Like any new technology, there are early adopters, those who are middle of the road and others who are reluctant to take it on. By now, many of us are getting used to Chat GPT and its many benefits. With new AI applications consistently emerging it’s natural for companies to wonder: “What else could I use AI for? Could we look to AI to replace or at least support our salespeople?”
Look. I get it. I really do. As companies continue to keep cost of sales and cost to serve down, it makes sense. Salespeople are expensive, and customers need attention. Good salespeople are hard to find and even when we do, they can be tricky to retain. Our development in them can be lost when they seek greener pastures and bigger pay cheques elsewhere.
So is it realistic of us to expect AI to replace great salespeople? And if it is possible, what impact could that have on our customer experience? How are companies already embracing AI in the sales space and what are the costs and benefits to companies of replacing salespeople with technology?
Customer service is harnessing AI to good effect
Striking warehouse staff in 2024 caused significant downstream costs and issues. For many companies it was time to draw a line in the sand. For them, the uncertainty of future strikes and the importance of logistics to business continuity meant that “people” may not be worth the trouble. Some have already begun to automate their warehouses entirely – not necessarily with AI but certainly with robotics. After all, robots don’t get sick, they don’t go on strike and they don’t need holidays! The significant initial outlay is to be offset with long term productivity gains.
But that’s warehouse staff. What about salespeople? Are there companies already using AI instead of people, and if so, is it working? In short, the answer is yes.
Take Klarna, the online payment platform. At November 2024, their AI assistant took on 66% of its customer service chats, or the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents. It’s also helping the customer experience by “helping to solve issues significantly faster, with resolutions taking an average of 2 minutes compared to 11 minutes.”
And if resolution time matters to customers, that’s an advantage.
The key according to Salesforce ANZ’s General Manager, Frank Fillman is to let customers know they are speaking with a bot which could dramatically improve call response times. I mean, just listening to hold music as we wait for someone to speak to when calling a bank or a utility is a customer bugbear. Some AI uses Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Understanding, as well as key phrases and even evaluating moods during the first response so that calls can be resolved where possible or escalated to a human agent if required. So far, it’s all sounding great, right?
What about AI in sales – B2B sales in particular?
However, these are customer service examples. What about sales – B2B sales in particular? Back in 2020/21, Gartner predicted that 80% of all B2B sales would be done either remotely or with technology. At the time I nearly choked on my cornflakes! After all, they weren’t referencing online retail! This was B2B – the world of negotiation, of long term customer relationships and complexity, was it not?! So, have we arrived there in 2025 after all?
In a more recent article, Gartner held fast saying 80% of all B2B transactions would be done digitally. Looking across the client landscape I’m not seeing it yet. But it’s only early. What I am seeing is companies using AI to do much of the heavy lifting inside their CRM systems – saving them significant amounts of time on proposals, research, prospect preparation and forecasting. PowerBI is a trusted tool used by most of my clients to produce better individual and team sales performance dashboards and to prioritise activity – like territory planning.
Gartner echoes this in its AI Prism citing the following benefits and uses of AI in B2B sales application:
- Price optimisation
- Customer Lifetime Value Analysis
- Territory Optimisation
- Sales content personalisation
- Sales forecasting
- Opportunity scoring
- Account intelligence
Sales enablement by efficiently accessing critical insights for improved planning, decision making and focused action. So far, it’s not doing the selling itself. My prediction is that AI will continue to support B2B salespeople by doing their heavy lifting activity, freeing them up for the interactions that require higher level interpersonal skills like negotiation, influencing, conflict resolution, face to face pitching. This is where I see a chasm in skills. As we cease to need lower skill sets in lieu of AI for prospecting and planning, we will need salespeople equipped with deeper and more sophisticated skill sets.
Training and ongoing professional development are the keys here. Without the ability to utilise AI generated insights effectively when you’re negotiating a deal with a customer, AI’s power lies dormant. I believe this is the more pressing challenge organisations now face. With the savings made from using AI I’m sure budget will be freed up to reinvest in advanced interpersonal skills training, right?!
Ingrid Maynard, author of The Sales Revolution (Publish Central $34.95), is the founder of The Sales Doctor and host of The Sales Revolution Podcast, with over 25 years of experience helping businesses transform their sales performance. She has worked with iconic Australian and New Zealand brands, equipping their teams with the tools and strategies needed to excel in competitive markets. Find out more at https://thesalesdr.com.au/
