The Comeback! Showa-Era Work Styles?! — What Salespeople Should Do Now Before Being Swung Around by AI

It happened the other day when I was having a meal with the president of an IT company.
“People keep telling me that if we don't adopt AI, we're in trouble, but honestly, I don't know where to start.”

Seeing him complain with a beer in his hand, my heart honestly ached.
It's not just this president, either.
Lately, when I meet with business owners, 8 out of 10 bring up the topic of AI.
But their expressions are somehow uneasy.

“If we don't introduce it, we'll be left behind,” or “What if we invest and fail?”
Have you ever had this experience?
The feeling of wanting to ride the wave of the AI era while feeling shaky on your feet.

This time, I would like to offer a somewhat unexpected perspective to all those business owners who are being tossed about by AI.
The theme is “The Comeback of Showa-Era Work Styles.”
For those of you who thought, “Huh? Showa, now?” please read until the end.

Entrepreneur Katsuya Sato posted this on X.

When I read this, I couldn't help but slap my knee in agreement.
In fact, when one of my client companies introduced AI agents, the time it took to create monthly reports was reduced from the conventional 12 hours to just 45 minutes.
Data analysis, document creation, email correspondence—
Work that was previously done by humans is being automated at a terrifying speed.

According to a McKinsey study,
about 30% of current tasks could be replaced by AI by 2030.
This trend is unstoppable now.

So, what will humans do?

As Mr. Sato says, “meeting people” and “taking responsibility.”
These are exactly the things that Showa-era salespeople naturally did while sweating it out.

Cold calling, running errands, entertaining clients on the golf course—You might laugh, but I believe that within that grit, there was “human value” that AI can never replicate.

Here is a question I want to raise.
People are making a fuss about AI stealing jobs, but I think it's the opposite.
What AI steals is “tasks,” not “work.”
This distinction is incredibly important.

When our client introduced a CRM automation tool three years ago,
it didn't go well at all at first.
Why?

Because the sales team misunderstood and thought,
“Since the tool makes proposals for us, we don't need to meet with customers.”
As a result, sales dropped by 15% in six months. I thought this was bad.

No matter how much you streamline, if your touchpoints with customers become thin, sales will drop.
It's an obvious fact, but expectations for technology were so high that it was overlooked.

That's when I realized the underlying strength of the Showa sales style.
Generally, it is said that “digital shift is justice,” but I think otherwise; rather,
after delegating everything that can be left to AI, go all-in on the “gritty parts” that only humans can do.
I am convinced that this is the ultimate strategy.

So, what should salespeople specifically do?
What I propose is the concept of “Neo-Showa Sales.”
There are only three points.

The first is to “make meaningless visits three times a week.”

“Huh, meaningless visits?” you might think.
But this works.
Show your face even if you don't have business.
Stop by with the excuse, “I was in the neighborhood.”

In fact, one of my clients who practiced these “meaningless visits”
acquired four new projects in three months.
That amounts to about 12 million yen.
It's something AI can never do,
the human feeling of “I just wanted to see you” creates trust.

The second is to “leave handwritten notes.”

Leave a quick handwritten thank-you note after a business meeting.
Just doing this significantly increases the chances of being remembered by the customer.
Precisely because we are in the age of digital dominance, analog becomes an 'outlier'.
You might think 'huh,' but
even research from the Harvard Business Review
shows that handwritten thank-you notes leave a 7 times better impression than emails
as data.

The third point is to 'speak about responsibility in your own words'.

Instead of just reading out proposals generated by AI,
say 'This is what I think. That is why I recommend this proposal,' and speak with your own sense of responsibility.
Just this will completely change the customer's reaction.

Last week, I asked a sales manager at a client company,
'Between presenting an AI proposal as-is and speaking in your own words,
which do you think has a higher closing rate?'
They immediately replied, 'The latter is nearly twice as high.'

At the end of the day, people buy from people.
No matter how much technology evolves,
the emotion of 'I want to buy from this person' cannot be created by AI.
Business owners, why don't we stop being swayed by AI?
Technology is a tool, and the protagonist is always the human.

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Profile of Hiroyuki Hasegawa,
with over 9,000 sales consultations
and over 10 billion yen in sales contributions to clients.