Sales at the Crossroads: AI, Ethics and the Future or Selling

How is AI reshaping the sales profession—and what does that mean for trust, ethics, and the role of human judgment? Host Brad Carlson sits down with Ed Nowlin, professor of marketing at Kansas State University, to explore the evolving balance between people and technology in selling. They discuss the ethical dilemmas created by automation, the skills tomorrow’s sales professionals will need, and how researchers and educators can prepare the next generation. Whether you teach, research, or practice sales, this timely conversation offers valuable insights on where the field is headed.

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Follow the Academy of Marketing Science on social media:
Facebook: facebook.com/AcadMktingSci
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For more information on AMS, visit https://ams-web.org/.

Transcript

Brad Carlson, Ph.D., Host and James J. Pierson Endowed Chair in Marketing at Saint Louis University:Hello listeners. Welcome to AMS Illuminations. This is our podcast series focused on professional development for marketing scholars, whether you're navigating the early stages of your academic career, building research partnerships, or looking to stay on top of where the field is headed. Today, we're taking on a topic that's moving fast and pushing us to rethink some fundamentals; sales at the crossroads, AI, ethics and the future of selling. As AI and automation work their way deeper into the sales pipeline from prospecting to closing, it raises some tough, important questions. What happens to trust and human judgment? Can algorithms sell ethically? And what does all this mean for the future of the human salesperson? To help unpack that, I'm joined by Ed Nowlin whose work brings real clarity to both the human and machine sides of selling. 

Ed is a professor of marketing at Kansas State University. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, his research investigates factors that drive or undermine sales performance. Further, he also explores actions managers can take to either moderate challenges or encourage productive performance. Over the course of our conversation, we'll talk about how the role of the salesperson is evolving, what ethical considerations we need to be thinking about, and what skills the next generation of sales professionals will need to stay relevant. We'll also dig into how researchers and educators can help shape the conversation and the practice as these technologies continue to accelerate. So, whether you're teaching sales, researching emerging tech and marketing, or just trying to keep up with how the profession is changing, I think you'll find this discussion both timely and thought-provoking. So let's dive in. 

But before we jump into AI and future of sales, Ed, what first got you interested in studying sales and the human side of persuasion in the first place?

Edward L. Nowlin, Professor of Marketing, Kansas State University: Hi, Brad. Thanks for having me today. So I think I started my interest in sales with, frankly, it goes back to childhood where my father was quite exacting about how you present yourself to people. In fact, changing my handshake and giving me corrections after every interaction, that's one of my earliest memories. After I graduated from college, of course, in those days there was no sales classes or anything, but I took a sales job like most people in Chicago, and so I grew my capabilities since I didn't have any background in sales per se. I didn't know how to do sales, but I knew how to ask questions. Instead of trying to sell somebody something, I would just ask them questions. Well, what do you need? Why do you need it? And so just from that small beginning, my sales career blossomed.

Carlson: Thanks for sharing that background with us. And you mentioned that when you were in college, there were no sales classes, so I'm going to go out on a limb and actually assume that there was no AI. So how do you see AI and automation changing what it actually means to be a salesperson today?

Nowlin: It's having both a slow and fast change. I know that sounds weird. A lot of the sales technology that has happened over the last 30 years has really been about automating sales tasks to free up the salesperson to engage in selling. Because one of the challenges or the bulwarks to actually being a great performer was that you have to fill out so many forms and engage in a lot of activities that actually weren't sales related but were acquired from the firm to track or report or whatever that process might be. 

And so a lot of sales automation technology has been geared toward automating these tasks and trying to free up the salesperson to actually spend more of their day engaging in actual sales activities. And so, I actually think AI is just the next step in a long evolution of trying to automate. I think what is happening is that the technology has been moving closer and closer towards the center of the relationship in terms of reminding, prompting and now engaging.

Carlson: Do you think the ethical landscape in sales has shifted in the last decade, especially as more of these processes have moved online and into tech driven tools?

Nowlin: To me, the primary question has been before the salesperson was the manager of the relationship and they held the information. They held the majority of the information about the customer, and they were the primary driver and negotiator of the relationship. Once we introduced the CRM technologies, and frankly now AI technologies, now we're talking about a releasing of information that salespeople will not have control over. And so I actually think the ethical consideration is different than what you might think it is. The salesperson has been the guardian of the customer because that's where prosperity emanates. Once a salesperson shares information, they no longer have control over information and how that information might be used. 

