Will AI replace sales people?

That’s the sort of lazy headline AI would write isn’t it! Clickbait that’s intended to provoke.

Take out “sales people” and you could insert any other profession to attract a different group of scrollers:

• Will AI replace marketing?
• Will AI replace accountants?

You get the picture.

Returning to the headline: Why does it need to be binary?

Video didn’t kill the radio star, did it. It just turned them into podcasters.

Why would AI replace sales people?

It’s difficult to see how AI could be better than a salesperson, so the only real motivation for this is if AI is significantly cheaper.

If you’re leading a sales team by reading this far you will already be asking whether cost is really the main driver of your selling activity.

Imagine an automated bot can contact twice as many potential customers in a day compared to a human. The numbers are attractive aren’t they?

But what would the quality of that call be. However well trained – and given time, you could encourage AI to respond to an unlimited number of prompts – the way that the bot answered can’t really replicated human interaction.

If ChatGPT can’t hold the attention of your customer for as long as a human – even if it’s a flawed human – then the call won’t be as effective.

Does your customer want an AI salesperson?

The customer is the elephant in the room in this cost-led analysis.

In selling, quality almost always trumps volume.

There are exceptions where a homogenous product is sold at lowest price.

Think of the awful “customer service” you get from a company like British Gas. According to Trustpilot #21 of 31 gas companies in the UK. The company whose name represents the country isn’t ranked in the best 20 companies in its sector!

But in business to business selling there is always a premium on quality of service, both before and after the sale is complete.

Research conducted by YouGov in early 2025 asked people what was their preferred way to contact a business. 64% wanted email or phone. The human touch.

You might think that’s a generational thing – and there are variations in the responses. But still, 35% of Gen Z preferred email. It’s not as dead as you think.

What screams out from this is that when things go wrong, people want a human to fix it for them.

Replace your customer service team with AI – and according to YouGov that includes chatbots – then you seriously jeopardise your service standards.

What sales tasks will AI replace?

This is a much more interesting question.  

Again it’s about listening to your audience. Ask any sales team about the biggest frustrations in their job and you’re likely to hear that they are swamped with admin and reporting.

These are necessary evils in a sales role. You actually should fill in your CRM records so everyone else in the business is up to date on conversations with each key customer.

You should be able to accurately forecast your pipeline so your CEO can report to shareholders how the business is performing.

And you should understand the profitability levers and pricing structure of your key customers.

But these activities are only helpful if you maximise time spent influencing customer decisions.

Imagine if AI could help you prepare for an upcoming customer meeting. You’d like to know key decision makers, a summary of their main strategic pillars, online reviews and promotion plans.

In the old days this would be a lengthy task, fit only for your most important meetings. Now AI can compile it for you at the press of a button.

And it doesn’t stop with research and preparation. Smart adoption of AI will help you tailor marketing materials to specific customer needs, increasing the impact of every one of your customer conversations.

It can help your sales people during calls by providing prompts for next questions – and it can interpret customer language to assess readiness to buy.

Improving your forecast system is another job for AI. In fact it will add value anywhere your sales team are piecing together spreadsheets and data can be improved, freeing up more time for selling.

AI creates better sales people.

This leads us to the heart of the issue. AI in selling isn’t about cutting costs. It’s not what your customer wants.

But it does have the potential to automate or remove the administration that is holding back sales people from spending more time with customers.

For decades now, companies have responded to rising costs by cutting sales jobs. Now we have a technology that can address that return on investment question by making them better, not cheaper.

It drives effectiveness rather than cutting cost.

More time with customers means better customer service and happier sales people. That’s a powerful platform for long term growth.

If you want help assessing your current sales processes and figuring out where AI enhancements might help you then contact us today.