What if your next client is not human?

For decades we learned to sell to people. We set out to understand their behaviour, identify needs, win their attention and earn their trust. We built brands, developed commercial strategies and invested in relationships that often take years to build.

Even when we sell to companies, we know there are still people on the other side. People who weigh proposals, negotiate terms, hesitate, trust and, in the end, decide.

But what if that is about to change?

We are entering an era in which artificial intelligence is ceasing to be merely a support tool and beginning to carry out tasks, interpret needs and take certain decisions. What if tomorrow a company delegates to a machine the job of identifying the suppliers it needs, comparing their proposals and selecting the best alternatives?

This does not mean people disappear from the process. They may well go on setting objectives, establishing criteria and taking the final decision. But they may stop taking part in an important stretch of the road that leads to it.

And that could change how companies compete, profoundly.

When the buyer stops being a person

Imagine a company that wants to contract a maintenance service for its premises. Today someone will probably research suppliers, ask for recommendations, approach companies they know, request proposals and meet some of the candidates.

Along the way, those suppliers will have chances to present their experience, demonstrate what they know, answer questions and build a relationship with the prospective client.

Now imagine that, in future, the company hands that task to an intelligent system. The machine knows the needs, the budget, the technical requirements and the organisation’s past experience. It searches the market, analyses suppliers, compares terms and puts forward a shortlist of the alternatives it judges most suitable.

Whoever takes the decision receives three proposals, with a comparative analysis and a recommendation.

It sounds efficient. And it probably is.

But what happened to the other suppliers?

Some may never have been found at all. Others may have been ruled out for not publishing a particular piece of information, or for failing to demonstrate, objectively enough, what sets them apart.

And however good our commercial skills may be, we are unlikely to take a machine out to lunch.

The provocation carries some irony, but it raises a serious question. For years we learned that trust, empathy and personal relationships are fundamental to doing business. And in many circumstances they certainly will remain so. But what happens when we no longer get the chance to build that relationship?

How do we become relevant to someone who does not know us?

A large part of commercial activity consists of reaching the right people. We invest in advertising, digital presence, networks, referrals and sales teams to make sure prospective clients know we exist.

But if the first search comes to be carried out by a machine, we will have to rethink what it means to be present in a market.

A company can have an excellent reputation among its clients and be practically unknown outside that circle. It can offer an outstanding service and still struggle to explain clearly what it does, what results it achieves, or when it is the better alternative.

Today an experienced salesperson can get past some of those limits in a conversation. They pick up what worries the client, adapt the pitch, find common ground and show capabilities that are not always easy to put into a written proposal.

But how do we do that when the first assessment happens with no human interaction at all?

Companies may have to become far clearer about what they offer. It will not be enough to claim quality, experience or a distinctive team. It will take demonstrated results, consistent information, and making the characteristics that justify choosing us comprehensible.

This does not mean every product and service can be reduced to numbers. It means that what we cannot communicate or demonstrate may become steadily harder for anyone to recognise.

And there is a particularly interesting risk here: we may have a better product than our competitors and still never be considered at all.

Will the future be more objective?

At first sight, a buyer that analyses information systematically looks like a change for the better.

A machine is not swayed by a particularly enthusiastic pitch, feels no obligation to favour an acquaintance, and can compare hundreds of alternatives without the effort that would cost a person.

We may come to have markets where price, quality, meeting deadlines and results actually achieved matter more than commercial influence.

For many companies that could be an excellent opportunity. Above all for those that deliver value but lack the size, the contacts or the resources to compete with better-known organisations.

It would be hasty, though, to conclude that decisions taken by machines will necessarily be more objective or fairer.

A machine needs criteria in order to judge. And those criteria are still set, directly or indirectly, by people. The available information may be incomplete, past results may favour particular suppliers, and the systems may reproduce preferences or limitations that were already there.

Besides, not everything we value in a commercial relationship is easy to measure.

How do we assess a team’s creativity? Its ability to respond to an unexpected problem? The confidence we feel in a partner when circumstances turn difficult? Or the willingness to find a solution nobody had yet imagined?

If selection comes to depend mainly on what we can measure, we risk favouring what is easiest to compare rather than what actually creates the most value.

And a new form of commercial influence may emerge: instead of setting out to convince people, some companies will set out to understand and influence the criteria the machines use.

The technology changes, but the need to question how decisions are taken remains.

And what if it stops being a person doing the selling, too?

There is a second possibility that makes this scenario more interesting still.

If one organisation can have a machine searching for and assessing suppliers, why should another company not have a machine representing its products and services?

Imagine two systems interacting. One knows the buyer’s needs, the price limits, the terms sought and the selection criteria. The other knows the products available, the capacity to deliver, the commercial margins and the terms it can negotiate.

They could exchange information, clarify requirements, adjust proposals and reach an agreement without people taking direct part at every one of those stages.

There will of course be limits. Not every decision can or should be delegated. Questions of accountability, security, trust and control will go on requiring human intervention, especially in the most significant transactions.

But you do not have to imagine a future in which every purchase is automated to recognise the scale of the change.

It is enough for a portion of commercial decisions to start happening this way for many companies to have to revisit their processes, the information they publish and the way they engage with their market.

We may come to have organisations where people go on setting strategy, building relationships and taking the important decisions, while a growing share of everyday commercial interaction happens between intelligent systems.

In that scenario the human relationship does not necessarily disappear. But it may arrive later, after an initial selection over which we had little influence.

Are we preparing for this change?

What intrigues me most is that a great deal of the business conversation about artificial intelligence is still focused on what we can do inside our own organisations.

How do we automate processes? How do we cut costs? How do we make teams more productive? How do we use technology to improve commercial activity?

They are legitimate and important questions. But we may be too busy working out how artificial intelligence can help us sell more, and too little concerned with understanding how it may transform the way our clients buy.

A company can invest in extraordinary tools to support its sales team, automate outreach and prepare proposals in minutes. But what good is that efficiency if prospective clients start selecting suppliers through processes the company cannot even take part in?

We may be improving what we have always done while the rules of the market begin to change.

We do not know when this change will come, or how strongly. It will probably differ by sector, by how complex the products are and by the risk attached to the decisions.

But waiting until the new buying behaviour is fully established may mean starting too late.

It may make sense to start asking now how our products are found, what information we publish, how we demonstrate our value, and how far our differentiation rests solely on the ability to build personal relationships.

Not in order to abandon what made us competitive, but to work out whether it will go on being enough.

Preparing the company for a different buyer

This reflection is not predicting the disappearance of sales teams, brands or human relationships. On the contrary, I believe trust, creativity and the ability to understand needs will go on playing an important part, above all in the more complex decisions.

But we may have to accept that first contact with a prospective client may stop happening in the way we know.

And that takes more than adopting a new technology. It takes strategic thinking, a willingness to question assumptions, and an appetite for trying other ways of presenting, demonstrating and delivering value.

The challenge is not working out how to convince a machine to buy. It is understanding what happens to our business when a growing share of decisions comes to be taken through criteria and processes we do not control.

For decades we set out to understand what makes a person choose us.

Perhaps it is time we started thinking about what will make a machine do the same.