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AI makes sales better, not cheaper

Andreas Schwarz
aisalesbusiness-developmentproductivity

This article was written by Andreas Schwarz. AI was used for proofreading and to research sources.

First of all, we are big fans of AI. We use it here at Franke und Schwarz every day, and nearly every internal process is AI-enhanced. But we do have the feeling that a lot of people have the wrong perception about the impact of AI on business development.

Whilst many companies and service providers promised AI-based sales platforms that would take over internal sales departments in order to drive success and save costs, the figures show something completely different. AI does make good salespeople even better, but it very seldom saves costs, let alone replaces a human. So why is that?

In order to put our impression to the test, we looked into a lot of data from surveys and reports to truly understand the positive impact of AI on business development.

One thing that became very obvious is the fact that business development is an opaque part of most organizations, where usually only the salespeople themselves have insight and processes are very inefficient.

Salesforce reported in 2022 that reps only spend 28% of their time selling, and the rest doing deal management, data entry and so on. In 2024, Gartner reported that 60% of the time is spent on non-selling tasks (as cited by Salesforce).

That is, in our opinion, one of the problems that AI does solve. Let us take an example: Before AI, it was a real pain to compare the CRM against trade fair exhibitor lists. We ourselves spent weeks checking up on a single conference. Now this work is done in the background, and we can focus on what really counts: getting in contact with those leads and booking meetings.

This example also fits well with HubSpot’s findings on what salespeople actually use AI for: automating manual processes (64%) and customer research (55%) top the list. And notably, Salesforce found that high performers are 1.7x more likely than underperformers to use AI prospecting agents.

So we do see that AI frees up a lot of time for salespeople and also makes tasks redundant that are, quite frankly, way below their pay grade.

That freed-up time is exactly where the money is made. A recent Gartner survey found that AI saves sellers 4.8 hours per week on average, yet 72% of sales organizations fail to reinvest that time into high-value selling. The ones that do reinvest it are 2.2x more likely to exceed their customer growth goals.

When good salespeople spend more time selling, they will also sell more. McKinsey states that companies investing in AI in sales see a 3 to 15% revenue uplift and a 10 to 20% higher sales ROI.

Coming back to “better, not cheaper”: McKinsey’s global State of AI survey also found that 65% of companies using AI in marketing and sales report revenue increases, but only 41% report cost reductions (as summarized by CyberForum).

These figures are on a company level and should encourage every C-level to invest in AI sales enablement. Sometimes we hear doubts about whether salespeople actually want to work with AI. Well, Gartner found that sellers using AI tools are 3.7x more likely to hit their quota, and which salesperson does not want to hit quota and earn the bonus? And it goes beyond the paycheck, because there is a second bonus, one that has nothing to do with money: Salesforce found that 85% of reps working with AI agents say it frees them up for higher-value work, and 82% even see AI as an opportunity for career growth.

And this is, in the end, the whole point. AI took away the spreadsheet nights, the manual list-checking and the data entry, and gave that time back to the humans who build relationships and close deals. The winners are the companies whose sales teams finally get to sell.

AI makes sales better, not cheaper. And honestly, better was always the more interesting promise.

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