“AI is coming for your job.”

“It’s coming to take replace your sales reps.”

“Robots are going to replace humans across marketing, sales, and support interactions.”

By now, you’ve probably heard some version of these ideas. Of course, we haven’t replaced humans. And as it turns out, people still prefer working with people.

And yet, many myths remain, with fearmongering coming at us from all angles.

Those myths are exactly that: myths. So in the interest of soothing the worries of our colleagues and clients in these industries, we’re laying out the seven most exaggerated AI myths for you.

Today, we’re going to debunk ’em.

1. AI Will Completely Replace Sales Reps

This myth is circling around because of the fear of job replacement by robots. Of course, your reps are going to worry that they can be replaced, as AI tools can now generate emails, provide analysis, and even make sales calls. 

Debunked: AI cannot actually sell anything. What it can do is provide data and do grunt work for the sales reps so THEY can sell better. 

Yes, salespeople are worried. But, as Sales HQ out of Australia points out, the only sales reps who will lose jobs because of AI are the ones who probably shouldn’t have been in role in the first place. After all, sales is not for everyone. 

Reality: Sales reps who learn to use AI will excel at their job.

The best sales reps are already utilizing automation and LLMs to their advantage. AI makes their jobs more efficient and more effective, so they can take their time working with clients and having in-depth conversations. 

Today, Sales reps are using Large Language Models to: 

• Find warm leads through prospect research. 
• Automate grunt work like CRM notes, meeting transcription, and RFP automation.
• Become smarter by getting fast, accurate answers to tough technical questions.

2. AI Automatically Generates Perfect Sales Scripts

Again, because the technology is so powerful, with access to so much information from the internet, It can synthesize valuable information for reps to use. With that knowledge, an LLM can generate a sales script that, to a robot, might sound perfect. 

But to a human… it likely sounds… uncanny.

And humans don’t like the uncanny. Something that sounds a little too perfect, with subtle signs of robotics, actually creeps most humans out. 

Debunked: Perfect is exactly what makes AI-generated sales scripts so awful. Humans don’t want perfection. They want humanity. 

Still, it’s surprising that more than half of AI outputs are deemed “disappointing” by Sales Engineers:

Reality: AI has a long way to go, but a Sales team without it can feel primitive in this day and age.

Sales reps can leverage the knowledge and power of AI to help draft their sales scripts. From there, they must be able to humanize those scripts and be ready to pivot when an actual call takes place. Reading off a script just won’t cut it.

3. AI Can Personalize Outreach with Minimal Human Effort

If you’ve ever asked for an article from ChatGPT or OpenAI, you might think it sounds like a human. Indeed, many people have reported that they’ve gotten blogs, stories, and even songs back from an LLM that “sounds just like me!” 

So the temptation is there to just let AI do the job altogether. It can be so personal, right? 

Wrong. 

Debunked: AI actually often gets too personal. And when it does, it gets creepy.

LinkedIn is full of screenshots of creepy AI-generated outreach examples. Emails like “Hey! I saw your kid’s 8th-grade swim meet. Here’s why you should check out our B2B SaaS app.” Yep. It’s cringey and creepy.

Even sales reps can go too far. 

You’re going to want to minimize the amount of personalization you include in cold outreach.

Reality: AI personalization without human oversight can ruin the relationship. Humanizing your personalized outreach requires scaling back what an AI can say. 

The best option is to keep it relevant, professional, and provide business context. You can build relationships from there. 

4. AI Will Eliminate the Need for CRM Systems

The idea here is that AI can both automate and keep your information stored, while also managing your customer relations. 

Sure. In a perfect world. 

But that’s not actually AI eliminating the need for CRM. 

In fact, a recent report shows that 65% of businesses have adopted CRM systems with generative AI. It’s the top trend right now. 

Furthermore, that same report shows that 32% of CRM usage focuses on lead generation and improving customer satisfaction.

CRM systems are not going anywhere.

Debunked: AI needs CRMs to build on. CRMs need AI for automating knowledge management.

Reality: We keep hearing, “AI will replace X.” But really, AI just makes X better. 

When we try to replace either one, we’re lost. 

It’s like saying, “Oh I love ketchup. It can replace my burger.” No. You put the ketchup on the burger. 

5. AI Can Handle Communication with Humans on Its Own

This is probably the most laughable of all the myths. AI is great at pulling data, at summarizing, even at drafting. 

It is terrible at communicating. 

Our own State of AI in Sales report found that overwhelmingly, sales reps on the ground know this to be true. As we noted, “While AI can repeat what’s already known, it won’t sense hesitation in a buyer’s tone, or spot a weird use case that might blow up three months in, or improvise when the conversation veers off script.”

Debunked: AI will provide frontline sales answers, but the deeper, complex questions need to come from a real person.

We don’t want robots doing the job. And we don’t want humans to become robots. 

We want humans to use robots to get better at their jobs. 

Reality: AI offering simple answers to product questions makes total sense. AI presenting simple pricing sheets makes sense. Having an AI craft a complex proposal with discount pricing does NOT. You need a professional for that.

This is the part that’s more art than science.

6. AI Can Predict Deal Outcomes with 100% Accuracy

Come on. We’ve all seen the video of the robot revolting in China, right? AI is not perfect. It cannot possibly predict outcomes with 100% accuracy. It can’t even get the data right 100% of the time. 

This fear likely comes from the fact that AI is confident. Most LLMs will report their findings as if they’re factual, which is a hallucination issue. It’s definitely not 100% accurate. 

Debunked: The United Nations University cautions that we should never assume that the accuracy of artificial intelligence information equals truth. 

And honestly, your sales reps already know it’s total BS. AI gets it wrong a lot, and sales reps have to deal with that fallout all the time.

The Reality: AI Insights will enable reps to forecast better. 

Yes. We want the AI output. It can be incredibly helpful. It provides us with insight, not 100% accuracy. It’s up to us, the humans, to provide the right input, understand the output, and make real, human judgments from there. 

AI is empowering, not all-powerful. 

7. AI Works Best Without Any Human Oversight

The concern in the larger sales world is that we can “set it and forget it.” The thinking goes that you can create a program to generate emails, make sales calls, and respond to humans. And that once you create the program, you’ll never need human oversight. 

Sure. In a perfect world, somewhere in a future where humans no longer care about human contact and don’t mind being treated like robots themselves. 

Debunked: Humans still want humans, which means human oversight will always be required, at every level. 

Yep. Even the weird ones. 

Reality: Sales reps don’t even trust AI to perform alone. In fact, we recently released a report on the state of AI sales and found that only 2% of respondents fully trust AI. 

The majority reported that they “trust but verify.”  

Us too, sales reps. Us too. 

Avoiding AI Doomery Moving Forward

It’s clear: AI is not replacing sales jobs. It’s not replacing humans where humanity is needed because AI can never be human. It just can’t. And the closer engineers move AI toward human-ness, the creepier it becomes.

So let’s just stop. 

Humans crave connection, whether we’re making a sale, making a purchase, or headed into a gym for a quick workout. And because we crave that connection, we’ll always be able to tell when we’re dealing with AI made to sound like a human. 

We’ll accept quick resolutions, tedious task management, and other shifts into AI where necessary in society. 

But we won’t accept having to deal with robots when we really want to deal with humans. 

And, again, AI can never be human. 

We’re much better off when we use AI to help us do our jobs, to help us get better at our jobs, and to allow us to connect with each other more. 

Let’s leverage the strength of AI to do our tedious work for us, so we can innovate better, build stronger relationships, and meet human needs where they are.

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