Our ability to work well with technology is critically important. Already, we see top-performing sales talent leveraging AI-driven technology to better meet the needs of their customers. Bots are acting on our behalf to set meetings, send relevant messages, and replace the mundane aspects of sales that we’ve dreaded for decades.
Amidst all this technologically-driven change; every salesperson needs to seriously consider the level of value they provide their employer and customers to fund their role. The Sales Development Rep (SDR) is most at risk as more than 50% of what they do can be automated today or in the near future.
“AI will accelerate the extinction of simple order-taking sales. It will enhance consultative sellers’ ability to win more customers by effectively articulating business value. AI-powered sales learning tools will suggest actions, micro-training, and just-in-time content for reps – based on assessment of the customer’s needs, the rep’s skills and experience, and the competitive dynamic during sales, like the way Netflix recommends movies” – Yuchun Lee, CEO and Co-founder, Allego
The rise of Sales as a Service
Significant capital is being invested in ‘AI for sales’ and ‘sales as a service’ as it represents the Holy Grail of sales automation. Success, however, demands an insane requirement to blend technology with humanly nuanced messaging. Cracking the ‘sales as a service code’ will yield a step change for enterprises in pushing down [human] costs and driving up profitable revenue.
“This is why investing in improvements at the top of the sales funnel, particularly in early prospect and lead qualification are so valuable: they save the time and energy of a startup’s go to market teams and can meaningfully improve unit economics.” – Tomasz Tunguz, VC at Redpoint
The climate we’re living in with SDR ‘spray and pray’ is downright comical. SDR’s are an expensive cost if they just sit on the phone and make 100 futile dials alone. Intelligent combinations are the key and you’re up the creek without a paddle without ConnectandSell, SalesLoft or something like Prospecting as a Service or Sales AI to augment the SDR function.
You’ve either got to vastly increase contact rates on the phone or invest in a brand new dimension of prospecting solution stack to have a fighting chance in emerging markets. Arming reps with the appropriate tech stack may not be enough… I see most people bewildered by the complexity and abundance of technology choice for their next activity.
Sure, Smart SDR’s can thrive and crush numbers with platforms like Outreach.io, Groove, and Salesloft but it is still coal mine worker level of manual effort. The reality is that SDR’s do an average of 93.8 activities per day and these activities lead to an average of 13.6 meaningful conversations, resulting in 12.3 opportunities accepted per month and almost 12 closed deals per quarter.
Let’s analyze that data – 93 activities per day? That’s astronomical if only 13 are a live conversation with a genuine human. ConnectAndSell fixes that by upping dials to 1,000 a day per rep sending live conversations frequently over the 50 mark. Blended combinations in SalesLoft (phone, voicemail, email, social) can fix the gap by organizing your touches diligently.
But are we just keeping a dying breed on life support? 25% of SDR’s fail within 4 months and the average tenure is just 14 months.
AI or SDR, who will win?
Imagine 12 opportunities automatically opened for you if the benchmarks above hold true and all you’re focused on as a rep is… wait for it… closing new business!
Three scenarios play out:
- SDR’s disappear entirely replaced by AI that evolves to use the phone. Ethical dilemmas aside, have a look at what Google Duplex could achieve for you.
- SDR’s morph into a strategic selling function or a data science analytics discipline that trains AI. SDR could become orchestrators of tools and algorithms.
- AI simply augments sellers of all stripes across the entire funnel. AKA a digital sales assistant for heavyweight sellers who can carry executive conversations, negotiate and close.
Futurists believe these phases will occur in reverse order. It proposes a cataclysmic threat to millions of sellers as we know it unless you simply anticipate and acquire new skills.
Should salespeople study computer science, applied statistics, and become quants? Will Sales Engineers and Product Folks be the architects of insight in the future as bots interact at the speed of light?
Will strategic insight itself be able to be synthesized by artificial intelligence or can salespeople become more strategic and consultative to keep safe from the great pruning of 2035?
The answer is somewhere in the middle and the exciting innovations coming from disruptive entrants not even listed on the game board yet.
I’ll leave you with this quote to ponder…
“There is no reason and no way that a human mind can keep up with an artificial intelligence machine.” – Gray Scott