Gartner Survey Finds Sales Organizations That Provide AI-Enabled Next Best Actions Are 2.6x More Likely to Achieve Commercial Growth
Analysts Discussed How to Drive Revenue Growth by Redesigning Seller Workflows for AI at the
A survey of 227 chief sales officers (CSOs) conducted from August through
“The most effective sales organizations are not simply layering AI onto existing ways of working,” said
AI-enabled growth depends not only on technology adoption, but also on redesigning sales roles around how work gets done. Sales leaders should redesign roles for an AI-driven environment, align those roles to AI-augmented workflows and prepare future roles to orchestrate AI agents. The need for that shift is becoming more urgent: Gartner predicts that by 2027, 95% of sellers’ research workflows will begin with AI, up from less than 20% in 2024.
Where Human Sellers Outperform GenAI
Buyer data also clarifies where human sellers still outperform GenAI. A survey of 645 B2B buyers conducted from August through
- 28 percentage points more likely to say a sales rep helped them advance to the next step in the purchase process than GenAI
- 32 percentage points more likely to say a rep made them feel confident in the purchase decision
- 39 percentage points more likely to say a rep understood their needs
- 21 percentage points more likely to say a rep helped quantify the benefits for their organization
Buyers who spent more time with supplier reps reported the lowest levels of dysfunction, and buying groups with low dysfunction were 13x more likely to report high-quality deals.
AI is well suited to activities, such as account research, personalized messaging, signal monitoring and next best actions, while sellers remain differentiated in empathy, judgment, contextual understanding and value framing.
“Sales leaders who win with AI will not ask sellers to do everything they did before, just faster,” advised Hessong. “They will build AI-augmented roles that give sellers more capacity to help customers realize value, advance decisions and achieve better outcomes.”
Gartner clients can read more in the report “Redesign Roles To Elevate AI-Augmented Seller Productivity.”
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About Gartner for Sales Leaders
Gartner for Sales Leaders provides heads of sales and their teams with the insights, advice and tools they need to address mission-critical priorities amid mounting pressures to drive growth through new and existing customers. With extensive qualitative and quantitative research, Gartner for Sales Leaders helps sales teams combat commoditization and price-based purchasing, develop critical manager and seller skills, elevate the value of sales interactions, unlock existing growth potential, and optimize sales force enablement. Follow news and update from the Gartner Sales practice on X and LinkedIn using #GartnerSales. Members of the media can find additional information and insights in the Gartner Sales Newsroom.
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