The sales and marketing landscape is on the cusp of a fundamental transformation, and AI is at the heart of it. Since early 2024, there’s been a 34% increase in AI adoption, with sales managers leading that at 41%.
This transformation enables teams to engage with customers more efficiently, make data-driven decisions, and maintain deeper relationships while automating routine tasks. Looking ahead in 2025, AI’s role in boosting productivity in the workplace is becoming more evident. Automating research tasks and customer interactions frees employees from repetitive work, allowing them to focus on higher-level, strategic initiatives. In the sales industry, this requires a shift in how sales professionals approach their roles. Sales teams need to reskill, making AI tools a critical and inherent piece of their workflows.
AI-Driven Sales Automation: More Time for Customer Interaction
Currently, sales professionals spend around 40% of their time engaging with customers, while the remainder is spent on research, admin tasks, and content creation. As AI continues to evolve, this time spent with customers is expected to rise to 60%. The automation of routine tasks such as summarizing email threads, generating content, and prospect qualification allows sales teams to focus on what truly matters: building relationships.
AI integrations allow teams to create personalized and efficient sales demos by automatically adjusting product presentations based on the specific needs of the customer, eliminating the burden of extensive preparation. By using AI to highlight the product features that matter most, salespeople have the ability to conduct more focused, impactful demos, increasing the likelihood of conversion, and ultimately, driving business growth.
The Rise of Branded AI and Conversational Agents
We’ve entered the era of “branded AI,” developed to embody the company’s voice, tone, and core values, ensuring that every customer interaction feels aligned with the brand’s identity. In turn, companies are investing in conversational AI agents just as they do websites and mobile apps.
This rise in branded AI offers a unique opportunity to provide consistent, personalized customer experiences at scale. Whether through virtual assistants, chatbots, or AI-driven email responses, these agents help businesses automate repetitive tasks while maintaining a personal touch, allowing teams to focus on innovative, higher-level tasks. As customers grow accustomed to AI-driven interactions, they expect a level of personalization and authenticity that is central to creating lasting customer loyalty–which sales teams need to continue to prioritize.
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Overcoming AI Fatigue and Ensuring Personalization
As AI becomes more prevalent in sales and marketing, there is a risk of “AI fatigue”– where both customers and sales professionals become overwhelmed by the volume of automated interactions. To combat this, personalization is key. While AI-generated content has become more common, sales professionals must ensure that their messages are tailored to each individual, making interactions feel personal and authentic. The most successful sales teams are those that find the right balance between automation and human touchpoints. By blending AI-driven efficiency with the human elements of trust-building and relationship management, companies are able to create customer journeys that feel both efficient and personalized.
This balance also relies heavily on a strong data-driven culture, which is the hallmark of a great sales team. AI tools play a central role in gathering and analyzing customer data, helping sales teams identify trends and personalize their outreach. Businesses need to leverage real-time data to refine their strategies, respond more quickly to market changes, and make informed decisions to drive growth. Marketing teams can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and target audiences, while sales teams contribute frontline feedback that helps marketing fine-tune its strategies. This collaboration ensures that both departments work together to enhance customer acquisition and retention efforts.
The Blending of Human and AI Interaction
While AI will handle more routine tasks, human interaction is still essential in building trust with customers. AI can support by providing valuable insights and automating administrative tasks, but when it comes to complex negotiations, product demos, and closing deals, human expertise is irreplaceable. AI’s limitations–such as occasional inaccuracies or “hallucinations”–require oversight to maintain trustworthiness, with sales professionals verifying AI-generated insights and ensuring that information is accurate. This hybrid approach, where AI complements human skills, will continue to be the winning formula for businesses in the coming years.
Customers still value human connections, especially when making significant decisions or purchases. AI can assist in identifying key touchpoints in the customer journey, but it’s the human touch that ultimately builds long-term loyalty and trust.
AI is not replacing sales professionals–it’s making them more valuable. Human intuition, creativity, and relationship-building will always be essential in high-stakes deals, negotiations, and trust-driven industries. What AI can do is remove the inefficiencies that bog down sales teams, allowing them to operate at peak performance.
The future of sales and marketing belongs to those who embrace AI as a strategic advantage rather than a threat to create smarter, more personalized, and more effective customer experiences.
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