How to Guide AI Strategy: Three Themes Every Technology Advisor Should Be Leading with Right Now  

After hundreds of customer AI conversations, a few patterns are impossible to miss. Here is how advisors can use them to stand out in a crowded market.   

As a technology advisor in 2026, you already know every customer wants to talk about AI, but many are still unsure what they’re asking for. AI environments are often scattered, with customers relying on a mix of AI tools, half-formed ideas, and a vague sense that something needs to happen this year. 

I’ve spent the last several months sitting in those conversations alongside advisors, across different industries and market segments with varying levels of AI maturity. It’s clear that the advisors who are winning AI deals today don’t always have the deepest technical knowledge around AI. Instead, they’re the ones bringing the most structure to the conversation; the ones who understand how to sell AI services in a way that feels like guidance rather than a pitch. 

Customers do not need another expert telling them what AI can do. They have ChatGPT for that. What they need and what they will pay for is somebody who can build trust by helping them figure out what to do first, what to do next, and what to avoid. That’s our job. 

Here are the three themes I see showing up over and over again during AI conversations. If you organize your dialogue around these themes, in this order, your customers will stop seeing you as a vendor and start seeing you as a trustworthy guide.

Theme 1: AI Conversations Should Start at the Communications Stack 

This is the door-opener, and most advisors are skipping it. AI does not work in isolation. It depends on data, content, and visibility, all of which tie back to how an organization communicates internally and with its customers. 

In other words, if voice, chat, messaging, and CRM aren’t connected, AI doesn’t have anything to work with. So, before any meaningful AI conversation can happen, the underlying foundation must be solid. 

A house built on a poor foundation won’t perform well. Same goes for AI. Starting with the communications stack instantly reframes the conversation. It’s the difference between showing up with another AI logo and price and asking whether the customer’s environment can even support what they’re trying to do.   

That single shift in framing makes the rest of the conversation possible and pulls in voice, contact center, CRM, and integration work you’re probably already comfortable selling. It’s also where a real AI consulting relationship begins to take shape, because you’re diagnosing before you prescribe.

Theme 2: The Real Money Is in AI that Acts, Not AI that Answers 

AI is no longer just about understanding what’s being said; it’s about taking action. Scheduling. Updating records. Triggering workflows. Onboarding. Routing. Eliminating the manual back-and-forth between systems that don’t naturally talk to each other. 

This is where customers see real ROI, and it’s where your opportunity expands well beyond CX into the broader business. AI workflow automation, agent orchestration, and integration were entirely separate conversations a year ago. 

Something I want every advisor to internalize? A lot of the leaders we’re talking to genuinely don’t know what’s possible with AI. For the first time in my career, I’m hearing customers say, “I don’t know what I don’t know. Tell me what you’re seeing.”

That kind of openness is a rare, short window. The advisors who walk in with two or three simple, concrete use cases right now (not theory, not slide decks, just “here’s what your peers are doing”) are the ones building real pipelines. Many of those peer examples, incidentally, are showing up organically on social media first, as customers watch competitors talk publicly about automating workflows they used to handle by hand.

AI that answers is table stakes. AI that acts is where the deal lives. 

Theme 3: AI Sprawl Is Coming for Every Customer You Have 

This is the theme that lets you move from being a tech vendor to being a strategic guide. And yet, few players in the market are talking about it. 

Once organizations start adopting AI, things can get messy fast, with different teams using different tools, inconsistent outputs, and zero visibility. Then somebody on the security team realizes nobody can audit anything, and the wheels start to wobble. 

This is called AI sprawl, or shadow AI, and it is already happening inside your customers’ four walls whether they know it or not. Employees are pasting sensitive information into consumer AI tools because nobody told them not to. Tools are being purchased without governance. Outputs are inconsistent because there’s no standard. The bill is starting to add up. And 18 months from now, this is going to be the thing CIOs get fired for.