The future of sales: Balancing automation with human touch

I not-so-fondly remember sitting in a cramped two-room startup office in Palo Alto in 2015, staring at my computer screen. I had just hit “send” on a campaign that would blast out 40,000 automated emails with the subject line “deep linking your app.” 😅 Our strategy was simple and, at the time, cutting-edge: Flood inboxes and hope for a 1% response rate. That would be more than enough to hit our quota.

Fast forward to today, and that strategy seems not just outdated but almost comically ineffective. The tools at our disposal have evolved dramatically, but so, too, have the challenges we face in reaching and engaging our customers.

I had a flashback to this 2015 memory while talking with Leah Tharin on the latest “Leah’s ProducTea” episode. We discussed the rapidly changing landscape of sales and marketing technology and why we're on the cusp of another revolution in how we approach customer relationships and sales processes.

This topic is near and dear to my heart–and my work at Clarify–so I wanted to expand a bit on the need for sales and revtech leaders to balance automation and human touch in this new era.

The rise of AI in sales processes

Today's AI-driven tools can do things we could only dream of a few years ago. They can send emails from different IP addresses to avoid spam detection, research prospects, and even include personalized content about their interests. But here's the irony: My inbox is now flooded with nearly 100 outbound emails daily, most of which go straight to spam.

This saturation points to a fundamental shift in our industry. As Leah aptly put it during our conversation:

"What we're doing is we're trying to use all these tips, right? It's like, oh, you need to put on the face of the CEO. You need to include something that is dear to them. You need to post when they are active due to their time zone on a Tuesday morning right after they had their coffee and all this stuff. You can automate all of this, and this feels weird to me, and I think it becomes ineffective with time."

‍This highlights a critical issue: As automation becomes more sophisticated, it paradoxically becomes less effective. The very tools designed to help us reach customers more efficiently are now creating noise that drowns out meaningful communication. We need a paradigm shift in how we approach sales and create strategies centered on:

1. Context-aware AI: We need tools that understand deep patterns in customer behavior, industry trends, and individual preferences to create genuinely valuable touchpoints, not just superficial personalization.
2. Intelligent augmentation: AI should enhance human interaction, not replace it. It should identify promising leads, suggest optimal outreach times, and provide insightful talking points for sales representatives.
3. Quality-focused metrics: Success should be measured by the quality of interactions and value provided to potential customers, not just volume. AI tools should assess sentiment and engagement levels of responses.
4. Holistic, omni-channel approach: AI should orchestrate seamless, personalized experiences across all touchpoints–email, social media, phone calls, and in-person interactions–ensuring consistency and relevance throughout the customer journey.

The oversaturation of automated outreach of the past has pushed us toward a more sophisticated, nuanced approach to sales technology. The next generation of AI-driven tools needs to not just automate tasks, but to provide genuine intelligence that enhances human capabilities and creates real value for potential customers. Only then can we cut through the noise and establish meaningful connections in an increasingly crowded digital landscape.

The limitations of current CRM systems

This brings us to the elephant in the room: our current CRM systems. After countless interviews with operators of Salesforce and HubSpot, I've heard the same complaints time and again. These tools are slow, require extensive manual data entry, and struggle to integrate modern analytics schema effectively.

These systems were built on the assumption that users would input structured data manually. But in a world where AI can parse, deconstruct, and reformat data in seconds, this model feels outdated. As one of our pilots at Clarify continually reminds me. “I want a CRM where I don’t have to do anything. It just knows because it has context in my inbox, calendar and warehouse.” We're moving toward a future where manual data entry should be a thing of the past.

Consider this: Traditional CRMs have no idea what an event object is. They were not designed to collect analytics in the classical sense. When you think of tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude or CDPs like Segment, they collect users and events. CRMs have people, companies, and static state objects that shift and change with values, but you're not capturing what happens to those over time.

The next phase of AI in sales is about chaining these models together to create complex, human-like actions. Imagine a system that can listen to your sales calls, summarize the key points, draft follow-up emails, and even suggest the next best actions - all without manual input. This isn't science fiction; it's the direction we're heading.

The continued importance of human touch

Despite the rise of AI across all of GTM, the human element in sales is more important than ever. After all, no matter how fancy our tools, humans still trust and buy from humans at the end of the day.

As our tools become more sophisticated, our role shifts from data entry and routine tasks to high-level strategy and genuine relationship building.

The best salespeople I've worked with aren't persuaders - they're consultants. They're there to listen, understand the customer's needs, and guide them to the right solution, even if that solution isn't their product.

Balancing automation and human interaction

The key to the future of sales lies in striking the right balance between automation and human interaction. AI should enhance our capabilities, not replace them. It should handle the routine tasks, crunch the data, and provide insights, freeing us up to focus on what humans do best - building relationships, understanding nuanced needs, and providing strategic value.

This balance is crucial because customers are becoming increasingly savvy. They can tell when they're interacting with a bot or receiving an automated email. Authenticity is more valuable than ever in a world where everything can be automated.

The shift in go-to-market dynamics

It's not just sales that's evolving - the entire go-to-market landscape is undergoing a significant transformation. We're moving back to a probabilistic world, where marketing is reverting to strategies from the 1960s to 1990s. We no longer have as much control or understanding about who to reach and how to reach them.

This shift is pushing us to rethink our entire go-to-market strategy. We're seeing a move toward product-led growth (PLG) models, where the product itself becomes a key driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. This approach requires a tight integration between product, sales, and marketing teams.

RevTech leaders need to foster closer collaboration between product and go-to-market teams. The tools we build and use need to support this integrated approach, providing insights that span the entire customer journey from initial touch to expansion and renewal.

Embracing the RevTech revolution

We're experiencing another revolution in sales technology. AI and machine learning are poised to reimagine our tools entirely, overhauling RevTech as we know it. Despite rapid advancements in tooling leading up to our AI-obsessed age today, many teams find themselves unfamiliar with how to navigate this new landscape of tech.

However, the future of go-to-market strategies will be shaped by those who can harness the power of AI and automation while maintaining the human touch that builds lasting relationships.

The tools we use will become more sophisticated, handling routine tasks and providing deeper insights across the entire customer lifecycle. But the core of effective go-to-market execution - understanding customer needs, providing real value, and building trust - will remain a fundamentally human endeavor.

Our challenge is to embrace these new technologies while fostering the interpersonal skills and cross-functional collaboration that set high-performing teams apart. The future isn't about choosing between human and machine - it's about finding the perfect harmony between the two.

As Leah said, "We got so good at producing stuff that we forgot to actually develop the core product." As we move forward, let's not forget that the core of our go-to-market efforts is about creating real value for our customers. Technology should enhance this mission, not distract from it.

The future of sales and go-to-market is bright, but it belongs to those who can adapt, innovate, and never lose sight of the human element that drives all business relationships. For RevTech leaders, this means building and implementing tools that not only automate processes but also enhance our ability to understand and serve our customers better.

If you want to learn more about how Clarify is building a tool to support those who value human relationships in the AI age, check out our CRM Manifesto. And, as always, I’d love to hear about how you’re balancing AI tech and human touch.