I use AI to help me write most days. Emails, follow-ups, account notes, the first rough version of posts like this one.
And I rewrite almost all of it.
Turns out I’m in good company. According to HubSpot’s research on AI in sales, 98% of sales people who use AI edit what it produces before they send it. The same research says 59% worry AI will make their jobs obsolete.
I think those two numbers are connected, and the first should make you feel better about the second.
What I change
When I look back at my edits, they fall into the same few piles.
I cut the warm-up. AI loves an opening about hoping you’re well and being excited to connect. My customers are busy. The first sentence should be the reason I’m writing.
I add the thing only I know. The draft says “following up on our conversation”. I change it to the actual thing we talked about: the delivery date they were worried about, the engineer they mentioned.
I make it sound like me. Shorter. Warmer. Fewer exclamation marks. Sometimes a joke, if I know them well enough.
I check every fact. Prices, dates, model numbers. AI is fluent and confident, which is exactly when you need to check twice.
Why the edit is the job
If AI can write a perfectly reasonable email, then a perfectly reasonable email is worth nothing. Everyone will have one.
What’s worth something is judgement. Knowing what to say, what to leave out, when to pick up the phone instead, and what this customer needs to hear this week. That’s what the 2% you change actually is.
So I don’t think of AI as writing for me. I think of it as giving me something to react to, fast. A blank page is slow. A wrong draft is quick to fix.
Let the machine write the first draft. You write the last one.
