AI frees salespeople from valueless tasks so that they can focus on what is essential: understanding the real challenges of a decision-maker and building the relationship before the need is formalized.
In conferences, boards or managerial journals, one idea keeps coming up:artificial intelligence will replace salespeople. It will automate sales, streamline cycles and, therefore, eliminate human intermediaries. However, in the field of major accounts, a completely different reality is emerging.
After more than fifteen years in complex and international technology sales, I have learned one thing: deals are not won where you think. According to the 6sense 2025 platform report, 94% of B2B buying groups already have their preferred suppliers before they even pick up the phone. The first meeting is therefore not used to convince. It serves to confirm and eliminate since the decision has already been made. I experienced this about ten years ago. A large retail brand was looking for a travel and expense management solution. Our proposal was (very) competitive, we had gone through the various selection stages without any problem but we were not selected. For what ? Because the relationship didn’t exist. In hindsight, we should never have responded to this call for tenders. We served as a hare, to make up the numbers at most. That day, I understood that selling starts well before the first meeting. It begins in the relationship that we create upstream.
This is precisely where AI reveals its true nature: not as a replacement, nor even an assistant, but as a sparring partner. Today, it analyzes calls to produce a risk matrix in real time and automates internal reporting. According to the HubSpot platform, it takes up to two hours per day from non-value-added tasks. From then on, the salesperson transforms into a strategist. As in a flight on autopilot, it monitors and sets the heading. The tool does the rest.
But AI has an absolute limit: it cannot create relationships. It can optimize a message, analyze a behavior but it will not capture something unsaid, an opening to move on to a more personal discussion. On a complex seven-figure sale, what turns the deal around is this trust built over months. Even more so if the sale involves around ten people in several countries. In this case, we must be able to understand who carries the budget, who listens to this or that person and who will have the final word.
With a manager, I don’t do a product presentation, or a sales agenda, but rather lunches. I talk about my hobbies, about where I live. When one opens, the other also opens. Gradually, I learn what really matters to him. Not what he says he wants, no, but what really concerns him. The relationship is not built in formal moments. It is built outside. Apart from the presentations. Outside of commercial agendas. In exchanges where there is, apparently, nothing to sell. It is in these moments that we understand what is not being said. What really matters to a decision maker. What worries him. What he seeks to secure. Not what it expresses in a specification. But what, in reality, will guide his decision. And that’s precisely where it all begins.
Because selling is emotional before being rational. But what we often underestimate is the nature of this emotion. In complex sales, it’s not a matter of “crush.” It’s about security. Perception of risk. What the decision says about the person who makes it. Decision makers don’t just choose one solution. They choose a decision that they can live with over time. And it is at this precise place that everything plays out. Understanding the issues of an account is the minimum. But we must go further. Like with this interlocutor who had just been recruited into a new company. New position, new team, pressure to prove yourself. The solution I proposed could directly impact his end-of-year results and therefore secure his place. It was no longer a technology deal. It was a decision that affected his professional future. When we understand that, we no longer sell in the same way.
AI therefore does not reduce the role of the salesperson, it elevates it. Tomorrow, we will no longer value the one who makes the most calls, who has the most meetings. We will value the one who sees better. The one who understands power dynamics, identifies the real motivations and builds the relationship before the need is formalized. In this new paradigm, the difference will not be in speed. It will be done on accuracy and AI can be an ally of choice, not an adversary.
