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TL;DR
- Sarada Subramanian (SprintRay), interview article
- AI handles the repeatable parts of the buying journey; the salesperson steps in wherever judgment, trust, or conviction change the outcome. AI can't fix a bad strategy, broken process, or bad data first.
- In B2B deals that cross company lines, no system carries context end to end, so the salesperson becomes the default integration layer, answering for things they don't own.
- Adoption isn't the signature. It's when a customer starts tying their own success to the product. Small early frustrations are often enough to send them back to spreadsheets or a competitor.
- A manual commission error costs more in lost trust than in lost time.
- The real business case for automation isn't "what will this cost" — it's "what is the current process already costing you," across reps, managers, and finance. The bigger payoff isn't hours saved; it's being able to change course without every new decision turning into a manual process.
Sarada Subramanian, a Project Manager in Global Sales at SprintRay, a 3D printing company for dental and orthodontic practices, spent the early part of her career working across finance, customer support, and sales enablement before a lost-revenue recovery project pulled her into commercial operations for good.
Where AI stops, and a salesperson starts
"AI should run the repeatable parts of the buying journey. The salesperson should step in where judgment, trust, and conviction could change the outcome."
That's Sarada's rule for where automation stops. None of it works without groundwork first, though.
"AI cannot compensate for an unclear commercial strategy. AI cannot fix broken processes or structure. AI cannot make bad data good."
Get the strategy and the data right, and automation starts pulling its weight.
The salesperson ends up owning what the systems don't connect
In a B2B sale that crosses company lines, context rarely survives the handoff between systems, from the first lead to the final invoice. Without that connection, the salesperson becomes the de facto integration layer.
"You are accountable to give an answer even if you're not the one producing the answer,"
Sarada said. Whether it's a late shipment or an invoicing issue, the customer still turns to the salesperson for an answer.
Adoption starts where the signature ends
The person who closes the deal can only start the job of making a customer stick, never finish it. True adoption, in Sarada's telling, happens when a customer starts associating their own success with the product itself. Her own example: years of running with an Apple Watch, until she couldn't separate her progress as a runner from the device itself. Getting there is fragile.
"Big, small, early frustrations matter a lot."
Sarada said, and one early stumble before a customer feels that first win is often enough to send a customer back to spreadsheets or a competitor.
"Ease of use is as important as product capability."
Not everybody gets there on day one. The ones who do become what most teams end up calling power users.
What a reconciliation error actually costs
Sarada once ran commission calculations by hand for a small team. At year-end, the numbers didn't reconcile with what the salesperson had calculated.
"That's when Q4 hell breaks loose,"
she said.
"It's a high-stakes process,"
she added, one where getting the number wrong costs more than time.
"The main downstream effect is the loss of trust that the salesperson feels at the end of the year."
The cost nobody puts in the business case
Companies tend to ask what automation will cost. Sarada thinks they should start with a different number:
"What is the current process costing you?"
Add up the hours: reps checking their own math, sales managers fielding disputes, finance running the calculations and defending them.
"What higher-value work can all these teams do that they are now spending on commission calculation and reconciliation?"
is the question that turns those hours into an opportunity cost. Get both numbers on the table, current and automated, and the case usually makes itself.
For Sarada, that is ultimately the case for automation. Saving hours matters. But the bigger advantage is what those hours buy back: the ability to change course without turning every new decision into another manual process.
TOP BYTES
"AI should run the repeatable parts of the buying journey. The salesperson should step in where judgment, trust, and conviction could change the outcome."
"When connectivity doesn't exist, the salesperson immediately becomes the integration layer."
"True adoption happens when a customer starts meaningfully associating their own success to the use of the product."
"People think about the cost of automation. People often don't think about the cost of not doing this."
