Running The AI Brittle Test Across Your Sales Process

Here’s a paragraph from behind a subscription news site. Written recently by the paper’s business columnist;

A number of recent and very readable books for the layman describe how AI is falling far short of even [the most] modest expectations.
Deep learning is proving to be a useful addition to the arsenal of data analysis, and does a lovely job at cleaning up old movie clips.
But the systems are “brittle”, which means a technique is not transferable to a very similar situation without starting from scratch.

The context of these remarks were the distance we remain from ‘general purpose’ AI. Namely the stage at which ‘a machine is conscious, self aware and capable of reasoning with the depth and subtlety of humans’. A concept you may have come across through the term ‘singularity’, and its determination through the ‘Turing Test’.

In any case, the march of the algorithm races on.

For those who understand true sales process practice, then we have such a computational aid of our own.

Not the gateways, funnel stages nor expensively projected brand name timelines of tracking an ‘opportunity’ through our hands.

But the pattern of events, activities and results that when they occur on a bid, pretty much guarantee we prevail.

There’s seldom more than a half-dozen headlines here.

Yet often success with one client, sector or situation can mistakenly cloud all other potential business.

In other words, what we consider our general process can also be “brittle”.

Unable to be properly replicated across the board. Meaning we basically start from scratch on each new deal that is in some way different from that (big one) biasing our thoughts.

There’s a possible choice here.

Abandon all bids that do not fit the specific criteria of the deal we modelled as near-perfect.

With enough focus or being effectively a door opened to greater riches beyond, this could work.

I’ve long talked of anchor, index, footprint and lighthouse clients for new endeavours and how they lead the way in different circumstances.

The issue though, is how often do we have the luxury of such stringent qualification?

Is our potential market really so vast and welcoming that any doors knocked cause orders to effortlessly, instantly flood in?

Thought not.

Are the levers we pull so inflexible as to only work in one particular setting?

Are our solutions so delicate as to need more attention than can be given in certain arenas?

Are benefits so fragile as to be deemed unattractive by a key type of buyer?

If so, then a refinement of our process is required. Can you first test, then if needed, turn yours from brittle to pliable and resilient?