Will artificial intelligence make employees redundant in sales?

Artificial intelligence will fundamentally change the world of work — everyone knows that. Yet no one really knows where the journey will go.

It goes without saying that anxiety about jobs is increasing: A tool suddenly comes onto the market that can write entire advertising texts, presentations or even screenplays for you without much effort.

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Sales staff are also becoming more concerned:

- AI can filter sales tasks based on relevance, importance, and priority.

- The system can recognize whether certain leads or customers have a particularly high propensity to buy and notify them.

- There are voice bots that are already solving most customer support problems.

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But will a few algorithms really be able to make flesh-and-blood sales people superfluous for good?

Before we address this tricky question, let's first look at how AI is already having a major impact on the world of work today.

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A look at the present: How sales are already benefiting from AI today

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Giants such as Amazon, Google and Uber have been using AI for years to generate significant sales increases. Exactly how they do that can be found in an old contribution from us.

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The list of current use cases of artificial intelligence in sales is huge:

- With the help of AI, companies can analyze the buying behavior of individual users and make predictions about future purchases.

- Chatbots accept customer inquiries and forward them to associated employees, resulting in a simpler and automated sales process.

- Artificial intelligence can analyze huge amounts of data in seconds, which would take a human days.

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We can therefore say that there are administrative tasks that AI already makes more efficient and faster than a human being.

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The future of artificial intelligence: Are people still needed in sales?

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If artificial intelligence is already ready today that it can complete tasks in just a few seconds that would take people days to do, is concern about the future really justified?

Will AI soon take over so many tasks for us that we can quit our job in the near future? Can we draw a number from the employment agency because the managing director will soon replace us with a computer program anyway? Is the nice receptionist from next door even receiving us there or has a more efficient robot already taken over her job a long time ago?

Does that sound like a nightmare to you? For us too! But that is exactly what it will remain: A dream.

Let's pause for a moment: The fact is, there is still no industry in the world that has been completely replaced by artificial intelligence. And this will continue to be the case in the future — at least in most industries. Sales people in particular can take a deep breath. The main activities in sales are things that people can do much better than an intelligent system.

Let's look at these things in detail now.

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Things people do better than artificial intelligence

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The capabilities of AI stop where humanity begins.

Human skills such as empathy, creativity and interpersonal communication remain essential for sales. A computer is unable to read between the lines and understand the intricacies of speech and gesture.

Even an AI that would always provide infallible and 100% correct information - which we are still very far away from - can only process data that already exists. Human creativity also makes it possible to think outside the box and find solutions that do not yet exist.

People have the ability to make decisions based on experience and intuition, which are not always based on logical reasons. These include, for example, feelings, human skills and morals — things that AI is of very little interest to.

Ultimately, artificial intelligence is only about processing existing data in such a way that it leads to a desired goal. Human values play no role here.

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Can AI replace salespeople?

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Sales is an interpersonal profession that requires all of the skills mentioned above to establish a personal relationship with the customer — and that's what sales is ultimately about: Long-term relationships.

So far, no machine in the world has succeeded in creating a long-term and emotional bond with a person - at least we strongly believe that.

People are inspired and carried away by people, not by computers.

It is therefore unlikely that AI will take over sales completely without human intervention. Rather, AI systems will support and relieve sales staff so that they can focus on the human aspects of sales. Sales will certainly change in the future, but human sales talent will continue to be crucial.

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conclusion

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In sales, you don't inspire entities with your services, but people. Data and figures help the AI recognize specific behavioral patterns of the target group, but it won't be able to understand how the target group feels and why. Artificial intelligence will relieve sales of administrative tasks and make them more efficient; the rest will remain a matter for humans.

With an artificial language assistant, such as Sally, you are able to put an end to administrative work and finally get back to doing what makes the job of a sales representative so unique: Interpersonal interactions.