Whatever the information you share with the firm, they're going to make decisions that are best for the firm at large and that may or may not take into consideration or be beneficial towards your customer direct. The ethical considerations I actually think are really between the salesperson inside the firm and then the salesperson and the customer. I think we keep forgetting what AI does. It's really a great collector of information and processor of that. There's always something sacrificed in the pursuit of progress, and sometimes we're not really clear on what that is until a long time afterwards.

Carlson: That's a great response. And you covered a lot of ground there, and you certainly brought up a number of potential issues. If I were to dig in a little deeper, do you have any specific ethical red flags in your mind that you see, especially with AI in sales, possibly how leads are scored and how buyer behavior is predicted? Obviously, you talked about there's so much more information available. It's being collected in a way that makes things easier for consumers, and sometimes consumers aren't thoughtful about where that data's going, how it's being used.

Nowlin: It's creating a gray area because sales and marketing used to be fundamentally different things, right? And as technology has evolved, sales activities and marketing activities have increasingly become overlapped. I think that creates this challenge of what are SQLs or sales qualified leads versus marketing qualified leads. So that's one source. It is creating a collision within the firm. It has this ethical implication only from the perspective of who is claiming the result, because that actually is related to resources and pay. So if you can actually claim the relationship, then that translates into monetary payment for you as a salesperson or even as a marketer.

Carlson: If we think about more complex B2B sales using algorithms, what are your thoughts on can these algorithms really take the place of human judgment and empathy, which is a big part of that sales process, or is there some limit to what machines can do?

Nowlin: Yeah, I think at this point, steering away from the Terminator movies, there's some truth to that. As technology grows, the potential for empathy grows, right? Right now, we're actually using AI to start to train our salespeople, especially for programs where it's difficult to get firms in. New startups are offering AIs for sales training, and firms are using it, and universities are starting to use it. And that came out in a recent meeting that I attended, and I get it because it's a low cost way to train your salesperson by interacting with AI. That is actually training the AI to become more empathetic. Now it's in the training arena, and it's growing pretty rapidly. We haven't seen it take forefront in the actual engagement, but I think that's coming pretty quick down the road.

Carlson: Absolutely. And as we think about these things, you may not have realized that you're going to have this opportunity, but I am going to now ask you something that's probably going to put your name in print. Thirty years from now we're going to look back and say, "Ed and Alan said this in 2025." So if you're looking ahead, how do you think the role of salesperson is going to evolve over the next five to 10 years, and what kind of skills do you think tomorrow's sales professionals are going to need that maybe weren't even on the radar five years ago? And just keep in mind that your name is going to be associated with this forever in this statement.

Nowlin: I think the role of the salesperson is going to be less relational as it moves forward. The skill level is going to be a lot more technical because there's going to be a lot more interacting with technology in order to manage vastly greater number of relationships. Potentially AI could be playing the role of the salesperson at times, this kind of seamless fusion of the salesperson actually being the driver and actually saying the words and then shifting over and having AI doing more mundane aspects of this engagement.

Carlson: So, if you could design a new sales tool or piece of tech that doesn't exist yet, do you have any idea of what that might be and why?

Nowlin: What this would have to look like is the amount of information that's going to be readily available for the salesperson is going to have to grow and diminish. They're going to be providing more and more advice in how to negotiate things, when to become more involved, when to pull back and let them take over certain aspects of it. I don't know if it's the right word. As the AI becomes more sapient, not sentient, but sapient, so enabled to interact in seemingly normal ways for very mundane aspects, they become more confidante, advisor of how to do certain things. So let's say you're managing 500 relationships general, and so they're fulfilling order requests and whatnot with the other 499 relationships, and you're dealing with a potential problem that requires a lot of personal contact.

Carlson: I love those insights, and I want us to have an opportunity to talk about how some of these topics should be addressed in research and teaching. But before we do that, I think in terms of understanding where we are and where we're going, it's always really important to look at where we've been and how we got here. And I think you have some really unique insights into this, especially in sales and technology where we are today. I would love for you to share with our listeners your perspective on this.

Nowlin: Yeah. So I wrote a book chapter several years ago, and the book chapter was in with the role of sales technology and how that's changed. And so I ended up going back and looking at the printing press from 1400s and what that did. Invariably what the printing press did is it increased the accuracy of information and the distribution dissemination of information, so increased and decreased the cost of information. It enabled that spread of information widely. So what the printing press did, it eliminated the entire industry, and it dramatically dropped the cost from $300,000 to more like $300. I'm giving example numbers. That's one aspect in terms of cost. But what it really did is it increased the speed of information distribution. So now, for example, Martin Luther was widely considered the first bestselling author of the printing era because his complaints that he hammered on the doors of the church could now be printed, and three weeks later, verbatim presented in England, a whole country's away from Germany.

