AI-coaching and well-being in sales: a theory of tools perspective

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become undeniably important in modern sales management, scholarly focus has remained disproportionately fixed on productivity and efficiency outcomes rather than mental health and wellness. This paper addresses that imbalance by examining the impact of AI-coaching on salesperson well-being. After exploring the limited scholarship available, we incorporate the theory of tools to scrutinize when AI is ready-to-hand (where the tool is transparently integrated), unready-to-hand (where the tool fails), and present-at-hand (where the user analytically observes the tool’s properties). The primary contribution of this work is a comprehensive future research agenda that moves beyond performance metrics to investigate the lived experience of salespeople and possible well-being outcomes, both positive and negative. The agenda identifies four critical dimensions—the user, the tool, the delivery, and the context—as potential moderators in the framework. This manuscript is a call to action for researchers to investigate how AI-coaching can be implemented as a catalyst for employee empowerment rather than a source of technostress and burnout for salespeople and sales managers.