Lost in Personalization: How AI is diluting true human connection in sales

While AI tools claim to personalize outreach for sales teams, they might be creating a paradox where everyone's similar personalization efforts are simply cancelling each other out. Personalization is now formulaic, stripping away the true human connection that has always driven successful sales.

Christopher Anzalone, CEO and Founder of Knowledge, raises an essential concern about AI taking over the sales process: are we losing the ability to connect and build rapport?

Lost in personalization: "If everyone’s personalizing the same way, then no one's truly personalizing," Anzalone states." In the age of AI, especially with the proliferation of agents in the near future, the ability to understand real human-level information and engage in meaningful conversations—beyond just discussing your product or service—will be what truly drives the sales cycle."

Building real rapport: Anzalone’s experience in sales, particularly in institutional finance and agency work, has given him a unique perspective on what makes a conversation truly engaging. He remembers how, during his time in sales, he would always look beyond the typical LinkedIn profile and dig into a prospect's personal interests. "I looked for these weird tidbits of information," he recalls. "If someone coaches their kid’s Little League team on weekends or is a die-hard Yankees fan, that's where rapport begins. I didn't care about just the money or market trends; everyone’s already talking about that."

What’s at stake: Focusing on shared personal interests is what Anzalone sees as the core of meaningful connections in sales. "People do business with people they like, and people like people they have things in common with," he adds. It’s this human element—this ability to build rapport on a personal level—that Anzalone believes is at risk as more and more sales processes lean on AI tools to automate outreach.

Looking at the individual: Knowledge is designed to address this gap by using AI in a way that doesn’t just automate the process, but actually enhances the salesperson’s ability to connect with prospects on a deeper level. "Most companies look at intent at the account level, but we track billions of website interactions at the individual level, identifying who is actually engaging with specific products and services," Anzalone explains.

After identifying the most promising prospects, it uses advanced psychometric models to gather data about these individuals, including their interests, to help build a richer, more personalized conversation. "We actually provide users with contextualized conversation recommendations," Anzalone says. "We show a 30-day website traffic history, so if you have a list of 100 people, we’ll tell you who you’re most likely to have meaningful conversations with."

Scrapping the old ways: Anzalone’s emphasis on AI’s potential to humanize sales contrasts with many legacy companies who are simply using AI to improve efficiency within existing sales processes. "I think most companies are just saying, 'Let’s take our existing process and do it more efficiently with AI,'" he explains. "But what we’re doing is completely different—we’re saying, scrap your traditional approach and let’s create a new process using AI to identify the 3 to 5% of your market that’s actually in a buying cycle."

Human element: Despite the rise of automation, Anzalone argues that there is still significant value in the human aspect of the sales process. "The biggest pushback we get is from people who don’t understand the value of the human component in sales," he admits. "They’ll say, 'Who cares if you have mutual interests? It’s all about pain points and needs?' Yes, that’s true, you can’t sell something to someone who doesn’t need it. But I think we solve for that with our ability to identify who's in market. The rest of it—those little tidbits of information that make you human—are what made great salespeople."