Posted on 04/01/2017 12:31:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Recently, much has been made of the role that artificial intelligence will play in taking our jobs. From manufacturing to driving to fighting wars, AI’s ascendancy into the workforce elicits everything from celebration to consternation. Depending on who you ask, AI will save jobs, or create jobs, or will banish humans from the job market forever. While the singularity is a long way off, the anxiety has set in.
Salespeople are nervous, too. A million business-to-business salespeople are already in danger of losing their jobs to websites by 2020, according to Forrester. The basic sales jobs are already migrating to machines, with food orders taken by touchscreen and picked up at a counter, all the way up to AI recommendation engines taking people out of stores. AI and self-service have already come for many lower-level sales jobs, and sales bots continue to get more intricate. Heck, Carnegie Mellon built a poker playing robot that beat professionals.
It’s that last one that should give a B2B salesperson a real chill. Poker requires emotional intelligence, patience and thoughtfulness before you get to luck. If an AI can beat poker players, an AI could beat salespeople.
Crappy salespeople....
(Excerpt) Read more at entrepreneur.com ...
the AI car salesbot can be preprogrammed with, “ do you want to take the green one or the red one,” and, “ i’ll have to talk to my managerbot “
If the average salespeople are gone, many of the top sales people then become the average salespeople.
Sort of a silly position the writer is taking. He’s certainly got an interest in advancing his position because of his own company.
Tech has and will reduce sales jobs. There is many functions salespeople used to do that aren’t needed anymore.
Agreed. It will be a long time (if ever) that 100% of all jobs are taken by AI. But that does not negate the point that a great many jobs are in danger of being replaced. It’s not just telephone operators and secretaries. A lot of “good jobs” can be done by machines. Maybe expert salespeople are OK for now. But the author better not get too cocky.
Thx for posting
AI may not work with stupid people.
That is what a salesman is for.
I say BS on this one. Top salespeople are on top because of the relationships they have with their customers. Trust and in depth knowledge of a customers needs are the key.
Ping!
The ability to BS will always be an in-demand skill.
The article writer’s company, salesforce.com, and so many of these tech companies create more work for the salesperson. Their programs offer those sitting on their asses in offices something to validate their existence. Most of the stuff that goes into these reports is fluff and day-to-day bs that salespeople don’t need to note for themselves. It’s just more unnecessary work being dumped on them.
Salesforce is owned by a big-time liberal. So many of these bigger companies think they have to have it now (I deal with a bunch of them). It’s just time-consuming BS. Personally, I could easily come up with better programs that are more useful to companies and their salespeople.
Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk are all very worried about AI.
“Press hard — you’re making three copies” will probably go away.
I developed 50+ websites and probably 15 e-commerce enabled sites 15+ years ago. I have zero desire to do such things now. Besides, it’s so much easier with all the programs now available. Again, so many of these programs now are time consuming fluff.
I work with about 30 companies now and a few use salesforce.com. Others use other programs too. It is often time-consuming and a lot of fluff. Seems a lot of management are more focused on showing activity (covering their azzes to some degree) than they are results. Showing activity to show activity is time consuming for salespeople. It’s like putting a lot of regulations on business.
There may be some transactional Sales jobs eliminated but, there is no way to eliminate consultative Sales.
Your not going to sign a contract with me because you Googled and get the result you want.
Some contracts are well into the millions and people want to know who they are doing business with as well, that company needs to understand the requirements and manage expectations as well results.
So no, Sales is a pretty safe job.
I get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for my advice.
My clients specialize in the widgets they make and I specialize in helping them reduce and control costs, while looking for opportunities to increase productivity
I did pretty well in sales before my health deteriorated (mortgages, recruiting and pay telephones) and I can’t imagine a robot or app doing what I did.
You could do it again.
I know you could.
Maybe from home even.
I know many who do what you used to and they work from home.
Not many payphones left these days. $30,000 weekly paydays were very nice circa 1986. LOL I have to do something. I worry about being completely dependent on the V.A. for everything now that my wife can’t work due to eyesight.
Weren’t you a headhunter at one point?
If you can place 8-10 people that puts you at $100k +
Yes. That’s a tough gig because you have to make two sales to get paid.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.