Sales rarely loses business on price and often on response time. Enquiries sit for a few days, someone forgets to follow up, and in the end the system holds less than was actually discussed.
Everything around the conversation can be automated: a new enquiry is captured immediately, enriched with publicly available information, scored by your criteria and assigned to the right person. Follow-ups run to plan for as long as nobody replies.
People still have the conversation. But they have it sooner, and with well-kept data.