In partnership with
The Future of Shopping? AI + Actual Humans.
AI has changed how consumers shop by speeding up research. But one thing hasn’t changed: shoppers still trust people more than AI.
Levanta’s new Affiliate 3.0 Consumer Report reveals a major shift in how shoppers blend AI tools with human influence. Consumers use AI to explore options, but when it comes time to buy, they still turn to creators, communities, and real experiences to validate their decisions.
The data shows:
Only 10% of shoppers buy through AI-recommended links
87% discover products through creators, blogs, or communities they trust
Human sources like reviews and creators rank higher in trust than AI recommendations
The most effective brands are combining AI discovery with authentic human influence to drive measurable conversions.
Affiliate marketing isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being amplified by it.
How to Make Every Rep a Top Rep
Clone Your Closers
Every manager dreams of it: a whole team of closers who sell with the precision, confidence, and consistency of your top performer. But here’s the truth nobody likes to admit most teams don’t have a “talent problem.” They have a systems problem.
Your best reps aren’t magical. They aren’t born with some mystical sales DNA. What they do have is structure repeatable behaviors, predictable routines, and a sixth sense for the next move because they’ve done it the same way a thousand times. Top reps don’t wait for inspiration. They run a process.
And that’s the opportunity.
If you can extract, codify, and deploy the patterns behind what your closers do, you can literally scale excellence. Not vibe-based selling. Not “I’ll wing it because I’ve done this before.” Real, repeatable, mechanical mastery that turns average reps into consistent performers and great reps into absolute weapons.
Cloning your closers is not about mimicking personality it’s about duplicating the inputs that generate their outputs. Their opening frameworks. Their discovery sequencing. Their objection handling anchors. Their follow-up rhythm. Their deal hygiene.
When the whole team sells like your top 10%, your revenue curve goes vertical. When everyone executes the best version of your process not their personal remix your pipeline stabilizes, your forecasts tighten, and your confidence explodes.
Excellence is not a mystery. It’s a system. And it’s time to build it.
ACTION STEPS: Clone Your Closers
Shadow Your Top Rep for One Week
Capture every micro-behavior: talk tracks, transitions, questions, follow-ups, pre-call routines.Convert Their Moves Into Playbooks
Turn what they do naturally into scripts, checklists, and process flows the team can run.Install the Non-Negotiables
Pick the 3 highest-leverage behaviors and make them mandatory for all reps.Coach to the System, Not the Individual
Review performance based on adherence to the cloned behaviors, not personality differences.
You don’t need more unicorns.
You need a system that makes every rep unstoppable. Let’s build it.
