Leveling the talent playing field (part one)
There we were, another Mission Impossible industry conference. Stalking exhibition booths and tracking leads at social gatherings til all hours of the night. 'Bob Jones thirty feet ahead to the left of center,' I hear my digital assistant in my ear like some agency overwatch as she scans the video feed from my augmented reality glasses. As I steer in that direction, my DA has already calculated the distance based on my gate, pulled up the dossier on my soon to be new client, gathered today's stats on the his home town, the sports he follows and determined how much she can feed in my ear and to my screens before I get there. As our conversation begins, everything my target says and projects through body and facial motion are taken in and processed and updates are provided across my line of sight to help me address the salient points and avoid landmines along the way. For critical items, my DA is always at the ready to whisper in my ear and help me save the day. We schedule a follow up meeting on my or rather my DA's recommendation we gather at the restaurant he was posting about earlier in the day. The evening closes with a deal drafted.
If you had told me years ago how my career would shift to sales, I might have laughed in your face. I am lousy with names. Conversation has always been a challenge. And, I am illiterate when it comes to reading emotional cues. Fortunately, the future is here. While the bits and pieces are not fully integrated yet. In the next year or so, I see this fictional scenario playing out and with additional capabilities beyond the few I have highlighted here.
In my experience, there were two ways to be financially successful in business. You can own it or at least be the CEO or other C-Level executive. Or, you can be in sales. Sales was the roller coaster path where if you had a great memory, enjoyed sports statistics, played golf, and could read people like a championship poker player you could become very wealthy (note I did not say happy - there are happy paupers - though happiness can happen as well). With the advent of digital assistants, AR and artificial intelligence, the sales arena just became a much more level playing field. I expect competition in many of these social playgrounds to widen as more players are enabled through these systems for human augmentation. In fact, the same technologies could be used for better interviewing and better coaching as well. Given the huge impact it could have at all stages in our lives, it will be interesting to see how we adopt this model. Will we try to prevent it to maintain a social elite or will we accept it and let it help us change to become more socially adept?
My hope is we all embrace the evolution.
If you had told me years ago how my career would shift to sales, I might have laughed in your face. I am lousy with names. Conversation has always been a challenge. And, I am illiterate when it comes to reading emotional cues. Fortunately, the future is here. While the bits and pieces are not fully integrated yet. In the next year or so, I see this fictional scenario playing out and with additional capabilities beyond the few I have highlighted here.
In my experience, there were two ways to be financially successful in business. You can own it or at least be the CEO or other C-Level executive. Or, you can be in sales. Sales was the roller coaster path where if you had a great memory, enjoyed sports statistics, played golf, and could read people like a championship poker player you could become very wealthy (note I did not say happy - there are happy paupers - though happiness can happen as well). With the advent of digital assistants, AR and artificial intelligence, the sales arena just became a much more level playing field. I expect competition in many of these social playgrounds to widen as more players are enabled through these systems for human augmentation. In fact, the same technologies could be used for better interviewing and better coaching as well. Given the huge impact it could have at all stages in our lives, it will be interesting to see how we adopt this model. Will we try to prevent it to maintain a social elite or will we accept it and let it help us change to become more socially adept?
My hope is we all embrace the evolution.
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