Your AE Job Is Moving to Slack Whether You Like It or Not
B2B orgs expect 52% of revenue through digital channels by 2027, which means half your quota is about to come from buyers who never wanted to talk to you anyway.
Your AE Job Is Moving to Slack Whether You Like It or Not
Here is the number that should worry every enterprise AE in ANZ: B2B organisations expect 52% of revenue from digital channels within two years. Not "some revenue." Not "a growing portion." More than half.
That means your six-figure OTE job, the one built on discovery calls and PowerPoint decks and flying to Melbourne for the close, is getting carved in half. And the half that is moving to self-serve checkout is not the small deals. It is everything your buyers can figure out without you.
This is not about SDRs getting automated (that already happened). This is about the actual sales motion changing. Your enterprise deal that took 9 months and 14 touches? Buyers want to do the first 7 months themselves. Research, pricing, feature comparison, vendor shortlist. All digital. You get called in at the end to negotiate T&Cs and take the order.
Except here is the problem: companies do not pay $120k base salaries for order-takers.
The shift is worse in ANZ because we are already behind on infrastructure. These trends cite internet speed and timezone support as major barriers. So while US sales teams get slick product-led growth engines, we get clunky portals that still require AE intervention. Which sounds like job security until you realise it just means ANZ sales orgs will be slower to scale and cheaper to replace.
What actually changes for you:
Your territory gets smaller. If 52% of revenue is digital, companies need fewer AEs covering fewer accounts. The mid-market patch you worked? That is now a Slack channel.
Your comp gets restructured. Base stays flat or drops. Commission gets tied to expansion and retention, not new business. The glory days of big new logo bonuses are moving to whoever owns the product adoption motion.
Your skill set needs upgrading. If buyers are doing their own research, you need to know the product cold. Surface-level discovery does not cut it when the prospect has already read your entire knowledge base.
The B2B digital shift is not some future trend. It is happening now, quota is due next quarter, and your company is not going to wait for you to adapt. You can complain that buyers should want human interaction, or you can figure out what your job looks like when half of them do not.
The ones who figure it out first will keep the $180k OTE roles. Everyone else is getting managed out by 2026.