Will AI replace salespeople? Many different types of jobs will get impacted by AI, but I personally believe AI won’t replace salespeople. Here are three factors I am basing this prediction on:

  • Connection
  • Obligation
  • Irritation

In this blog post and video, I will go into each of those and explain what I mean and how it could slow down the adoption of AI sales agents.

 

Connection

When I say “connection,” I am referring to the relationship that typically develops between a salesperson and a prospect or customer. The AI that is available today has the ability to deliver a sales pitch and know what best to say in most sales situations.

I would argue that it can communicate better than most human salespeople. But what AI cannot do is form any type of real connection or relationship with the prospects it is trying to sell to.

This becomes an issue or a weakness when it comes to \cold outreach and cold prospecting. For warm leads, upgrades, cross-selling, or customer service-related tasks, AI will be very capable of taking over. This is because these are warm sales situations, and the prospect or customer is already engaged to a certain degree. With that, there is not a baseline requirement for a human connection.

But with cold outreach and cold prospecting, you are reaching out to someone who hasn’t raised their hand and isn’t actively looking for your solution. In this scenario, you need that human connection to establish the dialogue. This is a requirement not just for getting discussions started, but also for driving the lead and opportunity to closer.

With that, when it comes to working cold leads and prospects, a human salesperson will almost always perform better than an AI sales agent, and this is a key reason why AI won’t replace salespeople.

 

Obligation

When I mention obligation, I am referring to some of the social rules that exist when humans talk. For example, if one person asks another a question, the other person often feels some level of obligation to respond. Even if it’s just to say, “I’m not interested” or “Please don’t call me again”, they still usually stay engaged and respond in some way or another because of an obligation to listen and then respond to the person talking or asking questions.

In a lot of cases, this small amount \of obligation is the only thing that keeps the salesperson in the game. And a salesperson who is armed with the right sales pitch and has been given the right training, he or she can use that sliver of obligation to keep the conversation going and build a connection.

But that whole dynamic completely changes with an AI sales agent that is performing cold outreach. This is because when a prospect realizes they’re speaking to AI, that obligation completely vanishes. The prospect feels no pressure to be polite and has no need to respond at all. This is another reason why AI won’t replace salespeople.

 

Irritation

I’ve noticed a new irritation, and it is that people appear to be getting annoyed by content that is AI-generated, powered, or related. This is because we are living in a world where we’re constantly being hit with AI-related stuff. If it’s not a blog post or video trying to fool us, it’s an ad selling the latest AI tool. And if it’s not the ads, it’s the news telling us how AI is changing everything.

This new environment is causing people to have a negative gut reaction
to anything that feels like it is AI. Cold outreach can be annoying when it is a human.
That goes to a completely next level when a cold prospect detects that the call or email is coming from an AI sales agent.

When you add all of that up, if you try to use an AI sales agent for cold outreach and hunting for new opportunities, you will end up with much lower results than you would with a well-trained human working the same territory. For this, I currently beleive the answer to the question of will AI replace salespeople, the answer is, “no.”