If CRM hasn't reduced the number of salespeople, then why will marketing automation?

What a provocative question, Scott. It requires an equally provocative answer.

I don't think that marketing automation will reduce the number of sales people. I would argue that marketing automation will reduce the number of marketers. Here's why:

Marketing automation requires companies to engage in more personalized communications with prospects according to their role, their industry and the size of their company. Sales people are much better trained and prepared to do this than marketers today.

Marketers today have been trained in using broadcast channels to use creative messages meant for the masses. Marketing automation doesn't work that way any more. The rise of social media channels of communication further isolate marketers from customers whose buying has evolved faster than the world of marketing.

Filling the gap left by the slow-to-adapt marketing profession will be today's sales people, who will become the vanguard of a new style of digital selling, transferring their skills to adopt a new world of responding to customer needs online.

And by the way, CRM didn't kill sales jobs because it was never meant to. CRM (or more accurately, SFA) has always been a technology that serves a management purpose -- to better track sales contacts and activities in ways that demand more from sales people. Sales force automation reduces the productivity of the bag-carrying account manager, but increasing the productivity of the report-demanding management team.