Unlocking Sales Success: Why Human Interaction Trumps AI in the Modern Marketplace

Sales organizations are now connecting their artificial intelligence to other technologies to "personalize" emails to their contacts. Is it possible for something to be personalized when a person isn’t doing the work? The following tech trends demonstrate the gap between humans and bots.

1. Revolutionizing Sales: The Role of AI in Personalized Email Marketing

Dan Kennedy would tell you that the company that can spend the most money to acquire a client will dominate their market. So far, no one has made the case that the company that can send the most fake personalized emails will dominate their industry. You would have to believe that buyers and decision-makers wake up every morning hoping to find a full inbox with messages sent by salespeople who are unaware of the contents or recipient lists. (True story.)

2. The Price of Impersonalization: Fake Personalized Emails and Industry Dominance

As technology continues to dominate how sales organizations think about selling, most digital tools promise efficiency, allowing the salesperson to do more in less time. This should lead to an increase in won deals, although the data suggests the opposite is true. Tech stacks, along with budgets, continue to grow ever larger.

3. Tech Efficiency versus Human Connection: The Salesperson’s Dilemma

For some time now, we have warned against not providing your prospective clients with a salesperson. Despite this, many sales organizations copy tech companies by increasing the number of SDRs and BDRs. The ultimate goal is to spend less money to pursue prospective clients.

4. Beyond Algorithms: Can Robots Truly Empathize in Sales?

One truth about competition is that if you refuse to do something, one of your competitors will do it in your stead. Let this be a warning that if you don't provide your prospective client with a salesperson, your competitor will. There is always someone who will pay more to acquire a client, especially large clients they will keep for years or decades, generating profit many times the cost to acquire the client.

5. The Fallacy of Tech Fixation: Redefining Success in Sales

There are things that only sentient beings are capable of, like empathy, caring, emotional intelligence, understanding, values, trust, and other things invisible to those who are not capable of reading the room. Our technologies are a parlor trick; they only know the next word. The algorithm is excellent at the trick it plays, causing some to anthropomorphize robots.

6. Why Human Interaction Still Reigns Supreme in Sales Organizations

There may be a time when robots will be programmed with additional parlor tricks that ape human traits, like when your AI apologizes for making a mistake. But your AI isn't capable of regret, the emotion that drives human behavior.

7. Navigating Change Amidst Uncertainty: The Value of Human Conversations

If the technologies we have used up to this point haven't improved win rates, why would we believe the next technology will crack the code? Technology is being used to reduce costs, not to make improvements. Know that AI is already a commodity. Those who will use technology to personalize an email will find their messages sitting right next to their competitors’. And thanks to AI, the two will be virtually impossible to distinguish. The more sales organizations use technology for certain tasks, the lower its effectiveness. As more salespeople automate communications, more buyers will seek a human for help.

8. Cracking the Code: Prioritizing Value in Sales Conversations

If you are observant, you might notice that humans spend a large part of their day communicating with others. Unless you love the experience of an automated phone system and the challenges of finding your way through automated customer-service chatbots, you can imagine that many things are better done by humans. Do you believe that "your call is important to us?" On the 22nd time you hear that same statement, you can be sure your call is not all that important. If it were, the company would have a human available to help you.

9. Human Psychology versus Technological Evolution: The Sales Conversation

In a time of accelerating, constant disruptive change, decision-makers face challenges to keep up. Buyers tend to be cautious, as they don’t know what the future holds. The 21st century started with an attack on New York City in 2001, and since has brought us wars, a Great Recession, and a-once-in-a-100-year pandemic. Now we face inflation and two more wars, causing greater uncertainty.

10. The Path to Success: Prioritizing Win Rates over Tech Trends

You can be certain that, for the time being, humans will continue sitting down together to have conversations about change and the better results they need. For as long as we have occupied this small, out-of-the-way planet, leaders have looked to others to help them understand something and explore their choices, while providing the confidence and certainty to move forward.

11. Evaluating Your Sales Strategy: The Impact of Technology on Win Rates

It is a mistake to invest time and money creating personalized email, only to fail to create value for the client in the sales conversation. Win rates are falling and will continue to do so because that metric isn’t a priority for sales leaders and their organization.

12. Increasing Win Rates

Sales leaders have spent more than a decade and countless millions of dollars trying to improve their sales results by adopting technologies. In my time in sales, I more than doubled my revenue with a stack of index cards, a phone book, and a telephone.

You will not have many competitors following this path, even though this is necessary now. Those who obsess over win rates and value creation in the sales conversation will have an advantage over those who believe the next big tech offering will ensure they reach their goals.

Leaving this article, assess your tech stack and your win rates. Look back over your last couple of years and see if you can tie your technology to an increase in your win rates. If you believe you need more pipeline coverage, you can be certain your technology is in no way improving the sales conversation.