Michael Humblet

The through-line

Across Michael Humblet's output, one preoccupation keeps resurfacing: sales has a trust problem that speed, volume and tooling cannot fix. Early material frames this in personal terms, his own eighteen years of ad hoc prospecting collapsing into "niks. Geen voorspelbaarheid" , and pushes toward process and consistency as the antidote. The more recent posts generalize this into a market-level diagnosis: buyers no longer want to talk to salespeople before they trust them, so credibility, not content or automation, is the scarce resource . AI enters as the newest test of the same principle, he keeps warning that most companies bolt on AI as a checkbox strategy (co-pilot, "meetings samenvatten") without changing how they build trust, and argues AI should accelerate sales and marketing rather than replace the human credibility work underneath it .

On credibility

Humblet's clearest recent thesis is that "Marketing deals in attention. Sales deals in trust" , and that most B2B teams are trying to solve a trust problem with marketing tactics: "more cold emails, more automated LinkedIn DMs, and more AI-generated comments" . He points to the number that "75% of buyers say they never want to talk to a salesperson" as proof that "the scarcity is credibility," not content , and urges teams to "reverse the funnel" toward the 98% of the market that needs educating rather than fighting over the 2% ready to buy now . He extends this to storytelling and social proof, calling out the common practice of using case studies and logos that were never actually the speaker's own clients, and says the real question for the next two years is "hoe krijg je dat" credibility, especially for startups without a track record .

On consistency over perfection

This is the oldest and steadiest thread. On the podcast he states plainly that "Consistentie is de sleutel... die consistentie is belangrijker dan de perfectie van de post" ⁸, and describes basic, repeatable sales habits, ten LinkedIn connections, five cold emails, two to three warm calls a day, sustained for twenty days, as the way a struggling company wins back momentum: "Als je dat 20 dagen volhoudt, ge wint. Maar de mensen vergeten dat" ⁸. The Back to Sales Bootcamp he built with Jorik Van den Bosch reflects the same diagnosis applied to his audience: reps calling "te weinig, met een script dat al vijf jaar hetzelfde is" because "je process veel te ad hoc is" , fixed not by trying harder but by rebuilding the process itself .

On AI as accelerant, not replacement

Humblet is skeptical of how companies actually use AI even as he insists it matters. He describes keynote audiences going silent when asked what they actually do with AI beyond "meetings samenvatten," and built an entire event around showing "wat vandaag al werkt bij ondernemers die het gewoon toepassen," explicitly positioning AI as something that accelerates sales and marketing, "niet vervangt" . On the trust side, he is blunter still: "AI gives you velocity, but bad AI does not create demand. It creates distance" , and argues that if machines are now recommending vendors to buyers, being absent from public, credible content like YouTube means "the machines recommending vendors to your next customer have nothing to work with" .

On curiosity as the sales skill

Watching his daughter talk to strangers on a walk in Leuven, Humblet distills his sales philosophy into a single line: "Nieuwsgierigheid is de sleutel tot goede sales" . Her approach, "spontane, open vragen boordevol nieuwsgierigheid," phrases like "Wat een mooie jas heb jij" and "Ik ben xxxx, en jij?", is "onweerstaanbaar. Ontwapend," and he notes he started adopting the same style in business conversations with the same effect . He ties this to a broader point that people open up fastest about their passion, and "die passie blijkt toevallig meestal je business te zijn" .

From the stage

On the Ben's Mentors podcast, Humblet gave several concrete, tactical points absent from his written posts. He described "dark traffic," the much larger silent audience that views posts without liking or commenting, as something to exploit rather than be frustrated by ⁸. He named Friday afternoon as the best time to call and email prospects because everyone reached is relaxed and has time ⁸. He explained forcing his own execution by publicly committing to dates before anything exists, announcing a book with only a title and cover, or selling event tickets with no agenda yet, so retreat becomes impossible ⁸. He also detailed Chaomatic's production model, one day split into four 1.5-hour blocks with four people in four sets yielding twenty to twenty-five videos that get repurposed into a year of content ⁸, and said he caps the company at twelve to fifteen people on purpose to protect boutique quality ⁸. He gave a rule for outreach, never open with "Ik ben de X van firma Y," and said the only goal on social is to start a conversation, deliberately waiting two to three days before messaging a new connection ⁸. Asked for advice to his younger self, he said: learn to touch-type blind and learn visual storytelling, because "je convinced tien keer makkelijker met een beeld" ⁸.

Takeaways

• Diagnose your sales problem as a trust problem before a marketing problem: 75% of buyers avoid talking to salespeople, so the real scarcity is credibility, not content .
• Fix broken pipelines with process, not effort: replace ad hoc, five-year-old scripts with a rebuilt prospecting process rather than just calling more .
• Treat AI as an accelerant for existing sales and marketing work, not a replacement for the trust-building behind it: "AI gives you velocity, but bad AI does not create demand" .
• Sustain basic daily sales actions (10 connections, 5 cold emails, 2-3 warm calls) for 20 days to compound your way back to a full pipeline ⁸.
• Prioritize consistency over polish in content: a predictable weekly rhythm builds more trust than a perfect post ⁸.
• Lead outreach with curiosity, not identity: open with genuine, open questions instead of "Ik ben de X van firma Y," since the only goal on social is to start a conversation ⁸.