Sales Leader Compass: AI Skills are Essential, But Sales Leaders Aren’t Hiring For Them

The theme of our first LinkedIn Sales Leader Compass Report—published in partnership with Ipsos—is navigating the path to future ready, or being prepared for what’s ahead in the next 1-2 years. We believe that being future ready—in this AI powered era—involves being equipped with the technologies and the skills, and the best practices, so that your team can have the right conversations with people who matter and achieve profitable, sustainable, and exponential growth. 

Quick recap. In last month’s blog post, we shared that only one quarter (28%) of sales executives globally are highly confident about being future ready and some of the underlying reasons why most sales executives are feeling overwhelmed by the rapid emergence of AI. Then, in our blog post from a few weeks ago, we dove deeply into how AI technologies can offload administrative tasks like updating a CRM and spending hours doing customer research to create more time for selling. In fact, we found that AI can potentially double selling time from an average of 10 hours a week to 20+. 

This week, we are exploring the second element of being future ready—and go deep into the state of sales skills today. And, at LinkedIn–that’s something that we know a lot about with over 1 billion members adding skills to their profiles and employers adding required skills to their job descriptions. In fact, over the last 12 months, LinkedIn members have added 787M skills to their profiles, up 56% year-over-year.

While core human capabilities such as relationship-building, communication, and negotiation remain essential, sales teams are increasingly investing in expanding their AI expertise, both through formal training and self-guided learning.

On average, sales professionals devote about 13% of their time—equivalent to just over 5 hours per week—to upskilling and development, with the goal of achieving even greater success. While refining their human skills remains a priority, sellers are also accelerating their adoption of AI knowledge, ensuring they stay ahead in an evolving landscape.

But here's the twist: while human skills dominate sales roles, AI literacy is fast becoming the most essential skill for success in the near future. Despite the growing importance of AI, fewer than 1% of sales roles currently list AI expertise as a requirement, according to the latest LinkedIn data. This presents an untapped opportunity; AI is transforming the sales function and while human skills will remain vital, investing in AI training is only part of the puzzle. Hiring for these new skills is just as crucial.

Your Upskilling Bonus Track: If you’re interested in taking free LinkedIn Learning courses to help you and your team upskill their AI and selling skills, then subscribe to the Sales Leader Compass Newsletter where you’ll find helpful content on your path to becoming future ready.

Sales Remains Fundamentally Human-Centric 

It should come as no surprise that the top ten skills identified in job descriptions for sales roles globally by LinkedIn are exclusively human-focused. After all, skills such as relationship development, communication, and negotiation are crucial to establishing buyer trust, engaging in meaningful conversations, nurturing relationships, and closing deals. Interestingly, AI was not even close to entering the top 10 list. The demand for these core human skills in sales globally has actually increased compared to the demand for these skills in 2022. 

According to LinkedIn skills data, relationship development and customer satisfaction are the top two skills with the largest increase in demand. More specifically, roles requiring relationship development have increased 45x and roles requiring customer satisfaction have increased 3x in the last two years. Salespeople understand this deeply. When provided a list of top skills to choose from—a mix of both human and AI skills—the top 5 skills that sellers globally identified as critical for success today are all human.

We surveyed 1,000 sales professionals worldwide, asking them to identify the skills they believe are most critical both today and in the future. The results were striking: the skills deemed essential for success in the present were overwhelmingly human-focused, while those seen as crucial for the future were nearly all technology-driven. The key takeaway? To transform your team into top sellers, they must excel in both human and technical skills—mastering the full spectrum is essential for sustained success.

Over Two-Thirds of Sellers Have Received Formal AI Training, But They Are Still Hungry for More

AI represents a significant opportunity for sales professionals, with understanding and leveraging AI tools and insights being identified as the #1 most critical skill for future success. Considering that the AI revolution is just over a year old, it’s remarkable that over two-thirds of sellers report that they have received formal AI training from their employers, but sellers want more. Nearly half of sellers globally are independently pursuing additional learning—either taking online courses on AI or proactively playing around with AI tools on their own. In terms of what sales leaders and teams are learning on LinkedIn, both are taking a mix of human and AI skills, but we wanted to share two courses that made both groups’ top 10 list: What is Generative AI? and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, both of which are free and unlocked for you and your team to get up to speed on AI basics.

Here’s Your AI Hiring Talent Wakeup Call

While certain sales roles, particularly those in “hunter” and “sales executive” positions, are starting to require AI skills, the overall demand for AI expertise for sales roles generally, remains extremely low. After analyzing job descriptions for sales roles listed on LinkedIn, we found that less than 1% of sales positions currently list AI skills as a requirement, when compared to the predominant skill of “selling.” This reveals a significant opportunity for organizations to hire sellers that already know how to use AI technologies and ramp them faster into roles that require them to use AI-powered solutions.

3 Things That You Can Do Today to Get Your AI Technologies Future Ready

In a world where you can either buy skills— hire for them—or build them—train for them. There’s work for sales executives to do on both fronts to ensure that your team not only understands how to use AI to automate administrative tasks and carve out more time for uplevelling their relationship building skills. Here are three actionable takeaways to consider:

• Embrace and Integrate AI Training: Sales executives should ensure their training programs are comprehensive and up-to-date, covering both foundational and advanced AI skills to fully leverage the potential of these technologies.
• Align Job Requirements with Future Skills: There is a notable discrepancy between the skills sales professionals are pursuing and the skills currently required by employers. Sales executives should include AI competencies in job descriptions and performance metrics. 
• Balance Human and AI Skill Building: While AI is becoming increasingly important, sales remains a fundamentally human centric field. Sales executives should foster a balanced approach, ensuring that while their teams develop AI expertise, they also continue to hone essential human skills. 

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