Will robots one day replace salespeople?
To the mainstream blogosphere, it’s a distinct possibility. “95% of Salespeople Will be Replaced by Artificial Intelligence Within 20 years,” according to one headline on LinkedIn. “Artificial Intelligence is a Threat to Salespeople,” says Forbes. Meanwhile, a blogger on Inc. asks, “Are Salespeople Becoming Obsolete?”
There’s no question that AI and machine learning will transform the business-to business (B2B) sales landscape. But corporate leaders looking to slash sales jobs must not get ahead of themselves. Humans are, and will remain, critical to the sales process.
The job of a B2B salesperson is to build strong relationships with clients and deliver great products and services that fit their needs. Good salespeople know how to listen; they understand the importance of empathy and perspective-taking; and they recognize the value of communication and collaboration. AI falls short in these areas.
To be sure, AI can facilitate relationship building. The best sales forces of the future will combine human emotional intelligence with AI-powered tools and technologies. Here are three areas where that matters most:
1. Customization: To know what matters to customers, businesses need to understand their points of view. Salespeople are in a prime position to do this: their job requires them to be in constant conversation with clients. These one-on-one discussions with purchasing managers, end users, and other executives often twist and turn in unexpected ways. Salespeople must pay close attention to what they hear; they must ask pertinent questions and follow-up questions. Their goal is to know their customers’ motivations and most pressing challenges.
Then they need to figure out how to act on the information — and this is where AI enters the equation. AI-powered toolscan parse and analyze the findings in no time. Process automation, coupled with predictive analytics, helps detect relationships between elements of data. Prescriptive analytics, meanwhile, help salespeople navigate the sales process by revealing the best path to value for clients. In short, these tools help salespeople adapt the solutions and recommendations they offer customers. Sometimes a customized product is needed; other times, an off-the-shelf service will suffice.
2. Coordination: Once the product is sold, a salesperson must ensure both its on-time delivery and that its implementation goes seamlessly. Accomplishing this requires a great deal of intra-organizational coordination. Salespeople need to be kept abreast of any R&D/ manufacturing bottlenecks and software engineering bugs; they need to know when a shipment will be delayed; they also need to know about a product’s maintenance requirements.
It’s a monumental task — one that AI is tailor-made for. In an environment where only 16% of companies have effective collaboration between sales and marketing, new tools and technologies can help keep both departments in the proverbial loop. For instance, the same AI-powered B2B platform can easily connect the product, marketing, and sales departments. So, instead of sending repetitive requests for updates, salespeople can log into the platform for customized content that will answer their questions. These tools vastly improve organizational transparency and alignment. Still, they require sustained and systematic human support in order to be truly useful.
3. Communication: Throughout the selling and launch process, the salesperson must be in continuous communication with customers. They need to keep the customer apprised of the schedule and up-to-date on any delays and feature modifications; AI tools are real assets here. Nevertheless, sharing information — particularly when it’s not good news — requires a deft human touch. (Indeed, as anyone who’s ever been in a “conversation” with Siri or Alexa can attest, speech recognition and natural language processing tools still have a long way to go before they can comprehend, and react to, our emotions.)
And yet, there’s often good news for salespeople to share: the value the product brings to the customer. Here again, AI can help. Demonstrating the financial return that a product or service delivers is a perfect use of this technology. However, no robot can beat a human in demonstrating and communicating value to clients. Recent B2B research shows the power of the human interface in client value realization and relationship satisfaction.
Communication is also vital to the product development process. (True, AI is increasingly part of this process, too, but human-to-human interaction and brainstorming is fundamental.) For instance, early on, salespeople share feedback they’ve gotten from clients to product managers. This real-world feedback helps the product team create a model. During the iteration and fine-tuning phase, salespeople provide input and ideas based on what they continue to learn from the customer. In this sense, they are the connective tissue that links the client to the enterprise.
The AI revolution will no doubt help organizations enhance, improve, and expand their customer relationships. But human beings are essential for AI to reach its potential or all will be for naught.
Zoran Latinovic is aVisiting Postdoctoral Scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management. Sharmila C. Chatterjee is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and the Academic Head for the Enterprise Management Track at the school.
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