Is AI the end of sales?
There’s a Cheetos-like snack from Savage, Minnesota called Earl’s Old Fashioned Cheese Puffs. These particular cheese puffs are the greatest snack on earth. While everything about the puff is fantastic, Earl’s is renowned in its small but loyal kingdom for having the best cheese dust in the industry. It’s good enough that you find yourself halfway through the bag just by looking for a really good cheesy one to end on. Ok, you get it.
Once, in high school, I hit the jackpot. There was just a giant clump of cheese dust in my bag of Earl’s. With great relish, I took a bite of the cheese dust… and it was TERRIBLE. There’s a lesson here: cheese dust is great, but it needs the puff.
AI is cheese dust. It’s an incredible concoction of flavor, and it’s good on almost everything, but it needs something to flavor in order to be palatable.
This is the biggest problem we see with applications of AI today. In the incredible (merited) fervor around AI, there’s been a flurry of new flavors (AI for legal, AI for sales, etc.) without much thought being given to how they’re supposed to be consumed. The result: a lot of branded chatbots that google stuff for us and turn a thoughtful two-sentences into a flowery 500 words.
The AI function that excites me the most is the ability to create structure from the unstructured. We’re a project management company: we know the value in changing someone’s title from creator to editor, but that editor still has to be incredibly thoughtful.
If you’ve spent time as recently as I have on the phone with automated support, you know that’s not selling seven-figure software deals. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable, though.
AI needs great data. In the case of sales, that data is best sourced from the buyers, themselves, since mind-reading is, at least, a few years out. It turns out, getting great data from buyers is one of the most important skills a seller can have, and (whether you type your own deck or have it assembled by the magic of AI), the collaborative experience of a buyer and seller sourcing the ingredients for a great flavor together might, actually, be the most valuable step in the whole experience.
If AI empowers buyers and sellers to better assemble the facts of the case and the course of action in getting the job done, bring as much AI into sales as possible… it just turns out great buyers and sellers will be the ones succeeding with it.
