AI lead-generation arms race

13th October 2026 |   Journal Of Sales Transformation

The AI lead-generation arms race is hotting up – that’s the view of social selling training and LinkedIn strategy business Maverrik.

Sales organisations are using AI to research prospects, generate opening lines, write emails, build follow-up sequences and produce personalisedlooking outreach at scale. At the same time, buyers and enterprise organisations are using AI tools to filter unsolicited sales messages.

Recent large-scale cold-email studies have reported human reply rates of below 1.5%, with one 2026 dataset putting interested replies at just 0.24% of emails sent. As response rates fall, some outbound teams increase volume and add more infrastructure to keep messages flowing, including secondary or burner domains, lookalike domains and tens of isolated inboxes per rep.

“We have reached a point where sellers are using AI to create outreach, while buyers are using AI to remove it,” says Maverrik founder and CEO, Dean Seddon. “Automation creates noise, which creates filtering, which encourages even more automation. And even when the message gets through, buyers can feel the lack of soul.

In response, Maverrik has announced its Human Selling Framework as a way to beat the “AI deadlock” in B2B outbound sales. The company believes the market will shift back towards highvalue, low-volume human selling: fewer prospects, better research, stronger understanding of buyer priorities and more relevant outreach.

“When technology neutralises technology, selling becomes a human sport again,” tells the Journal.