Will AI Replace Salespeople? What Sales History Tells Us

So many posts warning of the impact of AI on the sales profession – and they mostly all say the same thing…the same thing as you’d see throughout history every time there is either (a) a significant shift in the world of business, or (b) a significant downturn.

And the result has been the same each time, too. Will AI have the same impact?

During the Progressive era of the Industrial Revolution, selling had to change. Organizations had to start hiring their own salespeople to teach them to be service-first. Experts in their solutions and their impacts. Less focused on “the sale” and more focused on serving the customer for the long term.

NCRs first sales training class in 1894

Arthur Sheldon laid the foundation starting in 1902 and stamped it with his quote, “True salesmanship is the science of service. Grasp that thought firmly and never let go.” – The Art of Selling, 1911.

With the rise of mail order catalogs and advertising, salespeople were once again threatened by the 1910 quote from Thomas Herbert Russell’s book Salesmanship, Theory & Practice, “Buyers know more nowadays”. Salespeople had to add value through their service to the customer, helping them break out of their initial assumptions and recognize that they might not have the answers.

Into the late 1920s, quotes like “Behold the robot. Salesmen who know nothing are rapidly being displaced (by automation)…” showed up in the 1929 book, Salesmanship for the New Era.

The Great Depression of the 1930s led organizations to shift almost entirely away from commission-only compensation. By 1945, only 27% of companies had those types of plans, and ⅓ of those planned to abandon them soon. Salary+commission plans grew from just 25% of plans to 56% from 1934-1945, as organizations sought to exert more control over the message, process, and approach.

HBR cover from 2009

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 led to the rise of the March 2009 HBR article claiming “In a downturn, provoke your customers,” and then to the November 2011 release of The Challenger Sale – where “teach” was always the first step.

We saw it with the rise of e-commerce. Analyst firms were claiming that 1 million B2B sales jobs would be going away between 2015 and 2020, and hundreds of thousands of college students would no longer be graduating into the profession.

The answer was, and I believe still is, “Service”.

Every post here says it, too. Our role is to educate – the pros and the cons of solutions, to help buyers navigate, know where to look, teach what’s important, and help customers achieve optimal outcomes.

Menial tasks are not valuable. Service is. It’s a good thing for the profession, for the customers, and for the overall economy. Transparency wins.

My name is Todd Caponi, CSP® I’m a sales keynote speaker who also teaches revenue organizations how to leverage transparency and decision science to maximize their revenue capacity. It’s what I do…teach sellers, their leaders, well…entire revenue organizations how we as human beings make decisions, then how to use that knowledge for good (not evil) in their messaging (informal and formal), negotiations, and revenue leadership. I wrote a book Book Authority had listed as the 6th best sales book of all time (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦), and a second award-winning book (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳).

Reach out if you want to discuss The Transparency Sale sales methodology, or really…anything else (sales kickoffs, workshops, keynotes, the economy, history, etc.)! Email info@toddcaponi.com or call 847-999-0420.

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