Nope, It doesn’t care if your products are super complex technology applications. You’re likely to be replaced as a Sales Rep.
No, AI Agents are not going to replace all the sales people. The Agents are going to do exactly what everyone says they’re going to do, they’re going to augment the sales people.
What I don’t think people recognize is how good it’s going to be at augmenting this function. It will undoubtedly become so good that businesses will absolutely not need as big of sales teams.
A $3B technology company with 350 sales reps when properly augmented with AI Agents could probably run on like 25 sales people. Little more or less depending on diversification.
Think about a really large complex technology sale as an example. $50M project to implement Supply Chain software across an Enterprise or something like that.
Surely AI can’t replace this type of sale.
First an RFP is issued. The business needs to answer a lot of questions, it needs to put together a pricing proposal, review an NDA, and explain the methodology and history of the product recommended.
I think we could all make a pretty good argument that AI would be better at that than most sales people we know.
Second a Discovery is held. This is where the client explains their business and talks about all their goals and pain points and what would make this project successful. I think we could all make a pretty good argument that clients would rather just submit that to an AI Agent and not have to explain everything... five different times to every vendor.
Third, product demo’s are given. This one I’m not sure too many people have thought about so I’ll go into a little more detail here. A software business won’t need so many people to demo. The business will only need a few people and they won’t really demo to customers. They will continuously demo and train the DemoAI Agent.
To the client, they will simply explain what it is they want to see in a software demo. Then the DemoAI Agent will be able to not only create the demo, but actually give it. Also will be able to answer questions on the fly.
I think we could all make a pretty good argument that a DemoAI Agent who remembers and gets better with every question it’s asked and every demo it gives could be trained to demo really well.
Fourth – Follow Ups. Alright here is where the people come back in. Yaay! Yaay for people still being needed. I think for really large projects with financial implications involving publicly owned companies there is still going to be checks and balances using people. This stage is where both parties come together and ensure a common understanding.
But then it’s pricing proposals and legal documents and of course AI can handle this.
In summary here’s the thing that makes it so compelling. Sales Reps won’t go away because AI gets so good. Sales Reps will go away because the client will prefer the experience of the AI Agent over the sales person. The AI Agent will be smarter, more honest, and much faster.
If you’re a sales rep then you should be using AI to be better at your job. Soon your sales leader is going to be mandated from her senior execs to understand how AI could augment her sales force. You want to be one of the reps that is capable of assisting that project.
And the new sales leader will not only need to drive revenue up, but will be required to do so using an AI scalable budget, not the ups/downs and headaches that come with sales people.
Comentarios