I've spent a lot of time in rooms with business owners who still picture a great salesperson as someone who can talk anybody into anything. Someone with a big personality, thick skin and zero fear of rejection. And honestly, for a long time, that worked.
The playbook was simple. Salespeople worked to build their lists, they made cold calls, knocked on doors. Outbound was the only thing at play. That era isn't coming back.
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How has sales changed?
The internet didn't just change how people buy things. It changed how people research, evaluate and make decisions long before they ever talk to a salesperson. By the time a prospect reaches out to your company today, many of them have already visited your website multiple times, read your case studies, checked out your LinkedIn and probably looked at your competitors, as well.
They have a good understanding of what you do. What they want to know is whether they can trust you to do it for them. Research from 6sense found that B2B buyers are nearly 70% of the way through their purchase decision before they ever contact a vendor and 81% already have a preferred vendor in mind by the time they reach out.
That shift from outbound selling to inbound buying changes everything about the role of the salesperson. The old model had the salesperson as the gatekeeper of information. You had to talk to a rep to know the price, to understand the service, to figure out if the product was a fit. That gave salespeople a lot of leverage and that leverage is now gone.
Now that information is everywhere. The salesperson's job isn't to deliver information, it's to help someone make sense of it. That's a fundamentally different skill set.
This stat from Spotio really resonated with me. Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment, and it takes an average of 18 dials just to connect with a decision maker. Those numbers wouldn’t make me want to invest time or money on that strategy.
I'm not saying that work ethic is bad. Far from it. But that skill set alone won't get you very far in today's buying environment due to the shift in buying behavior.
The modern sales rep needs to be more of a consultant than a closer. Prospects are coming to you warmer and more informed than ever before, which means the first conversation can't be a pitch. It has to be a real conversation.
Where the old rep led with features and benefits, the new rep leads with quality questions. Where the old rep was trained to handle objections, the new rep is trained to understand them and deliver a customized approach that solves them.
What makes a great salesperson today?
When I'm thinking about the profile of a great modern salesperson, the word that keeps coming back to me is curious. They have to genuinely want to understand the prospect's business before they think about selling anything. If they don’t ask good enough questions to understand the client's business, they are going to struggle.
They also need to be comfortable with content. A huge part of inbound sales is knowing what resources, case studies or educational materials to send at the right moment in the buyer's journey. The modern rep should be thinking about what value they can add to a prospect before the prospect ever asks for a proposal. That requires someone who is creative, reads and knows about their industry and someone who is overall quickly competent in understanding the nuances of different businesses.
One of the most surprising changes in a great salesperson is that they need to be patient. The old outbound model rewarded urgency. The new model rewards consistency. Some inbound leads take three months to close. Some take a year. The rep who's used to a fast transactional sale is going to get frustrated and move on too early.
This also goes for business owners and sales managers. The ramp time for a successful salesperson is now longer than it used to be. Managers' expectations have to meet this change, or you might end up parting ways with great salespeople who haven’t had the time to fully mature with their cultivated opportunities. The rep who understands nurturing, who follows up with something valuable instead of just checking in, is the one who will win that deal when the timing is right.
How does marketing affect sales?
Marketing and sales used to be completely separate functions. Marketing made brochures and ran ads. Sales made calls and there wasn't a lot of overlap. That has changed.
Inbound sales only works if inbound marketing is generating the right kind of attention. Your content, your SEO, your email campaigns, your social presence, all of that is what puts qualified prospects into the pipeline in the first place.
If your marketing isn't attracting the right people, your sales team is going to be back in outbound mode, whether they want to be or not. Inbound leads convert at roughly 5-10% vs. 1-3% for outbound, which gives a concrete reason why marketing quality matters (bookyourdata).
The companies that have figured out how to get sales and marketing working from the same playbook are seeing the best results. When a lead comes in, sales should already know what content that person engaged with, what pages they visited and what problems they were likely trying to solve. That context changes every first conversation.
How does AI play a role in sales?
I know what some of you are thinking. AI is going to replace salespeople. I've heard that conversation a dozen times in the last two years. I don't necessarily agree. But I do think AI is going to separate the reps who are leveraging it vs. the ones who aren't.
Think about what a good salesperson spends their time on:
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Researching a company before a discovery call.
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Writing follow-up emails.
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Building proposals.
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Logging notes into a CRM.
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Figuring out what content to send to a prospect who went quiet.
A big chunk of that work is prep, not selling. Salesforce found that reps spend roughly 70% of their time on non-selling tasks. That's an enormous amount of capacity that never touches a real conversation. ZoomInfo's 2025 research found that sales professionals using AI report a 47% boost in productivity and save an average of 12 hours a week on administrative work. That's 12 more hours a week to actually talk to people.
The rep who walks into a discovery call having used AI to research the company, understand the industry and anticipate likely objections is going to have a better conversation than the one who spent 10 minutes on LinkedIn and hoped for the best. That's just the reality. The tool is available. The question is whether your people are using it.
Beyond research, AI helps with the consistency problem I mentioned earlier. Following up with value over a long sales cycle is one of the hardest parts of the job. It requires creativity and attention. AI can help you brainstorm relevant touchpoints, draft a thoughtful message or identify a piece of content worth sharing. It doesn't replace the relationship, but it keeps it alive between conversations.
AI amplifies what's already there. If a rep isn't curious, isn't a good listener and doesn't genuinely care about the prospect's problems, no tool is going to fix that. AI in the hands of a bad salesperson just produces bad outreach faster. In the hands of someone who's already consultative and well-prepared, it's a real advantage.
So when you're thinking about who to hire or how to develop your current team, add this to the checklist:
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Are they willing to learn new tools?
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Are they curious enough to figure out how to use AI to work smarter?
If the answer is no, that's going to be a problem. Not because AI is going to take their job, but because a competitor who uses it well is going to outwork them without working harder. Gartner found that salespeople who effectively use AI tools are 3.7 times more likely to hit quota than those who don't.
What should your strategy be?
If you're a business owner or a sales leader, take a hard look at who you have on your team and what you're asking them to do.
If you're still measuring your sales team purely on call volume and activity metrics, you may be optimizing for the wrong things. Calls still matter. Outbound still has a place, especially for top-of-funnel prospecting. But if your whole strategy is volume and persistence, you're going to have a hard time competing with companies that have figured out how to earn attention instead of demand it.
And when you're hiring, think about the qualities I mentioned:
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Curiosity.
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Consultative.
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Patient.
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Someone who wants to help before they want to close.
If you want to talk through what sales looks like for your team today or dig into your marketing strategy, we'd be glad to help. Reach out to us anytime.
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