{"id":19806,"date":"2025-10-01T20:47:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T20:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandler.com\/?p=19806"},"modified":"2025-10-01T20:48:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T20:48:51","slug":"age-of-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandler.com\/blog\/age-of-disruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on Thriving in an Age of Disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jody Williamson<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s not exactly going to be news to you when I say that ours is a disruptive era.\u00a0 You and I encounter evidence of that particular reality daily \u2013 hourly, even. \u00a0The big question is, how do we not just survive, but thrive in this environment of constant change?<\/p>\n

We’ve been here before with disruptive tech. And by \u201cwe\u201d I mean \u201chumanity.\u201d Think about the wheel, the printing press, the steam engine, cars, computers, the internet, smartphones \u2013 and now AI. Transformative, game-changing tech is kind of how we operate as a species. And guess what? That means there\u2019s some newer, even more disruptive thing on the way that we can\u2019t even imagine at the moment. But right now, it feels like we can’t fully grasp how much AI \u00a0is shaking up sales. What we can grasp, though, is something Charles Darwin grasped more than a century ago: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, rewind a bit. For about 120 years, up until around 2005, what was the main thing a salesperson brought to the table for a buyer?<\/p>\n

Easy: Information and education.<\/p>\n

If a buyer wanted to know about an industry, a company, or find a solution, they had to talk to us. Seems like a long, long time ago, doesn\u2019t it? Since the internet hit its stride around 2005 \u2013 websites got better, bandwidth was faster, and Google became a powerhouse \u2013 the game changed. That was a big shift, even if we didn’t feel the immediate impact. Buyers started realizing they could get information without needing a salesperson.<\/p>\n

On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT drops, and it’s a whole new ballgame. These large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, etc., make information super accessible and fast. With Google, you get links and have to dig. With LLMs, you get answers. That speeds everything up for buyers.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today, and we see that an estimated 96% of prospects do their own research before they even think about talking to a salesperson. They know all about our companies, our products, our services, and how we stack up against the competition. Buyers are way, way more informed than they’ve ever been.<\/p>\n

Because it’s so easy to use LLMs like ChatGPT to check out different options, buyers are now looking at five or more potential suppliers, compared to just two or three before. Plus, there are often multiple decision-makers involved. So, things are definitely getting more complex for us sellers.<\/p>\n

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