My last sales job was at a place where they wanted to record the cold calls and I would only speak if they picked up the phone. I did everything I could to sabotage it — told my boss the line kept dropping, etc. Because what I learned in sales is that the decision makers on the other end of the line are often fairly bright people who are bored with the kind of people they have to speak with.
They loved talking to someone like me! I’d do things like ask what their major was in college, and riff on that. I remember telling one hedge fund manager that their business model was inherently immoral, and what would they tell their kids when that became apparent? You’d think they would just hang up on me, but no — they liked sparring with an intelligent person!
I had people offer me jobs without ever meeting me. “I don’t understand most of what you’re saying, but I can tell you’re not a bullshitter,” one of them told me. (The one and only time I flew first class, I was seated next to a Midwest CEO who hated Democrats. I didn’t change his mind, but by the time we landed, he’d offered me a job.)
Would any of that happen with AI?
Now, sales departments always want you to make more calls. When I became head of my sales department, I actually lowered the number of calls they had to make. At the end of the year, my department’s sales went up 300%! Because you are more likely to get someone who’s genuinely interested if you can actually converse with them. And I’ll bet you that most of the bites you get with AI don’t actually convert to large numbers. High-level sales is always about personal connection.
Wait. I don’t get it. I assume they mean the AI can do 1000s of calls concurrently? Because sequentially that gives you a couple of milliseconds per call. The AI might get something out of that, but the human at the other end wouldn’t even know there’d been a call.
Plus, “almost indistinguishable”? As in a nitpicky difference like six fingers instead of five?
My late friend JT supported his family for years as a door to door salesman, and that’s exactly what he said. He told me he would look for a nice boat in a driveway and come around when they were outside and strike up a conversation about boats. After an hour or so and a few coffees and cigarettes they would ask him what he was up to, and then he would sell them some insurance…