For decades, tools/technologies have been developed with the promise of freeing up seller time to do that which is most critical–connecting with and engaging customers. We have 1000s of tools that demonstrably improve our efficiency. We can get much more done in much less time.
In the past few years, AI and LLMs have amplified that. Not only do these tools enable us to accomplish more in less time, but they provide high levels of personalization and deep research on the organizations and individuals we are targeting. We have more data to leverage in each outreach than we have had before.
As a result, we are reaching a point where the majority of our seller time should be spent in directly interacting with customers. And those interactions should be deeply engaging and impactful with the customer.
But is that what we are actually seeing? Are we seeing more time spent in working with customers? Are we seeing more impact and value created from that increased time?
The data (a lot indirect) would seem to indicate the opposite things are happening. Customers continue to vote with their calendars, they want to minimize seller involvement, they have better alternatives to learning about solutions and invest their time in those. While we should have more time and more data with which to engage customers, it doesn’t seem to be happening.
We continue to see plummeting win rates, % of sellers reaching quota, % of organizations achieving their revenue targets.
All these tools and technologies that should be improving our abilities to create value with our customer, that should be enabling us to spend more time with customers; don’t seem to be producing those results.
There is an argument, leveraging these tools/technologies, we can dramatically reduce headcount and spending. That is an option, but with companies so focused on scaling and growth, one wonders why those resources aren’t applied to driving even higher levels of attainment. In theory, we are freeing these resources up to close more business, why wouldn’t we do this?
Freeing up time is meaningless if our people don’t know how to use that time impactfully!
Providing the deep data, research and insights are meaningless if our people don’t know how to leverage it impactfully in our interactions with customers.
The technologies provide us remarkable opportunities. But are we equipping our people to leverage these in ways that are meaningful and impactful to customers? Are we doing the things our customers find useful, welcoming our insights and perspectives?
Are we missing the point of all these capabilities?
“Are we seeing more impact and value created from that increased time?
The data (a lot indirect) would seem to indicate the opposite things are happening.”
Add my inbox to your indirect data; the crudest of cold spam pitches has multiplied due to misuse of AI. And most of them trumpet the fact that they’re using AI, despite having provided ample evidence of its misuse.