And that speed of movement of information was quite mind-numbing for the time for both its accuracy and speed of distribution, but that also creates ethical considerations now about how that information is used and whether that information should be used. And I'll give you an example. I recently attended a relative's graduation. Instead of a reader reading the information, they scanned it, and AI read the graduate's names. First time I saw that. It sounds awesome, but the funny thing is the names weren't actually read any more accurately. In fact, the accuracy of the names being read, I would actually say decreased in accuracy. 

To me, the ethical considerations that drove in my mind was now that third-party provider of this AI reader, now they're getting the first name, middle name, last name of every single person who graduated from that particular university being piped directly into their firm, and I'm pretty sure there's no laws regulating how they can and cannot use this, and they're probably going to approximate the age given that they're just graduating from college. That gave me a lot of ethical considerations and concerns. Looking forward, how is information going to be used? How is it going to be sold? How is it going to be regulated? Those are some really important ethical considerations.

Carlson: I think that's a great historical perspective, again, giving us a sense of how other technologies have influenced the way in which we do business. I do want to take a minute to shift and think about the research and teaching impact. How do you think we can make certain that students and eventually the companies they work for are thinking critically about AI and sales instead of just chasing the latest shiny tool? So how does that influence our research and the information we disseminate to our students?

Nowlin: At the end of the day, we need to understand what our role is as a salesperson. You have to go back to basics to understand what we can and can't do or should or should not be doing. I think we should go back and always instruct and present, maybe even if it's just a couple minutes here, but it has to be more frequent about the role and responsibilities of the salesperson as an information processor and provider. As professors, we should be reinforcing the idea that we have responsibilities to the firm that's employing us and that we should be considering the importance of the firm and loyal to the firm and not just taking whatever we can get from the firm and then sharing it with the next firm. At the same time, there's also a professional responsibility that goes to what we provide to our customer. And maybe perhaps, unfortunately, that might mean that the requirement of us protecting our customer is actually increasing in terms of what we decide to share in our CRM systems or share with the AI or have the AI help us with.

Carlson: We've now reached the point in our interview where we're moving into the lightning round. This is pretty exciting. For all the listeners, the way this works, I'm going to ask you a question. You have 60 seconds to answer. Our first question, what is one sales skill that AI just won't be able to replace and why?

Nowlin: Currently, empathy, concern, going to your client's kid's quinceañera or bar mitzvah, that thing. That creates a bond of trust. And so I think at this point, that's what it can't respond to or can't do yet.

Carlson: Number two, if you had to teach just one concept in a future sales class, what would you pick?

Nowlin: Listening. As we're being bombarded by more and more information, we do a lot more talking than listening. And so for the salesperson, especially if you're great at talking and you're great at engaging with people, the hardest capability to have is to just sit, listen, and understand. And so maybe listening coupled with this whole notion of empathy and understanding. But, yeah, taking it in, listening.

Carlson: I'm sorry. What'd you say?

Nowlin: Listening and understanding.

Carlson: I'm kidding. Number three, finish this sentence. The future of sales will belong to those who?

Nowlin: Adapt. Sales has always been about adapting to whatever the context might be. At the current moment the B2B sales model looks like you're not really in the firm at all. You're out going to meet with your clients. Before it was on the phone. Before that, you were the vacuum cleaner guy knocking on the doors and throwing dirt when they opened and demonstrating how great your vacuum cleaner could clean it up. So it's gone from door to door to phones to now being in person, and maybe it's going to be more visual in the future. The ability to adapt to these different and changing and rapidly changing conditions and what's considered acceptable in forms of interaction.

Carlson: Ed, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights on this very interesting and timely topic. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on AMS Illuminations today. As a reminder, Ed Nowlin is also our co-leader of the AMS sales circles. The goal of the AMS sales circle is to create more of a community and stimulate conversation among AMS members interested in selling and sales management. So the AMS sales circle provides a forum for ongoing collaboration and welcomes new members with diverse backgrounds who wish to share knowledge and experiences related to research, teaching, faculty development, and practice in the areas of selling and sales management. 

Thank you for listening to us for this episode, and please don't hesitate to drop us a line if you have a suggestion for future guests. Thanks, Ed. 

Nowlin: Thanks, Brad.