The 2026 Sales Team: 50% Humans, 50% AIs. All 1 Team.

We’ve already seen something happen in support.  You can’t automate 100% of support with AI yet.  At least, not reliably.  But you can automate 30%-40% of support for real … with top 10% CSAT.

So what does that mean for inside sales?

Probably something similar by 2026.

A 50/50 Sales Team.  50% of your team are humans.  50% are AI.  At least for SMB and more routine mid-market sales.

From AI Support to AI Teammates

Right now, most companies are using AI for support functions—scheduling meetings, drafting follow-up emails, transcribing calls, and generating basic reporting. By 2026, these same AI systems will have evolved to manage entire sections of the sales process autonomously.  It’s already getting there.  It’s close.

Here’s what this evolution looks like:

1. Maintain Relationships: AIs will maintain relationships with early-stage prospects, nurturing them until they’re ready for human interaction. They’ll personalize outreach at scale without the “spray and pray” feel of traditional automation.  We’re close here.
2. Meeting Preparation: AI teammates will prepare complete briefing documents, competitive intelligence, and suggested talking points based on the prospect’s latest activities, earnings calls, and industry developments.  We’re already here.
3. Deal Strategy: AIs will independently analyze deal progression, suggest next steps, and even flag at-risk opportunities before humans notice the warning signs.  This we don’t have yet, but honestly it’s not very hard for a very well trained AI.
4. Post-Sale Handoff: The transition to customer success will be streamlined as AI teammates transfer complete relationship histories without knowledge gaps.  And to an AI+Human Customer Success team.  The AI side will already know the customer cold the moment they are handed over.

The 2026 Account Executive Role

“We will need AEs. Just fewer.”   At least for 1-2 call closes, and maybe more.  Probably all the way to mid-market.

That AE role isn’t disappearing, but it will be transforming dramatically:

1. Higher-Value Conversations: Human AEs will focus exclusively on high-judgment, high-empathy interactions where personal connection matters most.
2. Strategic Guidance: AEs will become trusted advisors rather than information sources, as prospects will already have baseline knowledge from AI interactions.
3. Complexity Management: Human sellers will specialize in navigating complex buying committees and sophisticated deal structures that require nuanced understanding.
4. Removing Humans from “Routine” $3k-$30k Deals.  If it’s just a few questions, and the prospect has already tried the product, there will no longer be a need for a human.
5. AI Collaboration Skills: The most successful AEs will excel at collaborating with their AI teammates, knowing when to let the AI lead and when to step in personally.
6. An Real AI on Every Zoom.  Call recordings and notetakers will soon seem like the past.  An A+ AI will soon join every sales call, for real.  Able to jump in and answer any and all questions.  Including many the humans can’t answer.

The 50/50 Challenge for CROs.  You’ll Need to Manage Both.

“CROs will need to manage a 50/50 Team.  50% Humans, 50% AI.” This represents perhaps the greatest leadership change of the coming year.  And QA tools are already doing this in support space.  They are already QA’ing human+AI hybrid teams with tools like MaestroQA and Observe, among others.

The 2026 CRO must:

1. Create Unified Workflows: Design processes where work smoothly transitions between human and AI teammates without friction or redundancy.
2. Develop New Performance Metrics: Traditional sales metrics don’t capture the effectiveness of this hybrid approach. CROs need metrics that reflect the overall team performance rather than separating human and AI contributions.
3. Redefine Culture: Sales organizations have always been built around human dynamics. CROs must now foster cultures that celebrate both human excellence and effective AI collaboration.
4. Reallocate Resources: With AI handling routine sales at scale, CROs will need to hire sales execs that can make this jump.
5. Be Much More AI and Tech Savvy.  In some cases, RevOps perhaps will own the AI side of sales.  But even so, the CRO of 2026 will need to be an expert in this half of their team, one way or another.

Addressing the Compensation Question

How do you compensate a team that’s half human, half AI?  For now, that’s less important than just building the team.  But ultimately, it may mean sales reps just plain have to close more to earn what they earn today:

1. Team-Based Incentives: Compensation might ultimately tie to overall territory performance rather than individual deals.  But in general, this leads to lower overall AE comp.
2. Quality Metrics: Human AEs are rewarded for the quality of customer relationships and long-term value, not just closed deals.  The “Mech AE” may be able to do more here over time.
3. AI Optimization Bonuses: Sales professionals receive incentives for improving AI effectiveness through feedback and optimization.
4. Will Humans Be Able to Handle More Deals? That’s an open question.  If so, it may lead to commissions falling.  Perhaps even 50%.  Because they’ll be expected to close 2x as many deals with their AI teammates.  \
5. Sales Teams Ironically May Specialize More.  You might have a team that just does live demos, together with the AI sales team.  Or in many cases, one that just handles issues kicked up by AI sales reps.

Preparing Your Org

For companies looking to get ahead of this shift:

1. Identify Human Strengths in Your Sales Process: Map which aspects of your sales process truly require human judgment, creativity, and empathy.  It may be less than you think.  Demos?  Probably.  Identifying all the stakeholders?  Maybe.  But many reps aren’t that great here today.  Urgency?  Maybe.  But only the best really can run the urgency playbook well.
2. Upskill Your Team: Invest in training that helps sales professionals collaborate effectively with AI systems.  But realistically, not all will be able to make the jump.
3. Pilot Hybrid Teams: Create experimental sales pods with varying human-to-AI ratios to find the optimal balance for your specific market.

Addressing the Hiring and Talent Gap With Even More AI Sales

I don’t know any start-up that can find enough top sales talent.  None.  So instead of settling, many will rely more on AI sales than more established orgs.  Not because it’s better, but because it’s there.  An AI sales rep that knows the product cold 24×7 is better than struggling to hire anyone at all you trust to add to the team.

The Top 10% of Sales Reps Today Close 65% of All Deals.  Will We Need The Rest?

Once you think about it this way, you may agree we just won’t need as many sales execs for routine deals.  Even today, the top 10% of reps close 65% of deals.  If AI lets you focus the human-driven deals into your Top 10% reps … you may not need all that many of the rest.

 

Enterprise Will Lag, But Change Still Coming

Enterprise sales still generally needs a quarterback to close deals.  A quarterback that can manage a team and plays over many, many months.  And that will require account management by humans.  But also ask yourself — how many sales processes have you been through that weere great?

Not that many.  There will be plenty of change coming in enterprise sales with AI.  But for now, it won’t be to 50/50 Human/AI ratios.  We’ll see where it goes over time.

You can see Windsurf’s built a massive enterprise sales team overnight.  One that is AI infused, but with humans still the quarterbacks:

The Future is Already Here. Just Look.

Organizations clinging to traditional sales structures especially in SMB and mid-marklet will find themselves rapidly outpaced by competitors embracing this hybrid approach. The 50/50 sales team isn’t a far-future concept—it’s the reality innovative companies are building right now.

The most successful sales organizations of 2026 won’t be those with the best humans or the best AI, but those that have mastered making them work together as a unified force.

It’s an inflection point.  The question isn’t whether to adapt, but how quickly you can transform your sales organization into this new model.

For CROs and sales leaders, the time to start building your 50/50 team isn’t next year—it’s today.