Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

Is AI about to wipe out a huge part of sales?

2 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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AI will replace routine SDR work like lead qualification within 12 months, the speaker argues. Mediocre reps who don't adopt AI tools risk becoming obsolete, while enterprise field sales and door-to-door roles remain safer. Sales reps need to get dramatically more productive or get left behind.

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The classic cadence based SDR running campaigns through a tool him or herself will be mostly extinct with 12 months. There is no reason AI can't do a better job. The classic qualifier qualifying inbound leads, which is a crappy experience for customers, should be similarly extinct within 12 months. The rest we're going to wait and see. What we do know for sales reps. We just don't want 200 reps running around that don't know what the product does. So you have to adjust as a rep. Every AI leader can't hire enough reps, but you're going to have to adjust to being geometrically if not exponentially more productive with help from AI. So you have to embrace these tools for real. A lot of old school GTM leaders are like AI isn't going to hurt sales reps, it's just going to give them superpowers. The best ones. Yes, the mediocre are just going to be like more mediocre field sales. No idea how AI is going to impact that. The enterprise leaders are hiring more field salespeople than ever. And knocking on doors still works man, but the office worker and the work from home worker. AI is going to take as much of your job or make you as much better as it can and you got to embrace it.