[ethbr1]

Their ultimate agent product strategy feels like reducing cost of sales... by automating salespeople.

I have doubts that will ever happen, but who knows?

Sales folks are highly-compensated, so even making a few of them redundant (or making existing salespeople more efficient) would be a big win for companies (Salesforce's customers).

[dartos]

I think a lot of CEO were sales people.

Being in that field, they can see where LLMs would fail at it.

They can understand that you can’t just replace a sales team with LLMs.

They don’t have that for engineering…

[bni]

Im an engineer. I see no reason why LLMs shouldn't already today replace most people in sales /s

[PaulHoule]

Compensated proportional to the revenue they bring in close to the time they bring it in. (Operations cost)

Very different from the software dev who gets paid today for revenue that might come in in two years. (Capital cost)

The average person has no idea of how capital sees the world. A worker feels resentful if they get paid less per hour of input, a capitalist feels resentful when they get paid less per dollar of investment. The Marxist viewpoint that they conflict directly is quite wrong: operations costs can be passed on to the consumer, but a capitalist is going to have to negotiate with their investors if they are having trouble with the bang/buck ratio of their investments.

(I'd had a job go really badly. A friend of mine said my problem was "I was only getting paid a fraction of the value that I create", I said "I tried getting paid more than the value I created and it ended in tears")

[wbl]

Why do people think costs can get passed on? They can't be. Pricing is about supply elasticity and demand elasticity. Sometimes you just need to eat costs because of the competition.

[PaulHoule]

Often though the competition is facing the same pressure. Or there is no competition.

My trainer at the gym introduced me to

https://patents.google.com/patent/US10245460B2/en?oq=1024546...

which sells for about $250 (worth it if you really use it.) My first instinct is that this product ought to be available for $25 on Temu if there wasn't a patent but I know from experience that if I talked to folks at TRX they'd have a good explanation of why my number is low. (e.g. TRX is in a position to pass costs on)

[downrightmike]

I got one of those from walmart in like 2018 for like $20, still going strong

[PaulHoule]

TRX won a lawsuit and you can't get one from Wal-Mart today

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/trx-obtains-federal...

[hedora]

These are between $20 and $250, but having many different band resistance levels is useful:

https://gofit.net/collections/resistance-tubes-bands

There are plenty of cheaper no-name options on Amazon, but they have the property that the handles snap off during use, risking injury.

[indymike]

This is less about Marxist/capitalist and more about a change in regulation in the US that makes R&D expenses (dev headcount) amortized over five years (for taxes) versus sales being a straight-up expense. This one is going to be good for the stock price, and the AI Agent angle is a marketing masterpiece.

[PaulHoule]

It's a good point about changes in tax laws for software devs. Makes me glad I work for a non-profit (a rare non-pathological non-profit no less!)

For all the discussion about a soft job market for devs, the fact that the last Trump administration made a tax change that puts a target on our backs comes up rarely but it is part of the explanation.

[indymike]

The chance happened in 2023.

[zeckalpha]

The investors are the capitalists. The C suite negotiator is petit bourgeoisie.

[mensetmanusman]

Customers will install agent interaction prevention agents to prevent the infinite onslaught.

Sales will still happen with dinner and handshakes.

[astine]

Salespeople are typically compensated based on commissions. At least the well compensated ones are. Automation can make things easier and streamline the sales process, but because the sales rep is paid a percentage of the GP of a sale, automation doesn't really their take.

[ethbr1]

The company still pays that commission. If the company instead kept that money, it would be more profitable (or could lower the price of its product).

We can get into the nuances of advantageous tax treatment or not, but sales commissions come from somewhere and are essentially transaction costs.

[cyanydeez]

There's probably space for AI secretaries to screen contacts and to drop AI sales.