Sales in the Age of AI

In this age of artificial intelligence, what is quintessentially human? How can we continue to remain relevant, original and compelling?

I would argue – of course I would – that charisma will prove elusive for even the most sophisticated robot for some considerable time to come.

Currently there are “avatars“ that imitate human behaviour. However, we remain finely tuned to all nuances of facial expression, gesture, tone and what I would argue is our inner spirit. Even if you argue the last part of that combination, I think it’s clear that avatars currently available to the mass market are not able to effectively impersonate you.

Yes, like so many of us over the past few months, I’ve been playing around with AI.

While the speed of AI production is remarkable, my current conclusion is this: never take the obvious route - it’s far too treacherous.

What do I mean by that? Well, in this age of mass sales and ubiquitous marketing efforts, anything that smacks of a cliche, a banality, a template or a script will increase scepticism rather than trust.

What’s needed, now more than ever, is creativity, originality and relevance.

These qualities are cultivated with experience, a measure of patience and some level of inner enquiry.

AI can help us to “de-rust” our thinking processes. What it cannot do (yet) is replace human ingenuity at any significant depth.

If we settle for the surface impact of AI in our sales communications, we risk three main disadvantages:

We will sound like everybody else who also relies on AI.
We will create a “race to the bottom,” where volume of output is valued over quality of output.
We risk creating laziness both in ourselves and in our potential clients. When everything becomes easy, nothing becomes valuable.

Having said that, provided you give the algorithm precise and detailed enough instructions (aka: prompts), the results can be very useful.

Here are a few examples:

Brainstorm market interest before you launch
Ditto for competitors’ offers
Automatically edit long content into bitesize pieces and share to social media
Automate emails that send according to optimal individual open times.
Brainstorm subject matter to assist with content creation.

Please note: all such content must be carefully checked and edited. Human expertise is needed to avoid repetitious phrases, cookie cutter structures, cliches and downright inaccurate information. Nobody wants cheap material mass produced in their name, do they?

Although the current status of AI remains at “junior assistant” level, the nature of machine learning ensures the junior will grow up fast.

That’s one reason you’ll want to familiarise yourself with the AI landscape. All too soon, I suspect, AI will become too abstruse to easily catch up with.

I remain optimistic about the future of human expertise, my friends, because when your sales charisma combines with truly intelligent AI, there will be a turning point in business opportunities.

We are on the cusp of that opportunity.

Of course, all such opportunities are also open to our competitors. That’s why creativity, uniqueness and relevant content will turn around what remains central to us as humans.

Create content that’s as unique as your fingerprint, relevant beyond mere trends, delivered in your inimitable style and you’ll remain as compelling a magnet!

Yours charismatically (non-algorithmically) - Howard