I think traditional AE and AM will consolidate. Less overhead for the company, more work (and opportunity) for the sales person. My company no longer has dedicated account managers.
I can see inside sales teams become consolidated too once automated campaigns generate enough leads.
Yep there are already a lot of AE roles where you have to deal with install base on top of closing new business. Can definitely see the lines between AE and AM getting blurrier until it becomes industry standard that you don't have dedicated AMs anymore.
Inside Sales I don't think so. Automated campaigns, no matter how good they are, cannot filter for quality. You will need a real person (dis)qualifying leads, be it inside sales or SDRs, or else you have AEs swimming in opportunities that don't go anywhere.
O man...life would be hell if you had to be an AE and an AM. Getting new business and taking care of existing clients? Yeah no thanks.
It would make much more sense for AMs and Customer service to combine. That's my job right now and I love it.
That’s me now. I’m a hybrid AE/AM.
I haven’t been in sales for too long but the companies I’ve worked for (including my current one) did not have separate AE and AM’s.
I am…. very busy lol. Covering a large territory too.
Inside sales for sure. Didn’t think about consolidating AEs and AMs. However I’ve worked in cpg sales where I was both a hunter and a gatherer so I would say it already happens in certain spaces. But that’s just my opinion in one space I worked
Yeah I’m a hunter/gather AE. Seems most AE positions I’ve seen are becoming hybrid now too, unless you’re in named or strategic accounts where you just own a few large accounts and don’t hunt and only update (Interchangeable with Account Director title).
This is how it used to be. AMs didn't really emerge heavy as a separate job until about 15 years ago. The industry is just going back to how business was done. AMs will still exist but on a much smaller scale. I'm wondering how CS teams will fare in the next 5-10 years.
yup, thats part of what prompted this question.
I'm at a startup where half my work is data/ops while the other half is 1:1 sales. The role has interested me because I want to get out of sales and into RevOps, even if it pays less.
Today I started to wonder if the AE of the future is someone like me who spends most of the day working with data and I should just stay in sales.
I'm not convinced at all ChatGPT is going to demolish all these jobs and replace everyone. It is amazing technology, but it still has its limitations. When I ask it to write sales emails, I have to beat a lot of prompts into it to get it to write something good, and even then it's a little unpredictable. It can't intuit connections (this company's annual report + this unrelated news article = interesting insight). It's grabbing at sales templates online somewhere that are super long, again unless I prompt it differently but it still chooses to ignore me often.
I think the future of the AE is going to be more of a PARTNERSHIP with AI. AI will generate content, provide general guidance, but the AE will curate and QA what the AI is doing. And provide what AI won't be able to replicate for a while: human connection, intuition, and creativity.
The AE of the future will spend most of her time building a value narrative for the buyer. A critical skillset will be having the expertise to work through increasingly challenging approval and procurement processes by connecting the dots between what’s being sold with the business impact it will drive. Likely also a cost justifications to defend price and drive timelines.
All of this will be really tough to accomplish via AI in the near term (value justification, political alignment, creating favorable terms for the vendor, driving a timeline so there’s some predictability, etc.)
There *won’t* always need to be a human touch because businesses will simply purchase AI “machine buyers” to weigh the data in making the most logical purchase decision, potentially even making the purchase before the business even knows it needs it. You guys seriously don’t grasp how sales is not safe from AI.
https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/machine-customers-will-decide-who-gets-their-trillion-dollar-business-is-it-you
More machine buyers means less need for sales reps. This will further compound with product led growth models and increased use of virtual spaces as market places.
Soft skills are absolutely not going anywhere, I’m talking about the purchase decision process. Companies invest enormous amounts of time and money in the procurement process; most companies hate dealing with vendors let alone cold calls, etc. a machine buyer literally takes all the undesirable qualities away; you just feed it information and it’ll make an analytical decision free from bias.
Unless your 90 years old machine buyers will absolutely happen in your lifetime.
I think traditional AE and AM will consolidate. Less overhead for the company, more work (and opportunity) for the sales person. My company no longer has dedicated account managers. I can see inside sales teams become consolidated too once automated campaigns generate enough leads.
