Cold calling is running a 3% connection rate. Inboxes are buried under AI-generated spam. And sales teams are still being handed more tools and told to go faster. Timothy Hughes has been arguing for a different approach for over a decade, and in this episode of The Habit Architect, he and host Michael Cupps get into what that actually looks like in 2026.

Hughes co-founded DLA Ignite, where he has trained thousands of B2B salespeople to build pipeline through social rather than outbound volume. His fourth book, Social Selling and Influence, published in early 2026, brings together ten years of research and field work, including a chapter on where AI fits into modern selling. He has also launched Azpertilo, an AI-native platform built on Claude and Gemini that generates personalized, on-brand content for sales teams at scale, grounded in each individual's own tone of voice.

The conversation covers the core principles of social selling, why LinkedIn ads are largely ignored while organic content compounds, how to write posts that get indexed by both Google and large language models, and why the companies generating multi-million dollar deals on social are doing nothing most sales leaders would recognize as outreach.

Cupps and Hughes also dig into what happens when companies hand their teams a tool without training, the difference between AI washing and real AI application, and why Hughes kept human coaching in the Azpertilo product even after building the automation to replace it.

The episode connects directly to the AI readiness themes raised in Episode 5, this time from the seller's side of the equation.

Connect with Timothy Hughes: linkedin.com/in/timothy-hughes
 Learn more about DLA Ignite: dlaitb2b.com
 Azpertilo: azpertilo.ai

The Habit Architect is sponsored by Enterprise Diagnostics and Time Bandit

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