Selling AI to Humans
Daniel Pink's book ‘To Sell is Human’ reframes selling as the art of moving others, focusing on empathy, resilience, and the clarity to solve problems. If you’ve tried selling AI solutions (or have been sold them), you’re aware there are a whole new set of questions and concerns that come up compared to non-AI products.
Here are the critical lessons from Daniel Pink applied to selling AI.
Selling AI effectively hinges on a new set of ABCs:
Attunement: aligning your pitch to the client's unique challenges and goals, demonstrating a nuanced understanding of how AI can enhance their specific business operations.
Buoyancy: maintaining optimism and learning from rejection, using objections as opportunities to educate clients about AI's benefits and its role in augmenting human work, not replacing it.
Clarity: distilling AI's complexities into clear, tangible benefits, helping clients see AI as a solution to their problems through simple, jargon-free communication that makes decision-making easier.
There are three key tactics to apply when selling AI — pitching, improvising, and serving.
Pitch: When pitching AI capabilities, it’s not just about listing features. You have to craft a compelling narrative that shows a clear before-and-after scenario—how AI can transform their current processes. The pitch should focus on the benefits, like cost savings, efficiency, and scalability, rather than the technical specs.
Improvise: Conversations about AI can go in many directions. Sales professionals must be prepared to think on their feet and adapt their strategy based on the feedback and reactions they receive in real-time. This means having a deep understanding of the technology to answer unexpected questions and present creative solutions on the fly.
Serve: To move others, especially in the hype-filled world of AI, means to serve them by improving their lives and work. Emphasize the service aspect of AI—how it serves to take over mundane tasks, provide deeper insights, or create new opportunities for creativity and growth. Show commitment to serving the client by offering post-sale support, demonstrating the adaptability of AI to grow with their business, and providing evidence of ROI for the AI solutions you're proposing.
