How to be a salesperson in an AI future
In this week’s newsletter I want to explore the future of the SDR/AE model in a future that looks to be dominated by AI.
If AI can start to pick up many of the high volume repetitive tasks of an SDR or AE - what is left for a human to do?
AI is here
AI powered sales tools are being launched and scaled at a rapid rate. Just this week, Lavender the hugely popular email assistant secured $13.2m to scale up their product.
I’ve spoken with two other startups this week - one focused on AI powered personalisation for outreach, and another delivering AI powered meeting follow up.
Across the sales process startups will appear to help remove the manual activity that limits a seller’s output.
The biggest transformation since the arrival of email
Prior to the mid-1990s, sellers were restricted to a telephone, sending a letter, or more often, getting out in the field and meeting with customers face to face.
The arrival of email reduced the time and cost of sending communication to near zero - resulting in a rise in mass-prospecting from internal sales teams.
In the early 2000s the arrival of cloud platforms like Salesforce.com enabled teams to automate their outbound processes - popularised in Aaron Ross’s “Predictable Revenue”, which made the case for high volume, outbound Sales Development teams that would generate leads via phone and email, then pass them over to the AE to take through a sales process and close.
The SDR model is hugely popular. Most tech companies use it - bringing onboard teams of hungry young sellers to hit the phones and email to generate “Sales Qualified Leads” at a lower cost than could be done via the AEs themselves.
Over the last 20 years technology has continued to arrive to improve the efficiency of the SDR model:
Auto-diallers to save time between calls
Lead scoring to prioritise who to prospect
Sales engagement software to automate sequences
But you still required a human-being (the SDR) to pick up the phone or send the email.
AI changes that.
With the arrival of AI models like ChatGPT we can start to see that some of the basic elements of being an SDR or AE are at risk.
AI can pull in that low level research “Noticed that you are hiring”
AI can draft that email to follow up a web ‘contact us’ form to schedule a call
AI can build a sequence and add prioritised contacts into it
So what does it take to be a human in a sales process?
Business acumen
Customers despise being in a sequence.
Customers loathe low level personalisation - “Noticed you are a retail company…”
What customers want is someone that really understands their business and can bring some insight to help them with their challenges.
I was on a Executive webinar this week from Corporate Visions:
If you want access to a senior executive you need to tell them something they didn’t already know about an opportunity, risk or problem that they didn’t know they had.
AI can’t tell them that.
Active Listening
You need to be able to speak to another human being with confidence, with clarity, with true understanding of what they say back to you.
You’re on a website, you open up the chat window.
Bad AI chat = bad experience
So you pick up the phone to ‘speak to a human’
Even as AI advances, just one instance of us not feeling heard makes us frustrated.
As a human, you have a huge advantage over AI.
AI looks at the written words - which we know makes up just 10% of communication.
But you can look into someone’s eyes, you can hear the tone in their voice, you can see their body language. You can infer so much more about what a customer really means when you communicate.
More than that, you can pick up what is not being said. In a meeting you can tell that the VP you asked to join has not engaged and ask them a question to bring them into the conversation.
You can tell when someone frowns and indicates they don’t understand what your solution consultant just said.
So use that - yes you can fire off an email, but AI can send emails.
Pick up the phone, send a video, arrange a short meeting. Be human.
AI can’t do that.
Spatial awareness
English is the language of the skies - pilots and air traffic controllers of all nations use English as a common language.
They do this to ensure that wherever they are flying, pilots have spatial awareness of what is going on around them - even if it isn’t directly affecting them at the time.
You can do the same for your customers.
By being aware of what is happening in industries that are similar to theirs, or how companies similar to theirs have implemented your solutions, or how partners that they work with have developed services to similar problems -
this is all insight that you can bring to them that AI will not provide.
I call this seeing around corners. Answering the questions your customer hasn’t asked yet because you can read the room and see what is coming.
AI can’t do that.
Being a project manager
Sales is a team effort - a modern seller is a project manager, coordinating sales consultants, legal, deal desk, implementation teams, senior executives, customer references, partners, and a similar set of people on the customer’s side.
Being able to professionally manage these multiple threads using applications like Smartsheet, keeping everyone informed of progress and focusing in on those that aren’t meeting their commitments is an essential skill to get your customer to their go live date on time.
AI can’t do that.
Being in-person
Gartner predicts that 80% of B2B sales interactions will be digital by 2025. In a post-pandemic world customers have learned how to engage with buyers remotely - but that doesn’t mean there is no in-person interaction.
Instead of simply asking for a face to face meeting (that could have been done on video), you should consider how to create an interaction that can only be done in-person.
A whiteboard workshop with post it notes
A ride-along session with their team
An in-person training session in their call centre
By getting in front of your customer you build a real human relationship, you get to make a coffee together, maybe have lunch together.
You get to talk about things outside of work — your family, your love of 80s music, the half marathon you are training for.
AI can’t do that.
Being human
As you think through your SDR/AE role over the coming years, consider how you can be human, and bring the value that your customers really do want from you:
Business acumen
Active listening
Spatial awareness
Project management
Being in-person
And if you are in a sales leadership role, consider how you can help your teams to develop and perfect these skills.
This is what will help fill pipelines and increase deal sizes over the long term.
See you next week
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