Do we really value our customers?

13th October 2026 |   Nick de Cent

Among the many mysteries in this age of accelerating AI, one of the most baffling is why so few sales organisations seem to see the current moment as an unmissable opportunity to get closer to their customers. Instead, AI is too often seen as a chance to bombard a largely unresponsive audience with a deluge of generic, unconvincing and soulless outreach material.

As one of the news items on page seven explains, an AI arms race is developing with both sellers and buyers harnessing AI: while sales organisations are using AI to research prospects, generate opening lines, write emails, build follow-up sequences and produce personalised-looking outreach at scale, buyers and enterprise organisations are responding by using AI tools to filter out unsolicited sales messages.

The outreach expert quoted in the news story sums up the problem neatly: “Even when the message gets through, buyers can feel the lack of soul.” No surprises then that response rates are plummeting, with interested replies apparently down to just 0.24% of emails sent, according to one study.

To use AI effectively, organisations are well advised to consider changing their whole approach, perhaps their entire philosophy towards customers.

All of this chimes with Chris Daly’s theme on page eight: it’s vital to close the AI skills gap without losing customer trust – AI gives sales and marketing people the opportunity to make things personal. Too often they use the technology to send largely generic messages. Perhaps more crucially for marketing and sales teams, 63% of adults in Britain lose trust in a brand that uses AI-generated content, with a nominal amount saying it increases their trust (1%).

So what’s to be done? To use AI effectively, organisations are well advised to consider changing their whole approach, perhaps their entire philosophy towards customers. Our theme for this edition of the Journal is value: specifically, the way we approach sales to bring something that our customers truly value, while at the same time maximising the value customers represent to our own organisations now and into the future.

On page 14, innovator Matt Wilkinson notes that AI can introduce real productivity gains for sales organisations: sequence generation, call recording, summaries, CRM hygiene, forecast scoring and meeting preparation being just some of the ways. However, he emphasises that none of this makes the buyer more present for salespeople. Truly innovative sales organisations are looking to harness AI in order to focus on the customers’ priorities and to test assumptions, right down to the level of individual members of buying teams – and to do this at scale.

Meanwhile, on page 18, chair of the Association for Key Account Management, Mark Davies discusses how to size a key account, from this year’s share of wallet to a decade of lifetime value. He explains that share of wallet is not a number you report; it is an opportunity, and that opportunity is how you engage your own senior leadership in providing support to grow an account.

Finally, in an extensive research paper on page 24, SAP’s Ivano Fossati explores “Value-based selling in the Age of Innovation”. He explains how moving beyond total cost of ownership can drive competitive advantage and considers how new approaches that imply a total mindset change can be introduced and successfully embedded to transform an organisation.