Should they deploy a AI chatbot now or wait?
The risk: deploying an AI chatbot, as part of the article’s original vision, is a potentially massive over-commitment. The company could lose a number of their valuable sales reps in layoffs, top clients don’t want to be experimented on, and it’s unclear what immediate gains the AI chatbot would bring in.
The reward: deploying an AI chatbot successfully could greatly reduce costs through layoffs and, even if top clients don’t want to participate, new clients can be brought in and be more personally catered to, potentially sales opportunities and, thus, revenue.
My take: AI chatbots are an excellent tool to decipher and parse information – your own, the internet’s, a company’s, etc. It is not, however, a real person. It does not think and it is not intelligent either logically or emotionally. Sales is a deeply personal function that requires deep knowledge of an industry, the folks working in that industry, and what is being sold at any given moment. It is an incredibly risky place to implement generative AI as it can directly slash the base revenue of the company without any immediate gain. It is far safer to allow other companies (potentially even in other industries, meaning this company can be a first-mover in its specific product space) to experiment with gen AI sales first, see what works, and follow quickly, as was suggested in the article. This way, the base revenue is protected and the potential revenue from innovated is still largely captureable.
What should they consider as they make that decision?
Regardless of what decision they make, they should consider:
1. The health and culture of their sales org (sacrificing this for potentially limited/nonexistant long term gains isn’t worth it)
2. The short term costs and benefits of switching to AI-enablement (why slash the org without seeing what gains can be won first?)
3. How AI-enablement fits into the larger product line’s vision and reconcile it with client needs and wishes up front.
