Tactical Tips to Make Your Sales Skills AI and Recession Proof

Artificial Intelligence is changing how we sell and interact with buyers, allowing one sales rep to be the force of many. Already, more than half of leading companies are using AI in their sales and marketing units while the rest are planning to do so in the next few years.

This is happening and AIs reach into more “human” communications will continue to grow. I want to give everyone new in their sales career, even those a little further down the road, and maybe feeling a bit anxious, 3 tactical tips to make your sales skills AI and recession proof.

Tactical Tip 1: Invest in your EQ (Emotional Intelligence)

Invest in your soft skills. The ability to adjust and move people. There are a number of amazing books out there about behavior psychology. A personal favorite of mine is called Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, and there is a slew of other books out there. The point is to start investing in your EQ, your own emotional intelligence, and your ability to understand why people do the things they do. 

This emotional understanding and inherent aptitude are the things AI has the toughest time actually mimicking. Again, soft skills.

Here's one of the most important questions I can put in your ear:

“Am I actually getting better at getting humans to move and to do things?” 

Understanding the actions of humans is something that’s going to continue to be fairly AI proof. Although tremendous strides have been made in AI to register human emotions by identifying facial patterns and moods by the sound of a person’s voice, I still believe machines are a long way from understanding how to react to these emotions. AI may be able to identify a customer is upset, but how we defuse the situation and turn it around still takes human understanding.

Tactical Tip 2: Does your role use these soft skills?

Think about the role you’re in today. If you think about what’s going to progress in AI in the next 2, 3, 5+ years, is the role you’re doing today allowing you to use soft skills and emotional intelligence? If not, and your role has become repetitive - if things like NLP and machine learning are able to mimic aspects of your job - then in 5-10 years they’ll be doing almost all of it. So ask yourself, in the role you’re doing today, are you setting yourself up for a long term career? 

No?

What changes can you make to do so? Don’t be the last truck driver on the road when we can all see that self driving trucks are coming. Don’t look in the mirror in 10 years and realize that your industry/role has now vanished.

Tactical Tip 3: Build a Network

Your network should be a group of trusted people that you can tap into over and over again. I talk a lot about the importance of professional, personal branding. That network of people that you build never goes away. 

A machine can’t replace the fact that you know so-and-so and have built a trusted 10-year relationship with them and have mutually shared a network of 20 other past/present colleagues and experts in your space. Therefore, invest in your network (right now). 

Building a network can be one of the toughest challenges for those new to sales and even some of us veterans. A staggering 25 percent of sales professionals across all levels admit that they don’t network at all! I want to be clear that networking isn’t only for prospecting, closing deals, and of course, making you AI proof. It also opens other doors in your career for advice, mentorships, and new opportunities (85 percent of jobs are filled through networking).

So my friends, start making yourself AI and recession proof today by investing in the skills AI can’t replicate, integrate them into your role, and start building relationships and networks that matter.