent, tangible outcomes across roles.
Create a centralized, team-ready collection that your reps can pull from that is:
- Scenario-based: Tied to real use cases.
- Standardized: Clear format, approved for team use.
- Accessible: Easy to find and action in the flow of work.
- Adaptable: Evolves with feedback and market shifts.
For Sales & CS Reps, it saves time and enhances performance. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they can start from proven, reliable prompts that can be easily adjusted for their unique needs.
For Front-Line Managers, it standardizes coaching and direction. Managers can guide their teams with consistent prompts to analyze calls, prep for meetings, proactively spot obstacles, or build plans that drive revenue.
For Executives, it ensures alignment. Leaders can trust that when their teams use AI, they’re doing so in a way that reflects company priorities and approved messaging.
A well-built prompt library reduces risk, accelerates adoption, and keeps the focus on impact rather than experimentation for its own sake.
💡 Need a starting point or looking for more prompts to add to your library? Check out these prompts to accelerate your sales enablement strategy.
🐙 Are you using Spekit? Get the most out of your AI Sidekick with these best practices!
Step 5: Reinforce continuously
AI fluency won’t stick without reinforcement. A few practical approaches:
Contextual Prompt Library
Use solutions like Spekit’s AI Sidekick to surface the best prompts for the tool you’re using or the process stage you’re working through.
Weekly enablement updates
Share new prompts, new and refreshed resources, and success stories.
Adoption dashboards
Track usage, identify lagging adopters, and highlight champions.
Contextualized nudges
Deliver reminders in Slack/Teams or directly in tools like your Salesforce or Gong.
Knowledge Checks
Quick quizzes or flashcards to build confidence.
“Enablement isn’t about providing all of the answers, it’s about building systems that help people find and apply them on their own.”
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Lessons learned
When we launched this program at Spekit, we quickly saw a few truths emerge:
- Clarity wins. Don’t over-explain upfront or skip the “why.”
- Keep it simple. Three sessions — Foundation, Application, Action — were enough to start momentum.
- Iteration matters. Early peer collaboration and openness about uncertainty accelerated learning.
For us, this wasn’t just about immediate outcomes. It laid a foundation for new hires and gave the team language and structure they could grow with.
What’s essential, why now, what to watch
To wrap it up, here’s how I’d summarize the state of AI enablement:
Final thought
AI is moving too fast for enablement to be an afterthought. Equip your teams with fundamentals now, and you’ll build not just safer practices but more confident, adaptable revenue organizations.
If you want more practical frameworks like this, I highly recommend downloading Melanie Fellay’s book, “Just-In-Time: The Future of Enablement in a World of AI.” It expands on the AI Training Must Haves and provides a broader roadmap for the future of enablement.
