Human Touch in a Digital Sales World: Navigating Beyond Automation

Revolutionizing Sales Productivity with Emerging Technologies

As technology marches forward, sales organizations continue their relentless pursuit of their Holy Grail, something they describe as “sales productivity.” The term “sales productivity” now means using technology and automation to do things that would otherwise require salespeople to do.

Navigating the Sales Technology Industrial Complex

Since OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, released ChatGPT, the sales industry has created a non-stop proliferation of so-called solutions. There is an old saying that pornographers are the first to adopt new technology. Today, the sales technology industrial complex is running in front of everyone.

Two weeks ago, I spent four hours making cold calls to prospective clients. For each one, I had numbers for their business phone and their mobile phone. I called both numbers, only to find that no one answered. I left voicemails, knowing I would not receive a return phone call.

On a call with several salespeople, the consensus was that it is increasingly difficult to get anyone to pick up the phone. Email is even worse. When sales organizations started using fully automated sequences, they started sending massive numbers of emails because they didn’t need salespeople to actually write them. This flood of emails made it more difficult to email our clients and our prospective clients, who found their inboxes overrun with irrelevant sales messages.

The Diminishing Returns of Cold Calls and Email Automation

Not long after ChatGPT’s launch, I got the first LinkedIn message from a salesperson who wanted to show me how to connect AI to LinkedIn to identify something personal about a huge list of contacts. Then, they had AI use this information to send what looked like personal emails. For some reason, sales organizations believe that personalization is the high-water mark of an email. But when everyone does the same thing in the same way, it doesn’t take long for recipients to ignore the email and the personalization.

The Illusion of Personalization in Automated Sales Strategies

A second person, also on LinkedIn, messaged me to share that he had connected AI to a phone. With this contraption, he can make 30,000 calls a day. I imagine he believed I would be impressed with such ingenuity, but my reaction was quite the opposite. This path is certain to make it more difficult to reach a client or a sales prospect by phone.

AI in Sales: Innovative Solutions or Increased Challenges?

You know how you get those phone calls with a recorded track? Imagine hundreds of those automated calls to every phone number, relentlessly calling decision makers and buyers, with AI handing off the call to a salesperson and recording the entire thing.

The Unique Dynamics of ChatGPT in Sales Communication

If you pay attention to ChatGPT, you may notice that it feels like you are talking to a smart child that wants to impress you. This is because GPT is a carbon copy of its makers, who also are smart children that are trying to impress us, although there is nothing more impressive than humans and their creative powers.

Embracing Human Connections in the Digital Sales Era

Computer. Laptop. iPad. iPhone. Phone. Email. Text. Social media. Chat. Zoom. Overwhelm. At some point, we will become bored with this technology, if we aren’t already. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I want to make an important observation that has not been shared, and one that may cause you to think differently about our technology and how we deploy it: None of your clients or mine have consented to accept the fully automated sequence and the five emails, one stacking on the other, cluttering up their inbox, and bullying the prospect to engage with a salesperson who will only reach out if the prospect clicks a link or sends an email.

The Undeniable Value of Human Touch in the Automated Sales Landscape

Even though you have an email, you have no permission to send it. Because this is true, you should not send a plethora of emails to get what you want. Using new technology, some sales organizations will do to the phone what they have already done to email.

One of my salespeople was pursuing a prospect. They were stunned that she was willing to drive to their location to meet them face-to-face and walk through their office and facility. She left the meeting with a contract. It was an easy layup.

Rethinking Sales Productivity: Beyond Automation to Human Engagement

When you live in an environment of accelerating, constant disruptive change, smart decision makers want to ensure they make the right decision, the decision to change, and the decision of who they trust to help them.

The more the technologists attempt to reduce selling to a transaction, the easier it will be to win a client’s relationship, followed by their business. I am certain that being human provides an extreme advantage in a contest: Caring. Empathy. Compassion. Psychology. Presence. Time. Effort. Interest. Curiosity. Wisdom. Understanding. Ingenuity. Collaboration. Consensus. Resolving concerns. Execution. Problem solving. Helping. Charity. Humor. Deep knowledge. Expertise. Experience. This is a partial list of the advantages a human has over a robot.

There is no such thing as sales productivity without winning more deals. You can send thousands of emails to people who have never heard of you, and you can make as many cold calls, but even if you get a good number of meetings, you won’t win without the effectiveness necessary to generate the revenue.

Productivity isn’t activity. Productivity is outcomes. You would be better off pursuing sales effectiveness, which will generate results by winning the client's trust, relationship, and business.

In the future, automation will do a lot of work, especially with cold outreach. Your best strategy is to be a human being, with all its many advantages. The personal touch has always resulted in better sales results. Let the techno-brutes do what techno-brutes do, while you show up face to face.