EXPOSED
The top-of-funnel half of this job — building prospect lists, writing cold outreach sequences, qualifying inbound leads, assembling proposals and quotes, logging CRM activity, following up — is already being done by AI and automated sequencing tools at acceptable quality, and headcount for junior/SDR-style service selling is the first to compress. What survives is the part where a buyer commits budget to an intangible service and wants a named human accountable for delivery: discovery conversations that surface unstated constraints, multi-stakeholder negotiation, pricing and scope tradeoffs, and rescuing accounts when delivery slips. Score reflects the modal worker (mid-market B2B services closer), not the enterprise strategic-accounts tier, which is materially safer.
Dipped in 2020, then grew past where it started.
Median pay $56,130 → $69,990 -0.2% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+3.1% 1,226,700 → 1,264,700 on the projections basis
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +3.1% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~123,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
SalesmanSales AgentSales AdvisorAccount ManagerSales AssociateSales ConsultantSales SpecialistAccount ExecutiveSales CoordinatorProduct SpecialistMembership SolicitorAccount RepresentativeField Sales ConsultantMarketing RepresentativeWireless Sales SpecialistField Sales RepresentativeInside Sales RepresentativeOutside Sales RepresentativeClient Relationship ConsultantTechnical Sales RepresentativeIndependent Sales RepresentativePest Control Service Sales AgentSales Development RepresentativeSales Representative (Sales Rep)
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Prospect research, sequenced cold email, inbound lead qualification, quote assembly and CRM hygiene are already machine work, which caps this at 8; what holds it above the automatable band is the live discovery call where a buyer's real constraint (a budget cycle, an internal rival, a burned prior vendor) only surfaces under conversational pressure, plus closing negotiations where scope and price move together.
Some physical or field component A 6 reflects that most of the week is phone, video and CRM, but service selling still puts you on-site for walkthroughs — surveying a facility before quoting janitorial or security coverage, sitting in a client's office to scope a staffing or logistics contract, working a trade show booth — which is more physical presence than an inside-sales desk job and far less than a field technician.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no licence to sell janitorial, staffing, telecom, or logistics services; contracts are signed by the company and misrepresentation exposure runs to the employer, so nothing in law prevents your accounts from being reassigned to a smaller team with better tooling — hence a 1 rather than a 0 only because commission agreements and non-competes create minor personal contractual attachment.
Meaningful discretion An 11 fits a rep who decides which deals to walk away from, where to concede scope versus price, and how to sequence a five-stakeholder buying committee — real discretion with revenue consequences — but discount authority, contract terms and approval thresholds are set above you, so the genuinely ambiguous high-stakes calls escalate to sales management or legal.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (8/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (13/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (11/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 25 of this occupation's 39 points (64%).
Embodiment (6/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to sales representatives of services, except advertising, insurance, financial services, and travel on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 51/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift is genuine here: if SDR/prospecting/proposal-assembly work is fully absorbed by AI sequencers (Outreach/Clay/Regie-style stacks), the residual job is discovery of unstated constraints, multi-stakeholder negotiation, and scope/pricing tradeoffs — the tier models handle worst. The composite occupation score can fall while per-survivor task_resistance rises.
If enterprise procurement rules for intangible services keep requiring a named human account owner in the MSA/SOW (single point of contact clauses, escalation-path attestations), and buyers of managed IT/security services continue insisting on a named human for renewals and incident escalation, the premium holds and can rise as AI-generated outreach floods inboxes and human contact becomes the scarce signal.
If firms formalize authority — documented discount/scope-concession authority thresholds and signature power on nonstandard SOWs vested in the rep rather than deal desk — the role owns consequential calls under ambiguity rather than routing them. Watch for the reverse too: AI-driven deal desks centralizing pricing authority would push this down.
Narrow route only: FTC/state UDAP enforcement or state telemarketing/telesales registration regimes (e.g. FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule amendments extending record-keeping and misrepresentation liability to B2B outbound, and TCPA one-to-one consent fights) could require an identified, registered human seller accountable for representations made in a sale. This would create a thin personal-accountability floor, not professional licensure.
The limit. No credible route to a professional license for service selling, and embodiment cannot rise — travel to a client site is not unpredictable physical work. The realistic outcome is a smaller occupation with a higher per-person score, not a protected one; the register score for the modal mid-market closer is unlikely to clear the mid-50s.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 91,680 | $93,750 +34% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 55,730 | $70,710 +1% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 50,470 | $79,450 +14% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 43,560 | $63,280 -10% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 33,900 | $78,950 +13% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 30,300 | $62,090 -11% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 29,980 | $96,960 +39% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 29,300 | $78,110 +12% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 13,390 | $116,510 +66% |
| Boulder, CO | 3,230 | $99,990 +43% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 29,980 | $96,960 +39% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 39. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.