Death of a Salesforce: Why AI Will Transform Sales

a16z Podcast

a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sales is evolving. AI-native systems are replacing traditional CRM tools, capturing unstructured insights from emails, Slack, surveys, and more in real time. These systems automate early-stage tasks like prospecting and qualification, enabling sales teams to focus on high-value work—while AI provides live coaching and drives decisions across sales, marketing, and product teams. In this episode, a16z partners Joe Schmidt and Marc Andrusko explore the evolution of sales tools and strategies, sharing their insights on what’s driving this shift. Is this the “Death of a Salesforce”? Perhaps that’s an overstatement. But one thing is clear: the future belongs to those who leverage data and AI to drive decisions—not just activities.

Transcript

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0:00.0	plugging into anywhere that customer feedback comes in, and that could be your email, that could be Slack, that could be Zendesk.
0:06.2	System of records can now have much more context, and context is what human beings use to make decisions.
0:12.6	There's insatiable demand right now, demand, and frankly, in which I've never really seen.
0:17.7	In 1999, some 25 years ago, Mark Benioff started Salesforce, with a vision to build, quote,
0:25.3	a world-class internet company for Salesforce automation.
0:28.8	Now, today, in 2024, there are thousands of Salesforce partners and hundreds of thousands
0:33.9	of certified professionals all around the world. Not to mention other
0:38.1	multi-billing dollar companies like HubSpot or Zendesk that are fundamentally built on the concept
0:43.8	of a system of record. And selling is a strategy as old as time, but the latest iteration
0:50.2	gave sales teams the ability to track, to assign, and to reward sales more effectively,
0:55.6	all through better technology. And the good news is that technology is not done progressing.
1:01.0	So that's what today's episode is all about, the intersection of sales and artificial intelligence.
1:06.8	So how will AI change selling as we know it? What workflows can be automated or redefined?
1:12.5	And better yet, what can the integration of AI do to fundamentally change the way that
1:17.0	selling is done, just as we saw in the last era of the CRM?
1:20.9	We discuss all this and more together with investing partners on the A16Z apps team,
1:25.6	Joe Schmidt and Mark Andrewsko.
1:27.5	This is also part of a wider series on how AI is disrupting the enterprise.
1:32.4	So if you're interested to hear more about how it's reshaping everything from marketing
1:36.3	to accounting, head on over to our A16Z YouTube channel.
1:40.8	Oh, and one more thing.
1:42.4	This episode was actually based on a long-form article co-written by Mark,
	...

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