How AI Agents Are Coming for Your Job (And How to Stay Ahead)
What AI Agents Mean for B2B Sales: Market Trends You Need to Know
What I’ve Been Seeing in the Market
Today will be a quick one. Some observations on:
Will AI replace sales?
Observations on the AI Market
AI agents and how it will affect enterprise B2B sales
the value of having your own voice when it come to sales
Will AI replace sales?
First, McKenah, please stop telling reps to post on social media instead of picking up the phone.
And no, AI will not replace 90% of SDR’s. I’m sure it will drastically change what the role looks like however. Even the market is rapidly evolving. Matt Harney recently shared some interesting stats around where things are headed.
Observations on the AI Market
Credit: Matt Harney
The cost of building out models is getting cheaper. But hitting a wall, because you can only go so far with historical data. You need quality data, and more of it.
This segues into another trend related to the above on AI replacing sales (though I don’t think it will).
Brett Wilson shared an interesting article on X recently, via Swift Ventures, about the “era of diminishing returns for AI”.
Credit: Brett Wilson
The tl;dr is that the big bet in AI is now on agents. Agents that can autonomously handle tasks which give you more time to be productive in your day to day. This doesn’t apply just to sales, it applies to all roles.
AI Agents and how it will affect enterprise B2B sales
I’ve been having conversations around deal acceleration and frameworks within our team. Most of this hinging on developing a unique, relevant, point of view for an account. This extrapolated from doing deep research, but quickly.
Enter AI.
Most of what I use today are tools like poggio, perplexity, and chatgpt to run through industry news, earnings releases and transcripts, along with financials.
Imagine being able to do this repeatably, taking myself out of the work, with just a one time input of workflow description above. Allowing me to focus on developing the relationship to drive a sale?
That world is coming soon. It’s already happening on some level today with platforms like Clay.
This also re enforces much of what I’ve been saying for the past year or so, and now just coming to be. You need to be tech savvy as a sales person in order to stay relevant.
The value of having your own voice when it come to sales
But why do I feel so bullish that AI won’t replace sales?
Because aside from the science of sales, the art is inevitably present. Saw this post on X from BowTiedCocoon:
What does stress/being nervous have to do with AI replacing sales?
Because even when you’re nervous, yet prepared, you’re able to go into a flow state that is … “you”. Your voice. As with any rep, you need to find your voice, your way of talking and connecting with other people.
It’s not an equation.
I’ve seen dudes who are awkward robots that crush quotas and guys who can make friends with a wall but couldn’t close a door, let alone a deal, if their life depended on it.
These are the things that AI cannot replace. Style and communication are grounded in things that make up “you”. Sometimes that strikes a cord and other times it doesn’t.
Kind of like comedy.
You have to build, and feel your style to understand what connects with an audience, or prospect.
This is the ultimate skill that *can’t* be replaced. However the work to find the prospects, or well qualified prospects, will definitively get much easier and less tedious over time.
Hope you enjoyed these takes.
As always, thanks for reading and see you all next week. If you have any questions or thoughts, shoot me a DM or email andrew@hackingsales.xyz.
-Andrew K
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Nice curation 😎.