AI and Sales - Do You Still Do Business with People You Trust?

By Rick Vohrer, TCV Growth Partner and Sales Quarterback

If you have ever been in sales, you have probably heard the saying that people do business with people they trust. I have believed that for most of my career. You build the

relationship, understand the customer, do what you say you are going to do, and over time you earn trust.

With AI becoming part of almost every business conversation, I have been wondering whether that idea is changing. I do not think it is. If anything, I think trust may become even more important.

AI is already making sales faster and more efficient. It can help identify prospects, research companies, write emails, summarize meetings, build proposals and follow up with customers. Those are all useful capabilities, and businesses would be foolish not to take advantage of them. But there is a difference between making the sales process more efficient and building a relationship with someone. I am not sure technology can do the second one nearly as well.

Before long, most companies will have access to similar AI tools. Everyone will be able to research faster, write polished emails, personalize outreach and respond more quickly. If those capabilities become standard, they will not be much of a competitive advantage. What may matter more are the things that are harder to automate: credibility, judgment, listening, follow-through and trust.

Technology has been speeding up business communication for a long time. I remember when writing to a customer was a process. Someone drafted the message, it went to a typing pool, a supervisor reviewed it, and then it was mailed. The fax machine made delivery faster. Email made it faster still, and text messaging compressed communication even further. Every step made communication more efficient, but I am not convinced every step made the customer relationship better.

Customer service is a good example. How many times have you called a company, worked your way through several automated prompts and eventually started pressing zero just hoping to reach a person? The company may have reduced the cost of handling the call, but that does not necessarily mean it improved your opinion of the company. Businesses are very good at measuring the cost they save. They are not always as good at measuring the trust they lose.

That same issue will show up in sales. Salespeople are expensive. Compensation, commissions, travel, management, training and technology all add up, so of course executives are going to ask how AI can lower the cost of selling. They should. But I think the better question is not, “How much can we replace?” It is, “What work should AI take off the salesperson’s plate so that the salesperson can spend more time doing the things customers actually value?”

Let AI do the research, update the CRM, assist with scheduling, help prepare proposals, summarize meeting notes and handle routine follow-up. If that saves a salesperson five hours a week, however, I am not sure the best use of those five hours is to send 500 more automated emails. Maybe the better use is to have ten more meaningful conversations with customers and prospects. That is where I think companies can either get this right or get it very wrong.

I also think AI will change the definition of a valuable salesperson. If someone’s primary value is forwarding information, checking on an order or sending another “just following up” email, AI can probably handle a good portion of that work. But if the salesperson understands the customer’s business, asks good questions, notices problems the customer has not considered, and is willing to tell the customer something they may not want to hear, that is different. That person is not just passing along information. They are helping the customer make a decision.

The bigger or riskier the decision, the more important that becomes. Nobody needs a trusted advisor to buy a $20 commodity. But if you are hiring a senior executive, entering a new market, buying a company, changing your sales strategy or making a multimillion-dollar investment, the decision is not just about information. It is about judgment, experience and confidence in the person giving you advice.

That is why I do not think the right response to AI is to resist it. Business leaders should use it aggressively where it makes sense. Use it to make people better prepared, remove administrative work, identify opportunities and speed up routine tasks. But do not assume that because something can be automated, it should be.

There are points in the sales process where human interaction is the value. A difficult conversation, a negotiation, a disagreement, a customer who needs reassurance, or a decision where someone wants another person to put their name and reputation behind a recommendation. Those moments still matter.

I have been in sales and business development long enough to remember selling before email, CRM systems, Zoom and now AI. Technology has changed almost everything about how we communicate, but I am not convinced it has changed human nature nearly as much. People still want to be heard. They still want to know who they are dealing with. They still want to believe that when something goes wrong, there is a real person on the other end who will take responsibility.

So I am not worried that AI will destroy sales. I do think it will change what customers value in a salesperson. Information will become easier to get and routine tasks will become easier to automate. Trust, judgment and accountability will not.

The question for business leaders, then, may not be whether AI can help you sell more. The more important question is how to use it in a way that improves the business without weakening the relationships that helped build it in the first place.

At TCV Growth Partners, we work with leadership teams to think through challenges like these from a practical operating perspective. If you are exploring how to incorporate AI into your business while preserving the human judgment, relationships and accountability your customers value, we would welcome the conversation. Reach out to the TCV Growth Partners team to learn more.

What do you think?  Feel free to share your thoughts – Rick@TCV-Growth.Partners