Listen in the Podli app 🎧
Follow your favourite podcasts, listen offline and in the car with CarPlay and Android Auto, and always pick up where you left off. Free to try.
Is AI about to replace your sales team? Jonathan Green sits down with Ellza Malok (Chief Psychologist & Researcher, Blue Monarch Group) on why AI is a great cost-cutting tool but a terrible trust-building one — and what that means for anyone who sells. They get into why trust and human relationships are about to become MORE valuable, how AI quietly removes accountability, why the buyer's experience beats your funnel, and the IKEA story that shows the real play isn't slashing headcount — it's redeploying people into revenue.
Key Takeaways:
• AI cuts cost but doesn't build trust. You'll coast on brand trust for a while, then watch your sales cycle and conversion rates plummet — often within six months.
• Sit in the buyer's shoes. A little empathy reveals how hard you are to buy from; a buyer-first process beats the funnel you'd design. (85% of buyers already have a preferred partner before they reach out.)
• AI removes accountability — which is exactly what makes it dangerous and easy to buy. "If the AI deletes your CRM, whose fault is it?" Keep a human-in-the-middle step.
• Cost-cutting is the antiquated play. IKEA automated low-value work, redeployed 8,500 support staff as advisors, and turned it into $1.4B in strategic value — reduce low-payoff work, don't just cut people.
• Top sales performance is deeply human — emotional tempo, team rhythm, recovering from a loss, the "human why" behind an RFP. AI can assist the what; it can't replicate the how.
Notable Quotes:
"AI is a great cost-reduction mechanism. But AI, so far, is not a great trust-building mechanism." — Ellza Malok
"Almost every study out there shows AI has produced a whopping total of zero percent ROI." — Ellza Malok
Connect with Ellza Malok:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellzamalok
Company: Blue Monarch Group
Enjoyed this? Follow The Artificial Intelligence Podcast and share it with someone building a sales team.
Connect with Jonathan Green