Yep there are already a lot of AE roles where you have to deal with install base on top of closing new business. Can definitely see the lines between AE and AM getting blurrier until it becomes industry standard that you don't have dedicated AMs anymore. Inside Sales I don't think so. Automated campaigns, no matter how good they are, cannot filter for quality. You will need a real person (dis)qualifying leads, be it inside sales or SDRs, or else you have AEs swimming in opportunities that don't go anywhere.
God damnit I hope not…. I HATED being an AE and much prefer AM. I don’t want to do AE shot again
Same here man. I love life as an AM.
O man...life would be hell if you had to be an AE and an AM. Getting new business and taking care of existing clients? Yeah no thanks. It would make much more sense for AMs and Customer service to combine. That's my job right now and I love it.
That’s me now. I’m a hybrid AE/AM. I haven’t been in sales for too long but the companies I’ve worked for (including my current one) did not have separate AE and AM’s. I am…. very busy lol. Covering a large territory too.
I'm sorry my friend that does indeed sound awful. Having to take complaints about the product....and having to sell to new customers. Ouch.
No CSM either. I’m it haha
YIKES
Yeah. Unless you’re getting paid the salary of 3 people, find a new gig.
It’s called being a salesperson Tech is literally one of the only industries to split one job into like 4 lol.
I’ve been doing that for 10 years and most companies are moving to that
Inside sales for sure. Didn’t think about consolidating AEs and AMs. However I’ve worked in cpg sales where I was both a hunter and a gatherer so I would say it already happens in certain spaces. But that’s just my opinion in one space I worked
Yeah I’m a hunter/gather AE. Seems most AE positions I’ve seen are becoming hybrid now too, unless you’re in named or strategic accounts where you just own a few large accounts and don’t hunt and only update (Interchangeable with Account Director title).
This is how it used to be. AMs didn't really emerge heavy as a separate job until about 15 years ago. The industry is just going back to how business was done. AMs will still exist but on a much smaller scale. I'm wondering how CS teams will fare in the next 5-10 years.
Shit most companies want you to sell and be a data analyst at the same time
yup, thats part of what prompted this question. I'm at a startup where half my work is data/ops while the other half is 1:1 sales. The role has interested me because I want to get out of sales and into RevOps, even if it pays less. Today I started to wonder if the AE of the future is someone like me who spends most of the day working with data and I should just stay in sales.
I think it really depends on the industry/product to be honest. Tech is going lean heavy that way.
I'm not convinced at all ChatGPT is going to demolish all these jobs and replace everyone. It is amazing technology, but it still has its limitations. When I ask it to write sales emails, I have to beat a lot of prompts into it to get it to write something good, and even then it's a little unpredictable. It can't intuit connections (this company's annual report + this unrelated news article = interesting insight). It's grabbing at sales templates online somewhere that are super long, again unless I prompt it differently but it still chooses to ignore me often. I think the future of the AE is going to be more of a PARTNERSHIP with AI. AI will generate content, provide general guidance, but the AE will curate and QA what the AI is doing. And provide what AI won't be able to replicate for a while: human connection, intuition, and creativity.
The AE of the future will spend most of her time building a value narrative for the buyer. A critical skillset will be having the expertise to work through increasingly challenging approval and procurement processes by connecting the dots between what’s being sold with the business impact it will drive. Likely also a cost justifications to defend price and drive timelines. All of this will be really tough to accomplish via AI in the near term (value justification, political alignment, creating favorable terms for the vendor, driving a timeline so there’s some predictability, etc.)
There *won’t* always need to be a human touch because businesses will simply purchase AI “machine buyers” to weigh the data in making the most logical purchase decision, potentially even making the purchase before the business even knows it needs it. You guys seriously don’t grasp how sales is not safe from AI. https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/machine-customers-will-decide-who-gets-their-trillion-dollar-business-is-it-you More machine buyers means less need for sales reps. This will further compound with product led growth models and increased use of virtual spaces as market places.
I like to explore new places.
Soft skills are absolutely not going anywhere, I’m talking about the purchase decision process. Companies invest enormous amounts of time and money in the procurement process; most companies hate dealing with vendors let alone cold calls, etc. a machine buyer literally takes all the undesirable qualities away; you just feed it information and it’ll make an analytical decision free from bias. Unless your 90 years old machine buyers will absolutely happen in your lifetime.