EXPOSED
This is a residual catch-all bucket, so the modal worker is a generalist seller — prospecting lists, sending outreach, quoting prices, demoing products, logging activity in CRM — and the prospecting, follow-up sequencing, quote generation, and pipeline notes are already the strongest use case for current AI. What survives is the part where a buyer wants a person in the room: reading hesitation, negotiating terms, and being the accountable face when the deal or the delivery goes sideways. No license protects the role, and volume-based seat counts are the first thing trimmed when AI raises per-rep throughput.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. At 8, the split is real but lopsided: list building, cadence emails, quote-and-proposal assembly, and CRM hygiene — likely most of a rep's logged hours — are already being handed to tools, while the discovery call where a buyer talks himself out of a purchase and has to be talked back in still needs a human to hear the pause and change tack.
Some physical or field component. A 7 reflects that most of the week is phone, email, and video, but this bucket absorbs event and trade-show sellers, in-home demo reps, and route-and-territory canvassers who carry samples, set up booths, and drive to the buyer's site — physical presence that shows up in some jobs here, not in the baseline one.
No licence, no signature requirement. A 2 rather than 0 acknowledges that some employers require product-specific certification badges and background checks, but nothing here is a state license: no exam gates the work, no registry can be struck, and the employer or manufacturer absorbs any misrepresentation claim.
Some relationship component. 10 puts this squarely mid-band because named accounts, repeat buyers, and referral flow do accrue to the individual rep, but the relationship attaches to the price, the product, and the territory — buyers switch reps without switching vendors, and most of the book transfers when the rep leaves.
Meaningful discretion. An 8 covers the discretion that actually exists — how far to discount inside an approved band, which objection to concede, whether an account is worth the quarter's attention — while pricing floors, contract terms, and credit approval sit with sales management and finance, so the rep rarely owns the call that can't be reversed.
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