Mind Readings: The Sales Process Should Be AI Automated

In today's episode, let's talk about where AI will be making a difference in how we do things, in particular in sales. I was uh recently buying something online and going through the purchase process, and I noted this is absurdly repetitive. Right. Here's my name, here's my address, here's my phone number, here's my email, here's the thing I want, here's the shipping I want, here's this I want, and so on and so on and so on. I thought to myself, this is mind-numbingly boring to be able to just buy something.

It's part of the reason why companies like Amazon do so well, because they have reduced friction in the purchase process so much that you can buy something with a couple of clicks and not even think about it, right? It is it is so streamlined. That generic purchase process for a company that isn't Amazon can potentially be intermediated by artificial intelligence. When we think about the things that are coming, like on-device AI from companies like Apple and Google and the many, many AI agent-based services that are out there that can help uh that a machine can help you do something, that is a market segment that is ripe for automation. Because it is the same repetitive, boring, complicated process of going through five pages of a checkout just to buy a widget or a stuffed animal or a pound of coffee.

Customers will want that automation, right? Consumers will want that automation to make buying things easier and faster and take less time and uh just make it a less painful process. Because right now it kind of sucks. It's better than it used to be, but it still kind of sucks. And anything we can do to reduce that friction is going to work in our favor.

When I am at the grocery store, now for for checking out, once things have wrung up, I just hold up my watch, I yell open wallet, and then tap my watch against the little credit card scanner, and boom, I'm done. I'm not fishing around in my pocket for stuff. It reduces friction. It's frictionless. It also gets me some strange looks at the grocery store, but that's fine.

What are you doing as a company to prepare for this? What are you doing as a marketer to prepare for generative AI and AI in general? And its ability to intermediate the sale, the ability to make the sale easier. I will tell you one thing, and this is something from the keynotes that I give on generative AI, particularly on how it's going to change shopping. The thing you can do today that will cost you very little, that will provide you immediate benefits that will prepare you for the agent purchasing era of AI, is this.

For how easy it is for someone to navigate. I was on a client's website the other day. And it's like five pages of navigation links before you ever get to what site am I on. Now, if you think people who are, you know, customers are finicky today, fire up that text browser and see just how long you last before you're like, I'm out of here. This is this is a terrible experience.

As opposed to a site that is optimized for a screen reader where you get to the good stuff quickly. Navigation is hidden away, or navigation is further on down the page, so the good stuff is up front. Because surprise, if you make it easy for a screen reader to navigate a text-based website, you make it easy for AI software to do that. AI agents use software like headless Chromium uh browsers and Chrome Web Drivers and Selenium and other technologies that don't require a human being to do some web browsing. They are nothing more than in many cases screen readers.

And that's the technology that a lot of AI agents use on the back end. So if it works with a screen reader, it works with an AI agent, and it will give you a competitive advantage over a site that doesn't have that, because an AI agent will not be as easily able to buy from that site. And we are headed in a direction where the consumer will pull out their phone and say, hey Siri, buy me this thing off of this website. And the the on-device AI will try and figure that out. That's the shortcut.

That is the shortcut. Get your website and all your digital properties ready for AI tomorrow by making them as good a first class experience with a screen reader today. And oh, by the way, the 10 to 15% of the population that is visually impaired in some fashion that uses screen readers or other assisted technologies will benefit today and be more likely to buy from you today. So it's a double win. You get ready for AI and you help monetize an additional 10 to 15% of your audience that probably is not shopping with you right now because your site's such a pain to work with.

So that's gonna do it for this episode. In terms of how to prepare for AI in sales, we'll talk to you soon. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button. Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already, and if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.