Selling in the Age of AI: A Salesperson's 'Artificial' Friend or Foe?
Greg's Words
Today's CRMs are not designed to help the salesperson sell more, be more efficient, or engaging. Anyone who tells otherwise is selling something.
CRMs are designed to CONSTRAIN the art of selling by managing behavior to KPIs and best practices. Today, more than ever, KPI's and best practices are old-fashioned and based on spent business models. Measuring your ways against the way others in your industry is stifling creativity in a time demanding more innovation and expansion than ever before in history.
"Salesforce said its AI Cloud suite will cost $360,000 a year with an annual contract. Its trust tool will be available to use this month, while other generative AI-embedded tools will be available this year or next year."
CRMs do not help, they hinder.
Executive Points:
- Despite the promise of efficiency and customization, CRM tools like Salesforce could be constraining the selling process rather than enhancing it.
- There is a growing concern that these tools serve management oversight more than they aid salespeople in selling more.
- Data privacy concerns and the potential misuse of AI remain significant issues that businesses need to navigate.
Salesforce recently launched its AI Cloud, a suite of products aimed at bolstering the company's position in the competitive AI space. But despite these advancements, there's a growing concern about whether these tools are truly beneficial for the sales process or are just another means of management oversight.
Are AI-powered CRM tools helping salespeople sell more, or are they limiting their creativity and personal touch?
AI Cloud hosts and serves AI models from a range of partners, including Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Cohere, and OpenAI, on Salesforce’s cloud infrastructure. The aim is to provide enterprise-ready AI capabilities, moving quickly to leverage Salesforce's history in AI and build this into their stack in a trusted fashion. However, while these tools are designed to assist with tasks such as auto-crafting personalized emails and creating service briefings, there is a question of whether these AI-driven capabilities are truly enhancing the selling process or whether are they merely providing better oversight and control to management.
In addition to AI Cloud, Salesforce has also introduced the Einstein Trust Layer, a new AI moderation and redaction service designed to prevent text-generating models from retaining sensitive data. While this serves the interest of companies with strict compliance and governance requirements, it also represents an additional layer of management oversight. In the pursuit of data privacy, are we creating a system that prioritizes control over creativity? A system where salespeople are more monitored than supported?1.
Salesforce's advancements, while innovative, also raise concerns about the potential misuse of AI. For instance, the AI Cloud has a glaring omission - an image-generation model. Salesforce acknowledges the usefulness of such a model for creating marketing campaigns, landing pages, emails, and more, but also recognizes the barriers, from copyright to toxicity, that they need to overcome before its release. This reinforces the idea that while AI can offer many benefits, it also comes with risks that companies must navigate carefully1.
In the end, the day CRMs shifted from assisting individual selling professionals to reporting to upper management, was one more step away from the 'art of the sale' to the 'algorithm of a sale'.
Maintaining corporate data is paramount - or is it? Can 'hooding' corporate data be detrimental to the evolution of AI and the human race? There is a lot being said about sequestering corporate secrets away from the GPT in the sky - but is there value in this tribalism?
Time will tell.
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Tweet: "Are AI tools like Salesforce an aid or a hindrance in the sales process? Unveiling the other side of the coin in the world of CRM. #Salesforce #AI #CRM #DataPrivacy"
LinkedIn Introduction: "In the world of sales, CRM tools like Salesforce have been lauded for their efficiency and customization capabilities. However, are they really enhancing the selling process as promised or are they just serving as a tool for management oversight? Let's delve into the untold story of CRM and AI."
Keyword List: Salesforce, AI, CRM, Selling Process, Management Oversight, Data Privacy, Sales
Ideal Image Description: A digital illustration that depicts a salesperson chained to a giant CRM tool, symbolizing the constraints and oversight that CRM can impose on the sales process.
Search Question: "Is Salesforce more beneficial for management oversight or for aiding salespeople?"
Funny Tagline: "Selling in the Age of AI: A Salesperson's 'Artificial' Friend or Foe?"
Song: "Eye in the Sky" by The Alan Parsons Project, as it relates to the oversight and surveillance aspect of CRMs.
| Source | Date | URL | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| TechCrunch | June 12, 2023 | https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/12/salesforce-launches-ai-cloud-to-bring-models-to-the-enterprise/ | "Salesforce is launching a new suite of products aimed at bolstering its position in the ultra-competitive AI space."``oaicite:{"number":1,"metadata":{"title":"Salesforce launches AI Cloud to bring models to the enterprise |
| ISACA | March 29, 2021 | https://www.isaca.org/resources/news-and-trends/isaca-now-blog/2021/beware-the-privacy-violations-in-artificial-intelligence-applications | "In an era where data is a vital asset, it is important that organizations find the right balance between personalization and privacy."2 |
| Forbes | June 5, 2023 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/06/05/the-dangers-of-ai-a-guide-for-business-leaders/?sh=6f81c2232266 | "AI systems, despite their many benefits, can also be misused. This can result in unintended negative consequences, such as discrimination or privacy violations."3 |
| VentureBeat | June 1, 2023 | https://venturebeat.com/2023/06/01/how-salesforce-is-evolving-through-ai-and-machine-learning/ | "Salesforce is evolving its product with the help of AI and machine learning. But is this evolution truly beneficial for salespeople, or is it just another means of control for management?"4 |
| The Wall Street Journal | May 25, 2023 | https://www.wsj.com/articles/salesforce-aims-to-plug-ai-trust-gap-with-new-tech-tools-19e11750 | "Salesforce aims to plug the 'AI trust gap' with new tech tools, but are these tools truly serving the best interests of salespeople?"5 |
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