Richard Bliss: How AI now serves as your initial sales rep

A CEO client of mine received an urgent request from his sales rep: Meet with a major prospect on Friday. By Thursday, the prospect had canceled.

The reason? They looked at the CEO’s LinkedIn profile and decided he didn’t seem serious about business. They went with a competitor instead.

He called me because he never wanted that to happen again.

This wasn’t about credentials or capability. The CEO’s company could have delivered exceptional results. But his passive LinkedIn presence cost him the deal before the conversation even started.

The new buyer research reality

Your prospects aren’t starting their research by asking for referrals. They’re asking AI. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, LinkedIn’s AI tools. These systems are the new first point of contact for business discovery. And they can only recommend what they can find.

When a prospect asks an AI system, “Who are the leading firms in Baton Rouge for X?” these tools do more than just scan your website. They evaluate your leadership team’s LinkedIn profiles, their published content, their participation in professional conversations, and the substance of their expertise demonstrations.

One of my professional services clients now gets 75% of their business through ChatGPT recommendations. This inflection point happened this year. Their competitors with weak digital presence have become systematically invisible.

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