This is number 9 in a series of interviews I am conducting with subject matter experts and practitioners in the sales profession. I am examining where we are today with AI in sales and where we are going.

This interview is with Miro Putkonen and Anton Dobrzhanskiy of Epicbrief. Epicbrief’s mission is to make human work in sales more meaningful and valuable. Here’s a summary of our conversation and below this summary is the full transcript of our interview.

1. Non-value-add selling is going away

If you don’t add value, the buyer doesn’t really want you there. You need to understand what your buyer is dealing with, and how can you potentially help them. Sometimes the problem cannot be solved with your product or service and helping even when the solution is not your product is how you can get people interested and get them to trust you.

2. Selling today breaks down into five areas

The way we think about selling today is in five areas: automation, needs analysis, problem solving, strategic thinking and empathy.

3. AI can help in four out of the five areas

We think AI will help in the first four areas. We don’t think AI can really replace humans or help with the empathy part of selling but by helping in the other four areas it can free humans up to be more human!

4. AI will help with non-selling tasks

A recent study from Salesforce which interviewed about 8,000 salespeople found that 72% of sales reps’ time is spent on non-selling activities. With AI you can remove many of those routine, repetitive, energy-draining tasks.

5. AI will fill in the CRM

There’s a study by Harvard Business Review that said 60% or 70% of reps in large companies get actual anxiety from logging into the CRM. We think AI can do a really good job of keeping CRMs up to date. If providers like us can keep CRMs up to date, we can focus on helping the sales reps with technology that helps them close more deals.

6. AI will usher in true personalization at scale

We think what’s going to happen with AI is personalization at scale. There’s an opportunity to align different buyers with different sales processes and make sure the process is tailored to the way that buyer buys.

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Interview Transcript

Nigel: Where do you see AI impacting the sales profession the most in the next two to three years? Or how about further out?

Miro: We’ve been thinking about it a lot over the past year. I think the intellectually honest answer really is, we don’t know! It’s not something we can predict, but one thing we’re certain about is that non-value-added selling is going to go away. If you don’t add value, the buyer doesn’t really want you there.

Nigel: What examples of adding value are you thinking about?

Miro: The first point is to deeply understand your customer’s needs and pain points. Actually, understanding what they are dealing with, and how can you potentially help them. Sometimes the problem cannot be solved with your product or service and helping even when the solution is not your product is how you can get people interested and get them to trust you.

Another example of adding value can be taken from consulting companies. They come to the table with a hypothesis about the problem and what the potential solution might be. That’s value. You might be wrong with your hypothesis, but if it is shows that you care and you’ve done the work in terms of trying to understand what the prospect is going through, created your hypothesis, developed your assumptions, and then created a solution which might potentially work, that’s a good starting point to establish a trusted business advisor relationship.

Nigel: You’re talking about being more like a consultant. Do you think salespeople become more like consultants by leveraging AI?

Miro: Yes, we think AI can elevate the thinking of sales reps. The way we think about selling today is in five areas.

1 Automation: The first area where AI will clearly add value is automation, so automating repetitive tasks, like updating CRM fields and doing some of the menial work. I think this one is well-known. Doing this will give salespeople more time to act on higher value activities.

2. Needs analysis: Understanding the customer’s needs and really analyzing them to come up with solutions is one thing AI is good at. It can identify patterns from sales calls and start to “connect the dots” to what common customer pain points. It can do this for all the different personas you may have in your type of sale at a much larger scale than humans can.

3. Problem Solving: The third area is problem solving. Tools like ChatGPT are like a sales companion. You can use ChatGPT to help your problem solve. It’s as simple as saying, “Hey, this is my customer’s problem. What ideas do you have for solutions?” It’s like having a great pre-sales rep to talk to about your deal and about your client’s needs.

4. Strategic Thinking: This goes to an even higher order of work. This might be the type of work that the VP of sales is doing. It’s trying to answer questions like, “How do I win more with less?”, “How do I reduce the sales cycle?”, “How do I improve conversions?”

5. Empathy: This isthe emotional intelligence part of selling, which we don’t think that AI can really replace humans or help with that part. But using the AI in the first four areas above can free up the human to be more human and bring their emotional intelligence to the sales conversation.

I think the human part of selling is so important. For example, we were on a sales call recently with a sales rep from a top company and I just was so frustrated on that call because the rep was not listening to me, and he was stuck in his script and process. And he was just pitching his services to me. And I just kept interrupting him and trying to say “please listen to me. I would like to work with you guys but listen to what I’m saying.” Unfortunately, I think the listening and human factor gets killed sometimes if you’re so caught up in process.

Nigel: Do you think we’re going to see big time savings for salespeople using AI?

Miro: Yes, I do.

There’s no rep who really wants to do this admin-type work. That’s not why they came into sales. Doing this work drains your creativity. A recent study took 40 reps and studied how AI impacts their work. One of the findings is that sales reps were 200% more creative when they got rid of all the admin and the repetitive tasks. The reps being studied were coming up with solutions live on calls, which were more innovative than they used to do before.

Nigel: Over the years, the data in every CRM system I have seen has been a mess. What are your thoughts on CRM data and how AI can help in that area?

Miro: I think from a sales leadership perspective, there’s always the question “why is no one filling the CRM?” And there’s tons of initiatives that organizations do to get the sales reps fill in the CRM. And it’s a huge pain for leaders and for the reps. And they’ve been dealing with this for years.

There’s a study by Harvard Business Review that said 60% or 70% of reps in large companies get actual anxiety from logging into the CRM. There’s something about the user experience that I think AI can help with. I think AI can do a really good job of keeping CRMs up to date. If providers like us can keep CRMs up to date, we can focus on helping the sales reps with technology that helps them close more deals.

Nigel: My last question is about prospecting. With AI, I’m wondering if we’re going to see the next era of prospecting.

Miro: I thinkthere is always a balance between creativity and process. You do not want your selling process to be chaos, but you also want to allow room for creativity.

Right now, there are companies that have sales sequences and buyer personas and they’re generating their messaging from these. And then there are other companies that do everything on the fly with virtually no common process in place.

I think what’s going to happen with AI is personalization at scale. There’s an opportunity to align different buyers with different sales processes and make sure the process is tailored to the way that buyer buys.

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