Will AI replace salespeople?

A more useful question is: What is the sales profession going to do about it, other than fret?

The real change isn’t that AI is replacing salespeople. The real change is that buyers now have more advice options – and distractions – and AI is just another catalyst to deal with.

For the first time, salespeople are competing not only with other vendors but with an expanding universe of alternative advice channels, new ways of thinking and fresh ideas.

Some of that advice is excellent – or at least sounds new. Some of it is poor. That almost doesn’t matter. What matters is that buyers don’t need to rely on either companies or salespeople, like they used to for guidance.

This creates a challenge for the sales profession, but also a tremendous opportunity.

Rather than joining the noise, sales teams can choose to distance themselves from it – and set a new standard.

Sellers can focus on becoming what buyers increasingly need: a premium source of advice, thinking, dialogue, and decision support.

Because ultimately, buyers do not choose salespeople simply because they are personable, experienced, or persuasive. They choose salespeople and their companies, because they help them make better decisions with greater confidence and lower risk.

If a buyer cannot see a clear difference between the quality of guidance available from a salesperson and the guidance available elsewhere, the sales channel loses its reason to exist in today’s world.

The future therefore belongs to sales teams that can consistently deliver superior conversations, superior reasoning, and superior value – before anything is purchased.

The encouraging news is that the sales profession already possesses much of the knowledge and expertise required to do this. What has been missing is a modern approach to developing that capability at the individual level.

For too long, sales development has depended on experience, personality, tips and techniques and occasional training interventions, borrowed from the luxury world and rarified air of big brands, Today, technology gives us new ways to accelerate learning, build fluency, and equip people to improve continuously.

That is what The Seller Accelerator Newsletter is about.

Not replacing salespeople.

Accelerating their learning for premium execution.

Not making sales more efficient.

Making the sales – and the customer facing – channels more valuable.

Not competing with technology.

Using technology to re-build ourselves.

One big immediate challenge is how does the individual salesperson accelerate their own learning, making themselves a unique “value offering” in their own right. We start to answer that question in the next edition of the Seller Accelerator.