New Kid in Town: Dealer Team Members, Client End-Users Must Break AI Fears

Even while it’s been around for years in various forms, artificial intelligence is undoubtedly the shiny, new thing in the eyes of many, a byproduct of the numerous platforms (Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) that have emerged. Its potential is beyond exciting, both from a personal and professional POV. But make no mistake about it: AI scares the bejeezus out of a lot of people who believe two things: one, it’s smarter than they are, and two, it’s going to take their jobs.

As we delve into the next installment of our July State of the Industry report on AI, we asked our dealer panel to chronicle the challenges and cultural barriers that have arisen when introducing AI into long-standing workflows, and how they were able to address the reticence. We also have a blend of internal and external game plans that cover dealer and end-user teams. It is clear that the AI Conversation is mandatory for adoption and to develop a healthy, and informed, attitude around it.

Overcoming AI objections is often a battle of mindsets. T.J. DeBello, vice president of sales for Stargel Office Solutions, notes the prevailing attitude is AI represents a shortcut, a threat or too complex to fit into a normal workflow. Given that workflows have been constructed over the years through experience, relationships and repetition, it’s only natural for people to be skeptical.

How does a rep break down the walls of tradition with an account? DeBello believes demonstrating practical examples goes a long way.

“For example, AI can help turn rough notes into a professional email, summarize a complex issue, create a first draft of a proposal section, improve a social media caption, or help organize talking points before a customer meeting,” he noted. “When employees see that AI can remove friction from tasks they already do, the conversation changes. The key is positioning AI as an assistant, not a replacement. It helps people do their jobs more efficiently, but it does not eliminate the need for their experience, judgment or relationships.”

Change is definitely a four-letter word in many vocabularies, and the willingness of end-users to embrace and adopt is vital regardless of the technology. Many tech initiatives founder, notes Jake Elliott, vice president and CRO for Spectrum Technologies, because it requires people to eliminate the familiar within their tasks and do something completely different. That’s where the friction begins.

Baby steps are helpful, and Elliott recommends implementing AI inside the workflows people are already using. One scenario he cited is the El Paso, Texas-based dealer’s contact center AI initiative. Clients call the same number as before and submit requests as usual. While the experience feels familiar, the process behind the scenes becomes faster, smarter and more efficient.

This has cast the adoption conversation in a different light, Elliott notes. “Instead of saying, ‘Stop doing it this way and start doing it that way,’ the message becomes, ‘Keep doing what you are already doing and watch the experience improve,’” he said. “So the biggest lesson for us has been that adoption improves when AI feels like an enhancement to the existing experience rather than a disruption. When employees and customers can experience the benefit without having to fight the technology, the resistance is much lower.”

Process Fatigue

From an internal standpoint, AI adoption was met with a sigh of sorts at Braden Business Systems. The team had been through a litany of changes previously—the cloud migration cycle, the security tooling cycle, the evolution from break-fix to managed services, and converting from a copier-only to a broader technology services portfolio. That led experienced team members to bemoan having “another thing to learn,” noted Erik Braden, CEO and managing partner.

To help ease the process, Braden was upfront about what AI would and would not do, namely not replace team members. It would handle the more menial, repetitive tasks in order to allow people more time to focus on client-facing activities and making judgment calls.

“We did not oversell. When we rolled tools out, we made sure the first use cases were ones that actually saved time, not ones that just looked impressive in a demo,” Braden said. “For our service technicians, that meant AI assisting with documentation and ticket summaries. For our sales team, it meant faster proposal development and better client research. Real time savings on real work.”

Another barrier was trust in the output. Braden was not surprised to see team members with 15-20 years express skepticism about AI-generated summaries, and he saw the misgivings about the summaries as valid. Thus, AI output is treated as a draft, a practice run, and never a final product. AI is “the intern rather than the senior,” a frame of mind that assures people occupy the higher position.

One of the most overlooked and underestimated barriers, according to Braden, is the cultural cost of inconsistency. “If your sales team is using AI heavily and your service team is not, you create resentment and confusion across the company,” he said. “If your managed services side is sophisticated about AI governance and your office equipment side is not, your clients will notice. Setting a baseline expectation, where everyone gets the same tools, the same training, and is held to the same standards, was more important than the speed of adoption.”

Search Me

Understanding what AI represents and how it should be utilized can be an issue for some. Nate Schaf, CTO of Eakes Office Solutions in Grand Island, Nebraska, notes that many employees initially treated AI like a search engine. That caused skepticism when outputs weren’t perfect, and it was a bit of an injustice to the tech’s capabilities.

“AI isn’t always 100% right, particularly when dealing with incomplete data or nuanced business context, and early expectations didn’t always account for that,” Schaf said.

With the added fear that AI could impact their employment status, Eakes took steps to make AI’s role abundantly clear to team members. It’s a tool to support decisions, but it’s not infallible, nor will it send employees packing.

“Our messaging has been consistent: AI should handle repetitive, time‑consuming work and accelerate analysis, while employees apply judgment, context, and relationship‑driven decision‑making. In many cases, it gives people more time to focus on higher‑value work that was previously getting pushed aside,” Schaf added. “Once teams see real time savings in their daily workflows and understand where human oversight and expertise remain critical, confidence grows quickly. Seeing AI work in practical, production scenarios, not just demos, has been the biggest driver of adoption.”

The greatest barrier, simply put, is fear. Sam Stone, president of Stone’s Office Equipment in Richmond, Virginia, points out that chief among them are the fear or being replaced or that AI lowers quality or authenticity. Longstanding business, particularly those that are relationship-driven, are loath to embrace anything that would be construed as robotic or impersonal.

This is why Stone’s Office Equipment has relegated AI to assistant status, maintaining only flesh-and-blood employees. The buy-in comes when team members witness AI changing diapers, so to speak, by eliminating repetitive tasks. That communicates the notion that peoples’ value is being diminished.

It’s not a magic elixir. “AI is only as good as the operator,” Stone said. “Bad prompts produce bad results. We’ve had to teach people that AI still requires judgment, editing, and business context.

“You can’t just push a button and expect brilliance. If that were true, every copier would stop jamming the moment you threatened it. We’re not there yet.”