Dear SaaStr: How will Ai Change Sales in The Next 12 Months?
AI is going to fundamentally reshape sales over the next 12 months, and we’re already seeing the early signs. It’s already fundamentally remade the contact center and post-sales. And it’s just getting there in sales.
Here’s where I think it’s heading based on 100,000+ conversations already on SaaStr’s own AI, and my experience investing in so many contact center and post-sales leaders:
1. AI Will Join Every Sales Call
Within the next year, AI will become a standard participant in sales calls—not just as a note-taker, but as an active contributor. It’ll know your product cold, answer questions instantly, and eliminate the “I’ll get back to you” moments that kill momentum. This will take sales calls from 10% being great to 95% being great because the AI will always be prepared and accurate.
2. Routine Sales Will Be Handled by AI
For simpler, transactional sales, AI will take over entirely. We’re talking about 25–45% of routine deals being closed by AI alone. Customers will prefer interacting with an AI that knows the product perfectly over a junior rep who needs three days to respond. This is already happening in customer support, and sales is next.
3. Sales, Support, Success and Marketing Roles Will Soon Start to Blend
AI will enable salespeople to handle more of the customer lifecycle—prospecting, closing, onboarding, and even customer success. The hyper-specialization of roles like SDRs, AEs, and CSMs will start to fade as AI takes over the repetitive tasks and empowers sales reps to manage the entire process. This will create a better customer experience and more efficient sales teams.
4. AI Will Eliminate Drudgery
Sales reps spend 75% of their time on non-selling tasks—forecasting, CRM updates, internal meetings, etc. AI will automate much of this, freeing up reps to spend more time actually selling. Even cutting this drudgery in half would be a game-changer for productivity.
5. More Transparency Will Come to Sales, Fewer Sales Games
AI doesn’t lie, doesn’t overpromise, and always treats customers with respect. This could profoundly change sales culture, where bad behavior like deal rippling or misleading customers has been too common. Companies that leverage AI to build trust and transparency will win in the long run.
6. AI Will Make The Most Efficient More Efficent.
The focus will shift from adding more tools to making existing tools smarter. Instead of just improving efficiency incrementally, AI will fundamentally change how sales teams operate, turning them into “Mech AEs”—salespeople augmented by AI to be far more powerful and productive than before. At least, the best AEs. The mid tier AEs? We may or may not need them anymore (see next point).
7. We Just Won’t Need as Many SMB Sales Reps. And VPs of Sales Will Need to Learn to Manage AIs Just as Much As Their Human Reps.
Enterprise sales may require just as many humans as ever. But 1 and 2 call closes for SMBs? AI is already close to being able to handle these better than a human. Beyond this, VPs of Sales will need to quickly learn how to QA and “manage” their AI sales reps. Their answers, actions, etc. will still need to be audited, often daily.
This isn’t just hype—it’s happening now. And it’s accelerating.
f you’re not already experimenting with AI in your sales process, you’re going to fall behind. The key is to start small, figure out what works, and scale from there. Let me know if you want to dive deeper into any of these areas or discuss how to implement AI in your sales org.
Much more here:
