Yes, AI Will Take Over Some B2B Sales Roles

Over the years, I have been involved with several universities that have sales centers as part of their business school programs. In one recent discussion with a group of new graduates, I was asked if B2B sales was still a “safe” profession to go into as a career, considering the impact that artificial intelligence was having on B2C sales and service. My response was a qualified “yes, but you need to pursue the right roles.” That of course generated a slew of follow-up questions as to which roles were wrong and which ones were right. So let’s explore that topic further here.

In B2B sales, AI is already proving to be more than effective at taking over repetitive, rules-based tasks, putting at risk certain sales roles, including these:

• Business development reps (BDRs): Outreach, Apollo, Drift, etc., can leverage AI to handle prospecting, lead scoring, and initial outreach, answer common questions, and set up meetings at a scale beyond what people can do.
• Transactional sales reps: Hubspot, ZoomInfo, Intercom, etc., can guide a prospect through the buying process with little or no human interaction required and can complete order-processing steps as well.
• Customer success reps: Salesforce, Totango, Gainsight, etc., can continuously monitor existing customer health scores, automate check-ins, and take on the complete renewal process workflow.
• Deal desk specialists: Conga, Salesforce, DealHub, etc. can effectively handle all aspects of the configure/price/quote process as well as track the processing of the paperwork through the approval process.
• Sales ops analysts: Clari, Gong, People.ai, etc., can dynamically create and update territory plans and forecasts faster and more accurately than humans can, and they can also handle tasks like data cleansing and updating.

But AI is also showing promise at being a useful tool for augmenting certain sales organization roles, especially in areas where empathy, complex problem solving, and relationship building are keys to higher-stakes B2B selling success. Some of these roles include:

• Key account managers: This role tracks the health of existing customer accounts and provides insights on expansion opportunities based on customer journey mapping, and also identifies risks so they can be proactively managed.
• Channel managers: The person in this role dentifies the most productive partners, forecasts indirect sales outcomes, coordinates new partner onboarding, and helps develop partner-specific playbooks, etc., to build trust and stronger channel relationships.
• Enterprise sales operations executives: This role optimizes forecast accuracy, identifies revenue risks and opportunities, facilitates cross-functional area communication and collaboration, recommends sales process improvements based on changes in the marketplace, and so on.
• Chief revenue officers: This leadership role optimizes visibility into key areas of sales performance, continuously analyzes past wins/losses/no-decisions, assists in strategic planning analysis and sales capacity modeling, and helps align corporate goals with sales strategies and tactics.

In these cases and more, AI acts as a copilot, supporting high-value sales roles. It handles the heavy lifting of data analysis, pattern recognition, process enhancement modeling, and so on, allowing sales professionals to focus on collaboration and creative problem solving. So for individuals looking at sales as a possible career choice, AI will be changing the profession of sales, obsoleting some roles but enhancing and creating others. So plan to take time to investigate your long-term career path so that you get supported by AI instead of run over by it. 

Jim Dickie is a research fellow for Sales Mastery, a research firm that specializes in benchmarking case study examples of how companies are leveraging technology to transform sales. He can be reached at jim@salesmastery.com or at @jimdickie.

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