Hiring a Manager or Integrating an AI: Honest Comparison for SMB

Your business is growing. Inquiries have doubled. Sales managers can't keep up with incoming requests — some clients go to competitors. You understand: it's time to expand the team or look for another solution.

The classic path is to hire one or two more managers. A proven option. But there's an alternative — sales automation through an AI assistant. Both options have pros and cons. Let's analyze objectively, without marketing fluff — what works for a scaling business.

Situation: When the Question of Sales Scaling Arises

A typical picture for a growing business. A month ago there were 80-100 inquiries per day — the team managed. Now 200-250 inquiries — problems have started.

Response time increased from 10-15 minutes to 40-60 minutes. Conversion dropped by 15-20%. Managers are working themselves to exhaustion — communication quality has declined. Night and weekend inquiries pile up until Monday.

Standard solution — hire 2-3 more managers for the sales department. Alternative solution — automate routine requests, freeing managers for complex deals.

Which path to choose? Let's compare by key parameters.

Risks and Limitations of Automation

Before implementing AI, it's important to understand the real problems you'll face.

Incomplete knowledge base problem. An AI sales assistant responds based on information you've provided. If the knowledge base doesn't have an answer to a specific client question — it has to redirect them to a human.

Lack of flexibility. Client asks for a non-standard service or wants to discuss individual terms? Automation is helpless here. The system works according to built-in scenarios and can't creatively approach a solution. In such cases, the AI sales assistant switches the client to a manager.

These limitations don't make automation a bad solution. But they explain why a hybrid model is optimal for many businesses — AI as the first line of support with the ability to quickly switch to a human.

Work Quality: Objective Comparison

Managers surpass automation in complex negotiations with checks of 500,000+ tenge,
working with emotions and conflicts, non-standard requests, and serving VIP clients in the premium segment.

Automation surpasses managers in processing routine requests (60-80% of all incoming), quality stability, automatic lead qualification, and scalability — traffic increased 3x? No difference for an AI assistant, but for a team — urgent hiring.

Critical point: artificial intelligence for sales can't work with strong emotions. In such cases, escalation to an operator usually occurs.

Real Cost of Expanding the Sales Team

Many only count the salary of 150,000-200,000 tenge, but forget the critical point — sales commission of 3-7% of revenue. This expense item scales with the business and can exceed the fixed salary several times over.

Consider a business with 5 million tenge turnover. Two sales managers close 60% of sales. At a 5% commission, each receives an additional 150,000 tenge on top of salary. Add 25% taxes and we get total: 750,000-875,000 tenge monthly.

Sales automation on Pleep costs from 26,000 tenge per month on the Lite plan with CRM integration. Most importantly — sales commission is 0%. The difference is 680,000-800,000 tenge monthly or 8-9.6 million per year.

Request Processing Speed: How It Affects Conversion

Research shows a direct connection between response time and sales conversion.

A sales department of 2-3 people works like this: morning is spent reviewing night inquiries (first response in 2-4 hours), daytime response is 15-30 minutes, during peaks — up to 2 hours. Evening, night, weekends — inquiries wait until morning.

According to Harvard Business Review data, responding within 5 minutes instead of an hour increases conversion by 21 times. An AI sales assistant responds in 3-7 seconds around the clock.

After analyzing 10,000+ dialogues, we found: response in 7 seconds gives 60% conversion, in 30 minutes — 40%, in 2+ hours — 18-20%.

Practical example: a salon with 150 inquiries/day, 60% come in the evening. With fast response gets 40 bookings instead of 13. Difference — +27 bookings daily. At a check of 12,000 tenge that's +9.7 million per month.

Scaling Strategy: When Which Solution Is Optimal

Expand the team if average check is 500,000₸+, premium segment, or complex B2B sales.

Automate if 100+ routine inquiries daily, standardized process, response speed is critical, many inquiries outside business hours. Examples: beauty salons, e-commerce, delivery, fitness clubs, clinics.

Hybrid model is optimal for 70% of businesses: chatbot processes routine requests 24/7, qualifies leads, transfers ready clients to managers. Complex cases and VIP go to humans. Result — 50-70% savings on payroll while covering 100% of inquiries.

How to Make a Decision: Practical Approach

Analyze inquiry structure: simple (prices, schedule), medium (consultations), complex (negotiations). If simple and medium >70% — sales automation is effective.

Assess losses from slow inquiry processing: inquiries outside business hours × conversion difference × average check = your lost money.

Test the solution: create an AI assistant, direct 20-30% of inquiries to a 3-day test. Assess response quality, client reactions, manager workload.

Decision: conversion at level or higher — suitable, quality 70-90% — refine knowledge base, <70% — hybrid model.

Conclusions

For routine sales, automation saves 680,000-800,000₸/month vs hiring two managers, provides 24/7 coverage and increases conversion by 40-70%.

For complex B2B and premium, team expansion remains optimal — live negotiations and empathy are irreplaceable.

For most, hybrid model is the best result: AI assistant handles 70-80% of routine, managers focus on high-margin deals. Scaling without proportional cost growth.

Key principle — sales automation changes the role of managers from answering routine questions to working on what brings maximum profit.

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