Customer Expectations: Are sellers making the grade?

A few months ago, we talked about how bullish salespeople were on sales as a profession. Of over 900 salespeople surveyed, 90% said that they would highly recommend a career in professional B2B sales to someone just coming out of school. They espoused the relative autonomy, lifelong learning opportunities and entrepreneurial aspects as a draw with great promise for the future.
At the same time, some industry pundits are a bit more bearish, with many predicting the elimination of selling jobs altogether, or at least a drastic reduction in the near-term. At least one storyline sounds something like this: 1) An increasing number of sales tasks can be replaced by AI-based technologies; 2) Sales organizations will be motivated to replace expensive salespeople with technology that doesn’t earn commissions; 3) Buyers won’t object because they are happier working online; 4) Sales as a profession will contract.
We wanted to stress test this belief