This week I read Anthropic’s report, How Employment Is Changing at Anthropic, and there were a few things that stood out to me, especially when they started talking about sales.
Anthropic reported that as AI becomes more widely used throughout the company, employees are producing more work, including more code per person and more sales closed per rep.
Now, before we attribute those additional closed deals to the presence of AI, there’s something I think is worth pointing out. Anthropic is a hypergrowth company. More people know about Claude today than they did a year ago, so how much of that increase in closed deals is actually coming from automation, and how much is simply because of more awareness? Anthropic even acknowledges this in the report.
Where the time goes
But what really stood out to me was what the report said about how their salespeople are spending their time. They shared examples of reps automating admin work, and one AE said that automations freed them up to spend more time face to face with customers, which ultimately allowed them to speak with 30% more customers than before.
For the last couple of months I’ve been writing about how much attention we should be giving to the accounts we manage. If we start taking administrative work off salespeople’s plates, we have an opportunity to spend more time actually getting to know the people and businesses we’re trying to reach. And if you’ve spent any time in sales communities on Reddit, you’ll see that administrative work is something reps have been complaining about for years.
So what happens when we start getting that time back?
What I’m seeing in my own work
One of the first things I did with Claude Code was build a tool that generates first touch emails based on my own requirements and writing style. Since then, I’ve been building more projects and getting faster at completing them. I’ve built tools to research and prioritize accounts, as well as automate parts of my own sales process. It’s actually pretty crazy looking at my GitHub activity now and seeing how much I’ve been building over the last few months.
So not only has AI given me the ability to build more and experiment, it’s also given me more time to think and strategize about how I want to spend my time.
There’s a scene in the Season 1 finale of HBO’s Industry that I love. Robert Spearing is sitting in front of senior executives at Pierpoint, making his case for why he deserves to keep his job. He’s being questioned about the value he brings to clients beyond taking them out and entertaining them. While defending himself, he talks about how much of the job could theoretically be automated before saying:
“This is still very much a belly-to-belly business.”
I find that particularly relevant, and maybe even a little more ironic now.
When I think about the time I’m getting back, I’m not just thinking about scheduling more sales calls. I’m thinking about attending more events, getting more involved in the communities I’m selling into, and finding ways to show up in those spaces as a representative of my company. I think it’s important to actually get to know people and become familiar with the industries you’re working in.
What this could mean for sales teams
This has me wondering how sales organizations might start to change as AI takes more administrative work off people’s plates.
If salespeople have more time to get out and meet customers, what does that mean for how territories are structured? Does it make more sense to have reps living closer to the majority of their accounts, or give them more opportunities to travel and spend time in those markets?
And if that’s how salespeople are spending more of their time, does that change how many accounts they should manage or what activities organizations should be paying attention to?
I think Anthropic’s report gives us a glimpse into how the work is changing. I’m excited to see sales organizations start to change along with it.