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Professionals · code 2433

Technical and medical sales professionals (excluding ICT)

AI can write the proposal. A surgeon still wants a rep who knows the kit.

AI could take a fair chunk of half the twelve tasks, including keeping up with products and building prospect lists. Visiting clients and estimating installation costs are mostly out of its reach.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Technical and medical sales professionals (excluding ICT) represent companies in selling a range of industrial, medical and pharmaceutical goods and services to industrial, business, professional and other establishments. Tasks include - (a) compiling lists of prospective client businesses by using directories and other sources; (b) acquiring and updating knowledge of employers’ and competitors’ goods and services, and of market conditions; (c) visiting regular and prospective client businesses to establish and act on selling opportunities; (d) assessing clients’ needs and resources and recommending appropriate goods or services; (e) providing input to product design where goods or services must be tailored to suit clients’ needs; (f) developing reports and proposals as part of sales presentations to demonstrate benefits from the use of goods or services; (g) estimating costs of installing and maintaining equipment or service; (h) monitoring customers’ changing needs and competitor activity, and reporting these developments to sales management; (i) quoting and negotiating prices and credit terms, and preparing and administering sales contracts; (j) arranging delivery of goods, installation of equipment and the provision of services; (k) reporting to sales management on sales made and the marketability of goods and services; (l) consulting with clients after sale to ensure a satisfactory resolution of any problems, and provide ongoing support. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Sales representative (industrial products) - Sales representative (medical and pharmaceutical products) - Technical sales representative Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Commercial sales representatives - 3322 - Sales representative (computers) - Sales representative (communications technology)

  • medical sales representative
  • technical sales representative
  • sales engineer
  • after-sales service technician
  • renewable energy consultant
  • solar energy sales consultant

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

50 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 3

378 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 12 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 49.9 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 49.9 = 50.1.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 3”: Most of the tasks are affected.

This job rates 28.8 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Technical and medical sales professionals (excluding ICT) 50

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Research on products and competitors.
  • Proposals and reports.
  • Lead lists.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Understanding clients' needs.
  • Technical advice.
  • Visiting clients.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Renewable energy sales.
  • AI tools in medical devices.
  • Remote selling.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

50 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 73 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

29 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 18 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

29 How
hands-on
18 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs .

finger skill 27.7 · hand skill 7.1 · cramped spaces 18.5 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 66, against an average of 50. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 66

    Acquiring and updating knowledge of employers’ and competitors’ goods and services, and market conditions

    Medium
  2. 65

    Compiling lists of prospective client businesses using directories and other sources

    Medium
  3. 60

    Developing reports and proposals as part of sales presentation to demonstrate benefits from use of goods or service

    Medium
  4. 53

    Reporting to sales management on sales made and the marketability of goods and services

    Medium
  5. 51

    Arranging delivery of goods, installation of equipment and the provision of services

    Medium
  6. 50

    Monitoring customers’ changing needs and competitor activity, and reporting these developments to sales management

    Medium
  7. 49

    Quoting and negotiating prices and credit terms, and preparing and administering sales contracts

    Low
  8. 48

    Consulting with clients after sale to ensure a satisfactory resolution of any problems and provide ongoing support.

    Low
  9. 46

    Assessing clients' needs and resources and recommending appropriate goods or services

    Low
  10. 42

    Providing input to product design where goods or services must be tailored to suit clients’ needs

    Low
  11. 36

    Visiting regular and prospective client businesses to establish and act on selling opportunities

    Low
  12. 35

    Estimating costs of installing and maintaining equipment or service

    Low

12 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
73
AI does it for you
50

Sidekick wins, by 23 points.

How good a match is this?

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2254, 2341

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.05% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

62
38

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 2 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should technical and medical sales professionals be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of it are exposed. Market knowledge, prospect lists, proposals, reports, delivery and monitoring are rated Medium; pricing, after-sales support, assessing needs, product input and visiting clients are Low. AI takes on research and admin; expertise and relationships stay human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 62. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →