There is something profoundly absurd about 80’s hair metal. For a seven-year span, these glammed up gods of rock owned the music world. There was still plenty of bland pop music, some decent R&B, and an emerging rap scene, but guitar solos and hair spray ruled the day.
I remember first hearing of this Swedish band Europe in 1986 when their surprise hit “The Final Countdown” quickly rose up the Billboard charts. I say surprise because the band didn’t expect it to be anything other than a cool opener for their shows.
“We're leavin' together, but still it's farewell”
The Final Countdown by Europe
No one else expected it to be a hit either. From the uninspiring metal riffing to the nonsensical lyrics*, the song was listed by Blender as the 27th worst song ever. But then again, meaningless and simplistic fluff was a well-worn path to commercial success during this era.
But why am I bashing a harmless pseudo-metal pop band and their insipid song? You might be thinking at this point, what on Earth is Mark getting at?
In sales, there are a lot of practices that continue to define our industry. We still power dial and cold call. We still manage pipelines and commit forecasts, which is mostly just a guessing game. We still organize teams in roughly the same way with SDR’s (cold callers) and AE’s (closers) and CSM’s (post-sales). And we still use CRM platforms that we universally curse (with Salesforce being the worst offender).
The truth is that sales has not seen a lot of real change. Don’t believe me? Check out the percentage of sales reps that reach quota going back three decades. It has not changed in any statistically meaningful way. If anything, what has changed is the rush of companies that actively delay the hiring of sales people by employing strategies such as product-led and community-led growth.
Inevitably, all these companies come to the same conclusion. They need a sales team. Then these same companies engage in the yearly ritual of cycling through sales leaders, teams, and strategies in the hopeless search for a combination that can provide steady and predictable growth.
Hold on Mark, you might be thinking to yourself. There’s been plenty of innovation in the sales industry! For example, SDR teams only became a thing in the last decade. We have tons of great sales tools that improve cold calling, manage pipelines, predict forecasts, and provide user-friendly ways to enter data into CRM systems. We have new ways of selling like the Challenger Sale, more schools that teach selling skills, and communities to connect with other sellers. We even got better at digital selling and managing distributed sales teams during COVID.
While true, somehow all of that has still not moved the needle on sales results. Nothing so far has addressed the fundamental question. What is it about sales that makes it such a challenging profession for people to succeed in?
Enter Generative AI. You may have heard all the chatter about ChatGPT or the hysteria of AI generated music and art (see AI Drake & The Weeknd song and Balenciaga Pope). Maybe you have tried AI image generator apps like Lensa, Starry AI, or FaceApp. Meanwhile our friends in marketing are already using Jasper.ai, Acrolinx, and Smartwriter.ai to boost their digital marketing efforts.
Sure you say, there are already plenty of AI sales tools, many that are quite popular. Tools like Gong, Conversica, and Clari have brought AI into call analysis, sales engagement, and revenue management for a few years now. The listings for AI sales tools are beginning to look like those charts of sales tools form several years back that were so crowded you had to squint to make out the logos.
The difference with Generative AI however is that it is the first time AI has become general purpose. You can put anything into a prompt and AI will respond with remarkable accuracy to any request. It can carry on a conversation, produce working code, write original emails, find and organize any type of research, create realistic images, and numerous other tasks. Some are using AI to do mundane tasks like booking travel, filling out government forms, and even doing taxes.
This type of AI gets us closer to AGI or artificial general intelligence. All previous applications of AI were known as ANI or artificial narrow intelligence, as they were good at one thing. Think computer vision to spot potential crimes or supercomputers that beat Grandmaster Chess Champions. They accomplish these feats by consuming vast amounts of data, but that also limits what AI can do.
In 2017, a research paper titled “Attention Is All You Need” laid out a new approach to AI. Instead of understanding an entire dataset, these things called Transformers focus on only the relevant parts of words and objects to build associations. This mirrors more closely how humans process vast amounts of information and helps AI achieve the results we are seeing today.
The power, speed, and breadth of the capabilities of Generative AI has huge implications for the sales profession. For example, I am an investor in a startup that generates human voices from AI for creating audiobooks. That same technology plugged into ChatGPT could conceivably cold call hundreds of leads, carry on an initial conversation, and book a follow-up call for a human sales rep. Maybe seems a bit distant, but AI can already research customers and craft compelling, personalized sales email copy.
Sales managers, operations, and enablement are not off the hook when it comes to AI impacting their work. Pipelines, forecasts, and territory assignments can already be automated using AI, what changes is that AI can also take actions on that analysis and guide corrective measures out to the field. Training can be fully crafted and delivered by AI, and even create some scratch creative and engaging training videos and presentations simply based on text prompts.
Now that I have thoroughly freaked you out about AI disrupting your job and the sales industry, there is one thing AI is still not able to accomplish. It cannot navigate the web of complexity involved in human relationships. Because of that, it will always make naïve decisions because it can only read the surfaces of human interactions, not the depth of motivations, conflicts, and emotions that drive how we create, operate, and react.
This means you still have a job (assuming you like the engaging with people part of sales). We should celebrate bidding farewell to the old drudgery of selling and leave together with the great AI enabler that will usher in a new vision of the sales profession that is more precise, rewarding, and ironically, more human.
There is one other thing that I am personally bidding farewell to. When COVID shuttered in-person events across our global chapters for the Enterprise Sales Forum, this newsletter carried on as the voice of the community. It has been an honor to share my experiences from the field and insights gained from other respected sales professionals on how to level up our sales acumen. In the process, I hope I was able to inform, inspire, and sometimes incite thoughtful debate.
As much as this newsletter has been a labor of love, especially over the past three years, it is time to say goodbye to this publication. With my work at AWS, my professional focus has shifted from all things B2B sales to startups and cloud technology. That being said, my work brings me closer to the original vision of the Enterprise Sales Forum, a community to help founders to sell better.
This is not goodbye to us however! I am launching a newsletter focused on startups called “Founders in the Cloud” that I invite you to subscribe for free.
What will “Founders in the Cloud” cover? I’ll dive into a range of topics from sales to engineering to product, focusing on practical advice and tools for entrepreneurs looking to launch and grow their startup. I will also cover broader trends in business and tech such as Generative AI, cloud tech, go-to-market, etc. What will stay the same is the essay format and community updates.
Something that will change however is a new collaborator, Basil Fateen. He joined my Startup Advocate team late last year to cover EMEA and is based in Dubai. He is a former startup founder, prolific content creator, and excellent speaker, who will share his own perspectives on the startup world.
I encourage you to check out the newsletter, subscribe, and share with others that would benefit from a fresh perspective on the startup world. And I sincerely thank you for sticking around this long to support the Enterprise Sales Forum. Signing off,
Mark Birch
* My apologies to those offended by my low opinion of this song and your poor taste in music. Here is a list of the top Billboard songs of the same year and the fact that Eddie Murphy is here says everything you need to know about music in 1986.
For this last community update of the Enterprise Sales Forum newsletter, and I also happen to be hitting the road again, going to the following cities for some excellent conferences and community activities:
🔴 Miami - Tech Week - Wed, Apr 26
🔴 Cairo - AfricArena - Sat, Apr 29th - Tue, May 2nd
🔴 Barcelona - Avalanche Summit - Wed, May 3rd - Fri, May 5th
Catch me if you are going to be at any of these events. Glad to meet up to talk all things B2B sales, startups, or just to say hi!