The Compass
Enterprise Sales in the Age of Abundance
4 Decades.
1000s of deals closed.
$1B+ in LTV revenue generated.
Software, Hardware & Services.
Global Enterprises. Many of the F2000. Most of Wall St.
North America. EMEA. SE Asia.
5 major tech disruptions: mainframes to distributed to desktop to wireless to internet to social.
And now AI.
Through all of that selling there has been one constant. Turns out I’ve been working in the Age of Scarcity.
As a Sales Rep there was seldom enough quality leads, good accounts or territory. Access to the right people was challenging. Each year my quota doubled, and my territory shrank by half. But like many high-performing sales professionals, we persisted and delivered. We made our number. Yet, at times, at a high cost.
As a Sales Leader there were few great salespeople nor time to coach them well. There was seldom enough resources to train the sales team properly. Pipelines were light and the time pressure intense. So, what did we do? We discounted our prices to make our number for the quarter. We robbed the future of precious deals to make the number. Imagine taking a deal worth $9M that would have closed 1 quarter out and discounting it down to $2M in the current quarter to make the forecasted street number. The rep was at a 10% commission rate. Do the math. The Sales Rep was angry and rightfully so. But it was the right call for the business and had to be made. That was fun.
As a Business Leader there was never enough revenue to comfortably hit the targets set by the Board and Investors. Of course, meeting them meant they would simply move the goals higher. Growth at all costs. And the scarcity of reliable forecasting was painful.
Our Buyers faced similar challenges. They lacked good information about how to get outside help to solve their business challenges. Sellers had the upper hand. We had the information they lacked and made them suffer through our boring demos and PowerPoint to get it. Think they will miss that stuff? Our Buyers frequently suffered with low adoption rates and poor ROI of the solutions they did buy. Sellers sometimes neglected to tell them how long and difficult the process was to implement their offerings.
The current Buyer / Seller relationship is based on this scarcity model:
All our sales processes and methodologies.
All our sales tactics & strategies.
All our pricing, negotiation and forecasting.
It’s a zero-sum game.
Enter AI. Currently, we are trying to throw an AI band aid on this mess, but you can’t automate bad process and expect different results. We are just wasting scarce time and budget.
But proper AI applications are coming soon and will change all of this. You can throw all this old sales process out. A lot of it was developed in the last century, is getting stale and doesn’t work properly anymore.
AI is going to radically change the Buyer / Seller relationship. It will now be based on an Abundance model. AI is not just the next technology disruption. This is like going from manual labor to engines magnified 10,000x.
This will require a fundamental change in how companies both buy and sell. By 2027 AI agents will be in place supporting both Buyers and Sellers. By 2030, the sales profession will look nothing like it does today (thank goodness). We will need all new sales process, methodologies, tactics, pricing & compensation models.
AI-driven businesses are projected to add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. (PwC).
Imagine what it will be like selling in this world? There will be plenty of opportunity for both Buyers & Sellers. But how we align those opportunities and execute positive transactions will be radically different.
Here are some of the changes:
We will accelerate the move from an analog scarcity model to a digital abundance model.
Sellers will be valued for their navigation skills. Not for following static playbooks.
Sellers will need to be good at strategy not just tactics.
Buyer/Seller relationships will be defined by AI-driven, hyper-personalized interactions that are relevant and timely.
The relationship will shift from transactional to collaborative. Sellers will work full-time alongside buyers to create long-term value, driven by shared insights instead of hanging out updating the CRM and the forecast.
AI will provide full transparency, helping to build trust and remove the friction often associated with negotiations.
Buyers and sellers will be supported by AI agents, which will handle much of the research, competitive analysis, decision-making and transactional details, leaving human professionals to focus on strategy, value and relationships.
Value-based pricing will become the standard. This means pricing will be tied directly to the measurable outcomes and value a product delivers to the buyer such as cost savings, increased revenue, or improved efficiency. Think about the impact of this on sales compensation. This shift will require salespeople to be deeply invested in understanding their buyer's goals and how their solution will contribute to them to get paid their commissions.
To thrive in this new model, salespeople will need to become experts in understanding the buyer’s business, identifying where value can be created, and ensuring the buyer achieves measurable success.
Success metrics will shift from things like the # of sales calls and quota achievement to performance-based outcomes, meaning salespeople will need to also focus on post-sale adoption, ROI, and overall customer success. Think commissions and customer bonus alignment.
Product life cycles will be shorter with frequent innovation requiring sales professionals to stay agile, continuously learning about new products, solutions, and industry trends to maintain their relevance as trusted advisors.
This transformation will lead to faster sales cycles, increased trust, and a more seamless buying experience for both parties.
Welcome to selling in the Age of Abundance!
Navigation: This was written while listening to Little Blue Planet by Michael E. Thanks to my fellow students in Cohort 13 of the Write of Passage for their edits & guidance. Writing well is a grail quest.
Artwork by Amy Donaldson. Peace.
