AI tools are reshaping the way salespeople tackle their day-to-day work, automating many of the core business development tasks that have eaten away at the average sellers’ day.
But AI isn’t just taking over mundane administrative work. It’s also raising big questions about the future of the sales profession — including lingering worries that many sales jobs could soon be replaced by machines.
According to several top sales experts, it’s not quite that simple. Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy and co-author of The AI Edge, says AI is actually giving salespeople more time to forge authentic relationships that can drive sustained revenue growth.
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“Think of the 70% of tasks that don’t directly contribute to closing deals — updating CRM records, scheduling follow-ups, sorting through data,” Blount says. “AI allows you to get rid of those tasks, so you can focus on the 30% that matter.”
This shift is already underway. According to Salesforce, workers trust AI to perform 43% of their tasks — and 77% workers believe they will eventually trust AI to operate autonomously.
“We’re going to use AI tools to get our time back, so we can focus on what we do best — having conversations with clients and helping them solve their problems,” says sales consultant Anthony Iannarino, co-author of The AI Edge.
Taking Personalization to a New Level
Modern sales tools and AI — when used carelessly — can mean a flood of automated, impersonal emails and LinkedIn messages for anyone who might look like they have a budget to spend.
That means personalization has become critical for effective sales outreach — and AI used properly, with the right data to back it up, plays a pivotal role.
“It allows salespeople to approach prospects at the perfect time, with messaging that resonates with their current needs,” ZoomInfo Enterprise Account Manager Will Frattini says.
For example, AI can synthesize data and signals that reveal prospect behavior, such as website visits, engagement with content, or social media activity, and produce an actionable recommendation of how to reach out.
By transforming the data and signals into actionable insights, and even writing a targeted draft, AI helps salespeople to tailor their outreach to meet specific, relevant needs. The result? More effective, personalized communications that drive higher engagement.
“AI doesn’t just automate outreach — it makes it smarter. It tells you exactly when to reach out, what to say, and what the customer might be thinking, based on real-time signals. This is what takes your sales process to the next level,” Frattini says.
Trust but Verify: Ensuring Data Quality for AI-Driven Decisions
AI’s effectiveness, however, depends on the quality of the data it’s working with, and teams that implement and rely on AI must be vigilant about the fact that AI can rapidly scale mistakes if the data is inaccurate.
“AI can generate insights and predictions at lightning speed, but if your data is flawed, you’re essentially weaponizing those errors. That’s why it’s critical to ensure that your data is clean, up-to-date, and reliable,” Iannarino says.
To avoid these pitfalls, experts recommend rigorous data hygiene practices such as:
- Routine enrichment of CRM records for deeper customer insights.
- Eliminating duplicates by purging your CRM of redundant data.
- Maintaining clean CRM data by ensuring that customer information is kept current.
Ensuring data integrity is essential to getting the best out of AI tools — without it, the insights generated could lead to misguided decisions and missed opportunities.
Predictive Insights: Let AI Identify High-Value Prospects
AI’s predictive capabilities are perhaps its most exciting feature for sales teams. By analyzing past interactions, customer behaviors, and market trends, AI can enable predictive prospecting, which provides insight into which potential customers are most likely to convert and when.
“AI also helps you identify high-priority leads by processing patterns that you may not even be aware of,” Frattini says. “It’s not just about intent data. AI can analyze combinations of signals — like changes in company leadership, recent funding announcements, or engagement with your content — to predict when a prospect is ready to make a purchase.”
With these buying signals that act as predictive insights, sales teams can prioritize their efforts, focusing on prospects who are most likely to convert and increasing their overall win rates. This helps salespeople allocate their time more efficiently, ensuring they invest their efforts in the leads that offer the highest potential return.
Embracing AI, Enhancing the Human Factor
In the end, experts say the key to sales success lies in leveraging AI to complement and enhance the all-important human element of sales.
AI will help automate low-value tasks, offer data-driven insights, and predict the best next steps — but it’s the salespeople who will use these tools to build relationships, solve problems, and close deals.
“AI will make us more efficient, but it’s the human-to-human conversations that will close the deals,” Blount says. “AI is a tool to help us get there, but it can’t replicate empathy, emotional intelligence, or the ability to navigate complex sales discussions.”