AI Empowers Sellers to be Sensemakers
We’ve been bombarded from all angles over how AI is fundamentally changing all aspects of life. But be honest with yourself. Is AI really impacting your sales workflow in a way that’s transformative? If it is, excellent: read on. If it isn’t, understandable: read on. Today we’re taking a high-level overview of how large language models (LLMs) can dramatically improve the way you show up with your customers. Let’s dive in.
The industrial revolution paved the way for the creation of entirely new machine-powered enterprises. Mechanization and automation transformed repetitive labor— like airplane assembly lines & shipyard work (note the Boeing dock workers on strike right last week with automation being a critical sticking point).
What’s AI transforming? It’s not just “services”, it’s highly specialized and skilled services. Knowledge workers like lawyers, teachers, doctors, software engineers, and yes, salespeople. Take a look at how expensive services have become over just the last generation when compared to consumer goods largely impacted by automation, economies of scale, and improvements in technology:
There’s still going to be a need for salespeople but the expectations of the value they deliver has to change. The salesperson of has gone through the following evolution over the last hundred years:
Pre-information age, salespeople used to be gatekeepers to key information (like inventory, pricing, product/service specifications). Salespeople sold features.
Post-internet age, the information disparity was largely equalized between buyers and sellers. Salespeople sold the benefits of a product/service.
Post-AI age, the buyer’s understanding of product/service benefits can easily be customized by LLMs. Salespeople will be expected to both guarantee customers’ desired outcomes and to be sensemakers in a world where information overload stalls buying decisions.
I’ll add to one of my favorite sales quotes in bold: “You don’t sell widgets; you sell outcomes. You sell empowered understanding. You make sense of a complex business ecosystem and guide your customers toward desired outcomes.”
LLMs are enabling sellers to add exponentially more value.
In a future newsletter, I’ll make this even more tangible and actionable by diving into examples of how sellers can prompt general LLMs (like Gemini or ChatGPT) to enhance their value proposition to customers. Stay tuned.
This one’s a bit more philosophical— make a choice: Are you committed to learn how to leverage generative AI to help your customers navigate solving problems, even the ones that feel out of your scope? Or do you feel as though the (legacy) approach of selling the benefits your product service can have on a customer’s business will continue to work? If the latter, sales might not be for you in the long-run. If the former, welcome to the future of selling.
Vertical LLMs have been shown to increase efficiency in specialized tasks by 30-45%, reducing the time needed for a variety of tasks ranging from document processing to research to customer inquiry resolution. Specialized LLMs are the next multi-billion dollar SaaS opportunity.