“Will AI Replace Buyers?”

There’s a certain comic arrogance in the discussion, “Will AI Replace (or Augment) Sellers?” As usual, it’s the self centered focus too many have about selling. Somehow, we never take time to think about whether AI will replace buyers. The degree to which AI replaces buyers will have a greater impact on sellers than AI taking sales related tasks, consequently reducing the need for sellers.

We already have so much evidence that buyers are charging ahead, potentially with a higher sense of urgency. We know:

• The majority of buyers are doing everything possible to minimize seller involvement. Over 80% of them prefer rep free buying experience. They are engaging sellers later and later in their buying process.
• We know that buyers are aggressively pursuing digital buying experiences. And this becomes an area in which AI can provide huge value to buyers. Buyers no longer have to do the buying journey themselves, they can have intelligent agents do a huge amount of the work themselves.
• We know buyers struggle with buying. In fact they fail over 60% of the time. Anything that can be done to help the buyer navigate their buying process more effectively (as opposed to efficient;y) will be a huge value to these buyers.
• We know buyers are overwhelmed with information, tools that consolidate and present the most relevant information to the buyers will help simplify the efforts, improving their efficiency.
• We know that buyers suffer from FOFU. Leveraging technology to help them gain confidence they are doing the right thing will be a huge benefit to buyers.

Most of the factors I’ve described above, are issues more prevalent in complex B2B buying. But what about the simple transactional processes. What happens when the buyer is very knowledgeable about what they are doing, where they have deep experience in buying, where the risk is very low, consequently FOFU is non-existent? What happens when the buyer can perfectly define what they need, their priorities, evaluation criteria, and so forth? All of this can be totally replace by an intelligent buying agent. Stated differently, it will be totally automated.

Again, none of this should be surprising, we’ve seen electronic procurement growing over at least 3 decades, new technologies will dramatically expand the ability to buy through these intelligent agents.

And think of the relief buyers will experience by getting intelligent agents interceding in their interactions with sellers. The volumes of stuff sellers inflict on buyers will now be intercepted by these agents. Reading 1000 emails a day doesn’t even cause ChatGPT to break a sweat! 10,000 a day, bring it on! Plus the ChatGPT buying agents will immediately recognize how the ChatGPT selling agents put together their arguments.

Think about the value buyers get from leveraging AI as much as possible in their buying process. Buying is an interruption to them, after all their day jobs have nothing to do with buying (with procurement as the singular exception). They need to maximize their time doing their day jobs, reducing the time spent in buying related activities–reserving the time for the most critical issues that AI cannot address.

So the biggest worry sellers should have about AI replacing them is not the AI tools for selling. It’s the potential the sellers become irrelevant and unnecessary to a buyer leveraging these technologies.

At this point, one might despair about the future of selling. If the buyer is leveraging AI to minimize their time and involvement in the process, if they no longer need sellers, if we have AI based tools that automate much of our job, what hope is there for sellers?

As we look at buying/selling and the capabilities of leveraging AI, too often we are asking ourselves the wrong questions. The least important questions are “What can AI displace?” Instead, we have to understand, “What is AI terrible at doing in the buying/selling process?”

Answering this question is the most important in determining the future of human based interventions in buying and selling. And I believe the future for sellers is very bright, but too many organizations are ill prepared to move into that future.

Let’s look at what AI is really bad at in buying/selling. Some thoughts:

• We know LLMs have accuracy problems. These tend to invent things. It takes deep experience, understanding and critical thinking to leverage AI in ways to minimize this problem.
• Analytical based AI tools are great at showing complex patterns based on historical performance. But it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know! Our world is one of increasing turbulence, disruption, risk, uncertainty, and complexity. We face things we have never experienced. As a result, analytic AI tools have limited ability to provide deep insights on these. They have limited ability to pose “What if” questions and help navigate to answers based on informed guesses.
• AI has severe limitations in situational relevance. It has severe limitations in understanding specific contexts. It struggles with dynamic, situational context. Things change constantly in the buying process, the situation, priorities, issues, challenges change. The people change and their priorities change. Understanding this, bringing order and direction to the customer, helping them more effectively manage themselves and navigate the process is something beyond the capabilities of AI tools.
• Finally, it’s the human the human connection. Underlying every buying situation is a complex and changing array of human emotions. The ability to understand, to display empathy, to help make sense, develop and maintain confidence in the face of continuing uncertainty is far beyond the capability of AI.

The future of selling in complex B2B. But we look at leveraging AI incorrectly. We need to understand, “What can’t AI do in helping buyers make decisions in which they have great confidence? What can’t AI do in helping buyers navigate their process? What can’t AI do in helping buyers develop and maintain consensus through their buying process? What human based interventions are critical to buying success in B2B buying.

As we develop the answers to this, we learn where sellers play, what distinctive difference human being can create with other human being in dealing with these very complex issues.

And the problem, both for buyers and sellers isn’t getting easier. It’s getting far more complex, far faster, and it’s accelerating.

The critical issues for sellers is not, will there be jobs, will AI make us irrelevant. It is are we prepared to step into the selling job of the future. I worry that too few are considering these questions.