No one’s talking about how AI is making the sales profession dumber

No one’s talking about how AI is making the sales profession dumber.

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There’s no way around it.

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As a profession, we are getting dumber.

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Hear me out.

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The best use case for AI in sales right now is ops.

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It’s an “extra set of hands” that replaces a rep’s need to:

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- Build lists

- Find triggers/signals

- Create starter copy for an email

- Point out similar customers

- Point out patterns from sales calls

- ICP analysis

- Deal analysis (qualification)

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In other words, if it’s objective or task driven, AI does well.

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Where AI lacks right now is in high-level, nuanced, in the moment thinking…being an “extra brain.”

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- Creative ideas for direct mail campaigns

- Making a split decision during a group sales call to go a different direction

- Navigating an enterprise deal

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In other words, if it’s subjective, creative, or nuanced…AI isn’t very skilled.

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Now to my point about AI making our profession dumber…

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The big mistake: Outsourcing strategic, high-level thinking to AI. We literally see 80%+ of reps making this mistake right now. They couldn’t write a mediocre cold email if their life depended on it.

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And it goes beyond that:

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“Tell me what to do next in this deal involving 10 stakeholders”

“Tell me what to say when I cold call with c-suite exec”

“Tell me how to work my territory”

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Instead of using AI to CHALLENGE their approach, they use AI to tell them what to do.

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Instead of using AI as a thinking partner, they use AI to do the thinking for them.

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You get that this eliminates you, the individual, as a differentiator right? What’s the need for a rep if you just outsource your thinking to an AI agent?

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YOU are the differentiator. Let’s not forget that.