Three Reasons Salespeople Shouldn’t Be Afraid Of AI

AI technology continues to saturate and disrupt almost every industry, growing both in capability and adoption. Many professions and companies have been feeling the shock as it takes over functions that once were solely the realm of human beings.

It’s natural that some people are feeling the pinch and worrying about what it means for their future.

I’ve been playing with Claude for coding software, as I talked about last week. It’s really good. Really, really good. In addition to being surprisingly reliable at coding and design, AI is also exceptional at analyzing data, using tools, answering (some) customer service questions, transcribing, summarizing, writing emails, and much more.

Many companies have been laying off employees and choosing not to rehire when a position is vacated. The changes are real. But even as I’m learning just how capable AI is, I’m also learning exactly why AI needs us, and why we don’t have to be afraid of it putting us all out of jobs or relegating us to servanthood.

The Bad News and The Good News

The bad news is that very few jobs will remain untouched by AI. For that matter, very few of us now are working exactly the way we always have, and even fewer will continue to do so. This “bad news” is hardly news to anyone paying attention.

The good news is that as long as humans are living, breathing, loving, buying, selling, growing, and playing, AI cannot replace us entirely. And for every job that AI is taking, it’s opening doors for us to expand our own capabilities and use AI’s capabilities to augment rather than eliminate the need for humans.

Here are three reasons not to be afraid.

1. AI is amazing at solving technical problems. But Only Humans Can Truly Solve Human Problems

While building apps for my brother-in-law and other important people in my life, one thing I’ve realized is that AI is absolutely terrific at writing code, finding its own mistakes, and even creating appealing UI designs.

But I’ve also realized I have to tell it what the app it’s building needs to do, because the AI doesn’t understand human context. It has no idea that a dental office assistant might be frustrated by the chaos of ordering equipment, that the dentist might be frustrated by not having the right equipment when he needs it, or that the patient needs to trust that their dentist has the tools they need to take good care of their teeth.

An AI might be able to offer advice, tips, and ideas to help each of these people manage their frustrations or find solutions. But, ultimately, no AI (yet) is walking around among us, actually engaging with the world to understand the human aspects of the problem.

2. AI Needs Humans to Provide Context

In order to build an app that helps my brother’s dental practice have the right drills at the right time, I first needed to understand the context of the problem in order to understand what a successful solution might look like. I needed to understand the stakeholders, the problem itself, the challenges in the supply chain, the inventory and finance constraints, and a great deal else in order to form an idea of what kind of software might work for them.

This work, which is critical in any problem-solving and especially in complex sales, is not work that any AI can currently do without human guidance. It needs us to provide it with the relevant context before it can begin to build a solution. We still have to provide the vision and the end goal, and the AI acts as a very capable assistant, doing the grunt work on our behalf once it understands what we want to do.

3. Humans Still Human

While AI gets better and better at churning out emails, analyzing data, writing code, and crunching numbers, humans are still out here being human. We naturally want a warm human presence when we’re making decisions, considering our goals, or even just buying lunch. And while we can grow accustomed to checking ourselves out in the grocery lane or ordering food through an AI, when it comes to the most important things in life, no AI can currently replace human consciousness and warmth.

This matters in complex sales because when the humans inside a large organization are contemplating a major purchase, they are still human. They have wants, desires, and needs. They experience conflict, get frustrated, are afraid to make mistakes, and have ideas for the future that they want to strive toward. And when big things happen in life, humans need humans.

When it comes to the most important things in life, no AI can currently replace human consciousness and warmth.

Salespeople in complex B2B environments have nothing to fear from AI because while they are outsourcing their email writing, data analysis, and coding to the AI, they can focus their attention on understanding the humans they are working with, building trust, and structuring their thinking to develop a shared mental model. An AI can reflect, converse, and connect dots. But what it can’t do is help a group of different people with unique perspectives come to the same table and build a shared mental model of the future.

This is why it’s more important than ever that salespeople (and all humans) develop the skills and the commitment to structuring their own thinking, becoming invested in the context around them, and understanding the human context in which we live, work, and play. Only by becoming more human can we learn to effectively live alongside AI.