What can be a solution for this?

The authors suggest a simple but powerful prescription:

• Coopt technology, especially AI tools, as your teammate and sharpen your human skills

A fascinating insight that they draw is how AI is dramatically different from all technologies that we have seen so far. With AI, it is possible to make the tech itself share the salesperson’s responsibilities of navigating the buying environment independently. This can considerably reduce the non-core work of the salespeople, allowing them to focus on selling and Customers.

When AI is adopted like “full fledged member of the sales team,” it can free up salespeople’s energies.

4 High Value Use Cases of how AI can Free up Salespeople’s Energies

Here are 4 high value use cases listed by the authors:

• Simplify and enrich Salesperson’s role – Activities like updating CRM and data capturing that salespeople usually regard as “Administrative” and “low value” hassles can be fully automated
• Craft unique value narratives for clients – Generative AI tools can support in turning customer data into customized value messaging, faster and better
• Prospect better – AI agents can scrape data from social media, external company databases, rating agency reports, and other sources to pick, qualify and shortlist prospects worth pursuing
• Design high value solutions and speed up deal closures – AI can be used to analyse real-time Customer information, product specs, and RFPs to generate solutions and quotes that salespeople can review and use. It can provide data-backed pricing justifications and value-based reasoning to close deals faster

What is the one skill needed to make the most of tech as a teammate?

The authors’ research uncovered another powerful insight. Their data showed that B2B buyers are much more likely to purchase a high-quality deal if interactions with the buyer clarify the value of the solution. Buyers’ confidence must be boosted by validating their purchase decision

This can be made possible through exercise of a human skill that only salespeople possess. The authors define it as “the ability to infer unspoken beliefs, feelings, and intentions to predict and influence buyer behavior.” Drawing on psychology, they give this skill a name – “Mentalizing”

The buyer’s mind is like an iceberg. The visible tip is what the buyer reveals out loud. The untapped potential lies beneath and that is accessible only through mentalizing. When technology is leveraged as a teammate, salespeople have room to mentalize, anticipate buyers’ stated and unstated needs and close high value deals

How to Develop Mentalizing at 4 Levels

Mentalizing is a skill that can be developed and honed through practice and use of AI’s vast capabilities. Mentalizing happens at 4 levels, before, during and after buyer interactions:

• Active Listening – What Buyers Say
  Action – Stay fully present in the moment as the buyer speaks. This will help probe for missing information and ask targeted follow-up questions
• Perspective Taking – What Buyers Think
  Action – Train yourself to immerse yourself in the buyer's point of view, assess what is already known to the buyer, and offer additional insight to affirm the value of a solution
• Empathizing – How Buyers Feel
  Action – Develop sensitivity to the emotional component of buying, alleviate fears of purchase risk and make the decision feel good all through the purchase journey
• Cognitive Decoding – How Buyers Will Act
  Action – Synthesize all the information at hand, predict how buyers will behave, and adapt strategy to maximize deal closure odds. This is the most sophisticated dimension of mentalizing

What it Takes – 3 Requisites

The authors suggest 3 requisites to build mentalizing skill by coopting AI technologies as a teammate – (i) Develop skills in prompt engineering (ii) Hallucination spotting and (iii) Creative use of AI as a sounding board

What it all Means

Putting it all together, the authors advise: “Sales leaders must combine the transformative power of AI with the uniquely human capabilities of their salespeople to drive high-margin deals.” That’s where the human edge is!